🚀 go-pugleaf

Woe is me!  The 800K internal floppy drive on my Mac II just died.  The cause
of death is quite obvious -- the upper head came loose and was ripped the rest
of the way off by the next floppy I inserted.  I am a Stanford student, so I
can get educational consortium prices for either repairs or replacements.  The
two options that I have right now are:
  1) Pay $159 and get an Official Apple-Sanctioned replacement.  For
	an additional $25 (for installation) I would get an Official Apple
	90-day warrantee.
  2) Pay $415 and get a ROM upgrade and FDHD (1.44 Mbyte) drive, and a
	90-day warrantee.
  3) Do both of the above and have two not-completely-compatable drives.
	This seems like a questionable idea, since some of my disks would
	then be readable only on one drive.  Also not much need, since I
	have a hard disk.

Now for the questions:
  0) I presume that Apple is the only source for the FDHD upgrade.
	(I can't imagine otherwise.)
  1) Is it worth it to upgrade to the FDHD?  I understand the benefits of
	the increased capacity, but am concerned about compatability.
	Specifically, high-density drives write much narrower tracks.  On
	IBM 5-1/4" drives, this can cause marginal reading performance by
	older normal-density drives because they expect wider tracks and
	aren't quite sensitive enough to read the narrower high-density
	tracks reliably.
  1.5) If I get the FDHD, does Apple provide any *software* to read/write
	IBM-format diskettes?  This could be a big plus.  Or do I have to
	buy translators from DataViz?
  2) Are there third-party 800K drives that will mount inside a Mac II?  
	If so, who sells them?
  3) Can Apple external 800K drives be un-shelled and mounted internally?
	I might be able to get one of these sort-of cheaply.
  4) Is there anyone that actually repairs these things?  The head has
	plug-in connections, so it would just be a matter of replacement
	and re-aliginment (right?).  (SF Bay-area only, please.)
  5) Have I left out any options?

I've borrowed a drive from a friend (may you be blessed forever, John!),
so I am not in a severe rush -- I can take my time.

Thanks in advance for any advice.
	- Glenn Trewitt
-- 
Glenn Trewitt, Center for Integrated Systems, Stanford University
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