New ST Owner. Should I clean the drive heads?

[grizzlyaddams]

So I won a working 1040STF from eBay with mouse and SC1224 color monitor. Everything seems to work. I took it all apart and detailed all the innards, getting rid of dust and grime, even removing and cleaning every individual keyboard key. The mobo was still quite clean (mostly the upper facing surfaces were grimy) I did NOT open the floppy or clean the heads.

 

While waiting for the Atari to be shipped to me I also ordered some games. I own about 9 of them now. 4 games came complete in box. One sealed. They all seem to work though I was not able to test all disks for multi-disk games.

 

The 5 other games came in a lot. Original disks + manuals. 2 of the games seem to work fine. 3 do not. Of the ones that don't work:

• Anarchy: Disk is read from boot and the system does not move beyond a grey screen. Sometimes the screen is garbled colors instead.
• Space Ace: The first disk is very noisy. You can hear the data surface scraping against the envelope of the disk. Once very few tries it showed me a "ReadySoft Presents!" screen but did not advance beyond that despite continuous reading from the drive. Again the disk itself seems damaged.
• Gauntlet: Attempts to load, 3 bombs. I can see a light ring all the way around the disk near the outer edge of the data surface.

 

At this point after some additional testing I feel the disks themselves are damaged, and this is not the fault of the machine. Other disks read consistently without problem. Maybe a little slow loading games like Heimdall, but maybe I'm just not used to it. (Games like Ultima IV seem to load faster on my 800XL)

 

So after putting the faulty disks in my drive and just to be sure I was considering cracking the machine open again to clean the floppy drive heads. However, drop in replacement hardware looks like it is difficult to find and I am afraid that I might somehow damage the floppy drive by attempting to clean it. I know what to do and how. I've cleaned other drives before. But not having a replacement worries me.

 

What are your opinions on this?

 

Additionally, the STF I got has TOS 1.0 on it. I plan to order the 6 chip 1.04 set from eBay very soon. Seems like a simple upgrade. Are there any other drop in upgrades I can perform? (No solder or modification of original hardware)

 

TL;DR: Do you think there is much risk in damaging the ST floppy drive if I open it to clean the heads? I've done it before with more common hardware, but the drive currently appears to be working fine and without replacements readily available I hesitate to mess with it.

 

Thanks for your time!

[bluemonday]

These symptoms sound similar to me when I dug out my old disks. Have you opened the metal bit of the disks and had a look at the actual floppy inside?

 

Many of my disks had some visible mould on (had been in a damp cellar), which was causing problems.

 

I cleaned both sides by manually turning the disk and using record cleaning fluid and ear buds. I managed to get quite a few of them working again.

[Zogging Hell]

I'd probably clean the disks and the drive head if some crap has got from one of them into the drive. As a quick test to see if the drive is working properly you could try and format a blank disk, double sided and preferably with an extended format (try fastcopy or Kobold) so that the drive gets a proper work out. As long as the blank disk is ok and the drive is good you should not get any errors, if you have problems though it would be a good idea to clean the drive head, either with one of those specialised floppy disks (which will stop you having to open it up) or isopropyl alcohol and a cotton bud. Cleaning it by hand should be ok if you are very gentle and give it time to dry. It could also be that the drive is out of alignment, but that is a more complicated fix.

 

But I'd also recommend what bluemonday said, with one addition, every time you get a new disk, check it out before you stick it in the drive. Most games will have been sitting for a long time now so the chances of some being dodgy is getting higher and higher. Floppies, despite their reputation, are suprisingly resilient, more so than CDRs I would say, but they are at danger from scratches from crud in the disk. The line you are seeing on one disk is probably a scratch, although sometimes if the disk is really cruddy it can just be where the drive head has actually 'cleaned' off some of the crud in its attempts to read the disk. Unfortunately this probably means the crud is now on the head...

 

As far as upgrades go it depends what you want to do with it. If you are just playing games from floppy then I wouldn't bother as 1mb is more than enough for most of them. If you want to try serious apps or run hard disk adapted games more memory would be a must (Exxos, I believe, sells a plug in kit), and a Ultrasatan SD card is also a good upgrade.

[grizzlyaddams]

Yes I visually examined the data surface of the disks. Gauntlet had 1 small freckle sized spot of what could have been mold. I cleaned it and it did not affect it. Space Ace had a scratch on the surface all the way around the data surface. It was not covered in any type of grime or mold.

 

I was attempting to write some ST disks using a floppy in my Windows PC. However it was a USB floppy and was not successful. I did however format disks DSDD 720k multiple times in the process using the ST itself and did not get one single error.

 

All the other games I have load consistently and without error. So at this point I am going to leave well enough alone and not open the floppy. If it's not broke don't fix it? I'm going to soon order TOS 1.04 ROM chips and a replacement drive belt just in case. When that stuff arrives I will probably crack it open.

 

Thanks!

[Zogging Hell]

Sounds like the drive is fine then . You might want to just check the floppy is actually the drive belt model before ordering one (you might already know that, sorry if that's the case), it's only the early ones that are, and in most the belt would probably be on the way out by now (all mine died a while ago). You can easily dismantle these without fear of damaging much to see where the belt is. If the drive is double sided then it is less likely to be a drive belt one, particularly if it is the small button variant.

 

For some disks it might be worth squeezing a few drops of isopropyl onto the surface of the disk and then manually rotating it a bit (there is a cloth in the disk itself which is meant to keep it clean, which will absorb the liquid and rub it across the whole surface) and then repeat. It might take a couple of goes to fully clean things. Leave to dry for a short while then try the disk again. Sometimes it can be the whole surface which is the issue. You're not missing much with Space Ace anyway, although the loss of Gauntlet is more of a blow..

 

Without sounding like an ad for Exxos' stuff, he has a TOS switcher that might be better than just replacing the TOS roms. Some early games will only run with TOS 1.00/1.02 and don't get on with TOS 1.04. See the other thread on the go at the moment.