Squeaky floppy drive. Any suggestions?

[nectarisneo]

Hello everyone. I was lucky enough to find a floppy drive for my Adam but have noticed that it makes a faint squeaky noise when the motor is running. Is there something that needs to be lubed/oiled/adjusted periodically on these drives? I'd like to keep my drive working as long as I can considering how rare they seem to be. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

[NIAD]

I've noticed this with my drive as well when using them with generic/lower quality diskettes. When I've used a good name brand diskette like Nashau (which are getting hard to find) that has a thicker/heavier protective sleeve, I rarely, if at all, experience this.

 

Aside from that, have you tried or do you own a Disk Cleaning Kit?

 

Not sure about lubricating/cleaning any other mechanical parts like the drive belt or motor that spines the belt... hopefully someone on here can chime in or will have to Google for a possible answer.

[nectarisneo]

I am using generic disks in my drive but do have some NOS Dysan that I can try. As for the cleaning diskette, I don't believe that I have one but did disassemble the drive for a careful cleaning with Q-tips and alcohol. I'll give the Dysan disks a try and post my results. Thank you very much for the information.

[nectarisneo]

Well I tried two different NOS Dysan floppies that I had and unfortunately the squeaky noise is still there. It's faint but still noticeable. If the drive mechanism dies, is it possible to substitute with a pc drive?

[NIAD]

Well I tried two different NOS Dysan floppies that I had and unfortunately the squeaky noise is still there. It's faint but still noticeable. If the drive mechanism dies, is it possible to substitute with a pc drive?

Probably the only one left that could answer that question is Terry Fowler of eColeco as he has repaired and converted to larger sized drives a lot of ADAM Disk Drives. I'll have to shoot him an email and hope for a response.

 

The ADAM Disk Drive was made by MPI Technologies and the drive mechanics would probably be impossible to find... the controller board that is housed in the unit is unique to the ADAM as well. I'm gonna have to open up my old PC to take a look at the 5 1/4" 360K drive in it to see if it has similar hook-ups for all the sensors (read/write, disk inserted, etc.) that you would have seen wires running from the controller board to the drive mechanics when you had it opened.