Marko Mäkelä wrote:
> > 1571s used a leaf spring suspension for the upper read/write head that
> > will tear and thus not put proper tension on the disk to read.
> > Especially this happened when the drives were left open (spring up) no
> > disk in the drive!
>
> So true. Do you know of any easy fix for this? Or does someone know
> someone who works at a facility that could manufacture those springs for
> next to nothing? :-) Metal parts are difficult to repair, especially
> springs.
I once repaired the drive of my plastic 128D by applying two component glue
to the broken spring. The procedure requires some skills with handling
fragile and small parts, but otherwise it was pretty easy. The bad thing is
that the drive needs a complete realignment after that treatment, because the
head assembly has to be removed from the drive to get to that spring. I
didn't realign the drive because I couldn't do it at that time, but I never
had problems with reading disks in it. But I don't recommend writing disks in
such a drive.
Another option would be a complete replacement of either the head assembly or
the complete drive assembly. I think CMD had replacement heads for $19 for a
while, don't know if they still had some and now sold them to Maurice in that
big deal. And a while ago some company in Germany found a small stock of
factory new replacement drives and sold them quite cheaply. A person known as
C64doc (reachable via www.c64games.de), who offers repairs for Commodore
equipment, aquired about two packages with 10 drives in each, and I was able
to get another three :-) The bad thing is, that these drives are pretty
heavy, about 1100g per piece, so international shipping would be more
expensive than what I paid for each drive, which was, IIRC, a little less
than DM10/EUR5. Still, if someone is in very bad need of such a drive, this
would be an option, and I'd be willing to give a few away just for let's say
EUR5 per drive plus shipping.
And the nicest thing about those replacement drives is the shipping box they
came in, it's an original box from Mitsumi/Newtronics with some stickers with
Commodore part numbers on it. And inside there is a two part styropor inlay
with 10 slots for the drives.
Nicolas
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