[Coco] Replacement 360K floppy drives?

[Allen Huffman]

> On Jan 10, 2015, at 10:05 PM, Nick Marentes <nickma2 at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> 
> I had this happen to me all the time when I had my real drives connected.
> 
> The drives haven't gone out... the drive heads are dirty.

I thought about that and watched a (crappy) YouTube video of someone cleaning a Commodore 64 drive with alcohol and a Q-tips (you know, the way everyone told you not to do it back then 'cause if you weren't a professional you could ruin your drive) so I disassembled my drives (lots more complicated pieces than a single sided drive), air dusted them, and went through a manual cleaning.

Here's hoping it helps.

> You've been reading these 30 year old disks and the magnetic material on the floppy is rubbing off onto the head. When I was doing my disks, I was running a cleaning disk after every 3 disks. I had to, they were I/O error'ing. Cleaned the heads and I was good for a few more.
> 
> I haven't used my real floppy drives in years. Between drivewire and now SDC, it's been reliable. I run a floppy disk free CoCo!

That's what I am trying to get to, if the old hardware holds out. I've also been cleaning contacts and just spent two hours repairing a monitor cable. My eyes are shot compared to when I made the cable, but I finally can see "red" again on my CM-8. Man, this has been a night.

		-- Allen