Floppy Drive won't Write
Posted: Sat May 04, 2019 1:33 pm
Hello!
This is my first post on this forum. Glad to join the group!
I've been poking around the internet trying to resolve various issues with the PCjr I got from my older brother. It's a rather nice specimen, with the better keyboard, optical mouse, and modded memory sidecar bringing it up to 640k. I replaced a faulty 64k memory card, fixed the keyboard cable (optical doesn't work at all), and dealt with some broken switches on the bottoms of the controllers. The system is now working, and I can relive my childhood by playing Jumpman and Crossfire with the correct, PCjr-only, lego-block colors. The only issue remaining is with the disk drive. It will read, but won't write.
I did a little research and found out how the write protection is an optical sensor. I popped out the LED, and it doesn't appear to light up at all when the disk tries to write. I got a flashlight and pointed it at the sensor while the drive was trying to write, and after many tries I got it to save my niece's Lode Runner level, but this only worked once. Since then I've tried this trick a lot, but had no success.
The obvious solution would be to replace the LED, but now I'm not convinced the sensor is working either. Can I bypass the optical sensor entirely? As a cheap fix, if I just clip and solder the connection directly, does the drive always function as write-enabled?
I also made the uneducated choice of purchasing a 360k Teac 54b 5.25 floppy drive, which I naively thought would work as a replacement. Unfortunately, I haven't had any luck getting this drive to function, and am now realizing that perhaps not all 360k 5.25 floppy drives are interchangeable.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks!
-Alaric
This is my first post on this forum. Glad to join the group!
I've been poking around the internet trying to resolve various issues with the PCjr I got from my older brother. It's a rather nice specimen, with the better keyboard, optical mouse, and modded memory sidecar bringing it up to 640k. I replaced a faulty 64k memory card, fixed the keyboard cable (optical doesn't work at all), and dealt with some broken switches on the bottoms of the controllers. The system is now working, and I can relive my childhood by playing Jumpman and Crossfire with the correct, PCjr-only, lego-block colors. The only issue remaining is with the disk drive. It will read, but won't write.
I did a little research and found out how the write protection is an optical sensor. I popped out the LED, and it doesn't appear to light up at all when the disk tries to write. I got a flashlight and pointed it at the sensor while the drive was trying to write, and after many tries I got it to save my niece's Lode Runner level, but this only worked once. Since then I've tried this trick a lot, but had no success.
The obvious solution would be to replace the LED, but now I'm not convinced the sensor is working either. Can I bypass the optical sensor entirely? As a cheap fix, if I just clip and solder the connection directly, does the drive always function as write-enabled?
I also made the uneducated choice of purchasing a 360k Teac 54b 5.25 floppy drive, which I naively thought would work as a replacement. Unfortunately, I haven't had any luck getting this drive to function, and am now realizing that perhaps not all 360k 5.25 floppy drives are interchangeable.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks!
-Alaric
