Akhter Plinth Floppy Drives

[Julz]

Re. Akhter Plinth Floppy Drives:

Can anyone tell me if these are easy to service? Mine came with the Master 128 I bought from a work colleage, over 20 years ago (non eBay purchase), and they worked fine when I last used them - c. 2001! Obviously, now, they don't, so I'm assuming drive belts need replacing. The Beeb does recognise them and attempts to access a disk, using *. but after a short 'whirr' (more like a 'schhh'), nothing.

Just wondering if anyone here has had any experience with servicing these, before I go ahead and tackle them myself, or can provide me with some hints / tips, etc. Can supply photos of it, if required.

Thanks in advance.

[Wheel_nut]

You should have a look at the Power Supply in this enclosure. If it is similar to the Watford Electronics one that I had, the PSU has three RIFA Capacitors which suffer the same failure as those in the Beeb PSU.

If the Drives are playing up, it would help to know the Make and Model Numbers of the bare drives. Akhter, Pace, WE and Viglem simply packaged drives from a myriad of manufacturers. Fortunately, afaik, there are no belts though there are other perishables in some manufacturer's products.

[Colday]

If these are the true Akhter double drive enclosure,, I have 2x of these which I am about to start servicing and repairing. One pair works, the other, not so much.

Would be good to swap notes...

Pm me.

[Julz]

OK. Cheers. I'll go and take some photos and make notes of the make / model/ serial no, etc. and put them up on here.

[vanekp]

most modern floppy drives have no drive belts, the main thing that gives problems is the carriage is clogged up where the heads ride back and forth on and may need cleaning and lubricating and the heads themselves need to be checked and cleaned, cleaning disk are hard to come by and are quite expensive for what they are.
Otherwise there is not really a lot to do on a floppy drive.