[Coco] FD-50X Drive manuals

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 08 March 2009, wdg3rd at comcast.net wrote:
>----- "Gene Heskett" <gene.heskett at verizon.net> wrote:
>> FWIW, this is a huge problem with 8" floppy drives, been there, done
>> that.--
>
>Gene, this is slightly off-topic, but do you know of any sources (or
> fabrication hints) for head-load pads for old CDC and Shugart 8" SSDD
> floppy drives?  I don't want to lose any more of my TRS-80 Model 2 media
> (nobody has yet written [or probably ever will, as there are few games] an
> emulator for that line and I am incompetent to do so).  Model 2 Scripsit
> (no relation to Color Scripsit except in name, there were half a dozen
> unrelated programs with that name produced in Fort Worth) is still one of
> my preferred word processing programs, the same program Isaac Asimov used
> to type his last hundred or so books. 

I battled that with an old Beston Marque character generator many years ago.  
I wasn't able to find felt of the same thickness locally, and I tried to stack 
3 layers of the green stuff, using various glues including rubber cement, but 
found that if it was used sparingly enough not to bleed through, that it 
wasn't a very dependable solution since I was also giving them a short shot of 
wd-40 for lube, letting it dry thoroughly.  Then I stumbled across some brand 
new, surplus Shugart double sided 8" drives for $50 ea, and replaced both of 
the old 800's with them.  Then I got a patch from them to use double sided 
drives, and all my CG operators bowed down and kissed my shoes.

But those were the ones with insufficient pressure on the rosettes & had to 
find a shim to put under the closing clamps leaf spring in order to get enough 
pressure to drive the disks, and that led to rosette deformation and damaged 
hub holes.  It didn't help a bit that the disks we were getting had been 
laying horizontally in a Mexican warehouse for 15 years, crushing the sleeve 
edges from cold flow, and of course driving all the lubricants out.  Later, I 
solved that problem for a little while by installing some Bournelli drives, 
but they weren't all that dependable either.  Eventually we gave up and bought 
another CG, much more capable then the old Aston or Beston we'ed had since the 
biblical flood waters had receded, or at least it sure seemed it was that old.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Of course, this being Perl, we could always take both approaches.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <199709021744.KAA12428 at wall.org>