800k External Drive not recognized

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800k External Drive not recognized

I hooked my old 800k drive up to my Macintosh 512k. I boot from a floppy in the internal drive, and get to the desktop. I put a floppy in the external 800k drive and nothing happened. No sounds from the external floppy, and no floppy icon added on the desktop. I tried eject the floppy disk manualy with a paperclip but it won't budge. The drive hasn't been used in a while (atleast 10 years) could the floppy mechanism be jammed or completely broken? I plan to get another external floppy drive for my MacSe, but don't have another to test the port on the back, but i'm pretty sure it's not the port or the board, something with the floppy drive.

Is there anyway of getting the floppy out without taking the floppy mechanism apart since the paperclip method didn't work? It was an old game that was in Disk 1, Disk 2 format and i atleast want to still be able to use it later.

Thanks

Posted on May 16, 2012 8:50 PM

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Answer 1

May 17, 2012 6:11 AM in response to jbowden07

jbowden07 wrote:

I hooked my old 800k drive up to my Macintosh 512k. I boot from a floppy in the internal drive, and get to the desktop. I put a floppy in the external 800k drive and nothing happened. No sounds from the external floppy, and no floppy icon added on the desktop. I tried eject the floppy disk manualy with a paperclip but it won't budge.

Did it make the usual thunking sound when you inserted the disk, as it was dropped into place? I suspect not, and the carriage is somehow jammed or otherwise out of place since the paperclip won't work.

jbowden07 wrote:

Is there anyway of getting the floppy out without taking the floppy mechanism apart since the paperclip method didn't work?

No. You need to take the case off and have a look at what's going on.

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Answer 2

jbowden07 Author

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May 18, 2012 4:56 PM in response to JustSomeGuy

No, i made no sound at all, just sat there lifeless.... and with the paperclip, its kind of like the little tab you push with the paperclip is stuck in the eject position all the way in.

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