My Atari 1040 STfm floppy.. ..single-sided or broken

[Foster]

I've got a 1040STfm with a floppy drive that works just fine so long as I'm working with single-sided disks. I get errors if I try to load from or format double-sided disks. I assume it's simply a single-sided drive but I want to be sure before looking into repair/replacement. The actual model # is Epson SMD-480L.

 

Any help would surely be appreciated.

 

... Foster

[techie_alison]

All 1040STF(M) models had double-sided drives. It was only the early 520 STFM models which had single single sided.

 

The 1040 was the 'premium' model.

 

(i think... )

[+poobah]

I've got a 1040STfm with a floppy drive that works just fine so long as I'm working with single-sided disks. I get errors if I try to load from or format double-sided disks. I assume it's simply a single-sided drive but I want to be sure before looking into repair/replacement. The actual model # is Epson SMD-480L.

 

Any help would surely be appreciated.

 

... Foster

 

broken.

 

480L is a 720K double sided drive.

[Foster]

Thanks a bunch for the help! That's exactly what I needed to know. I'll now set out to repair it and, if unsuccessful, replace it.

[ijor]

It is possibly broken, but first thing first... Perform a good clean-up of the drive heads. Your second head might be just too dirty.