Troubleshooting intermittently failing 1050 drive

[xrbrevin]

1 hour ago, macsonny said:

I know this might be a bit crazy but I've now had 3 drives that I've fixed by replacing the felt pads on the top of the read/write arm (head). They get worn and if the drive head doesn't apply the right pressure you get that exact problem. Have you tried replacing those?

where can you get them from?

i could do with a few

[macsonny]

22 minutes ago, xrbrevin said:

where can you get them from?

i could do with a few

Just make them. I've used felt and it works great!

[sideburn]

I have not but both drives fail the same and I did apply pressure to the head and moved the disk around to see if I get any kind of signs of life and no luck. Then out of the blue it will suddenly start working flawlessly and you can copy a disk or two or three and then back to fail. 
 

I think I’ve got to go through the service manual in detail and try to start probing areas with the schematic. But no idea where to start really…

[Vyvyan B.]

13 hours ago, macsonny said:

Just make them. I've used felt and it works great!

Make them out of what felt? Do you have link to the specific material you are using? I think I read in one post here that these were actually made out of rabbit hair.

[_The Doctor__]

and rabbit is correct.

[xrbrevin]

not this then:

[nasty niff]

Cassette tape pressure pads work good

[macsonny]

On 1/23/2023 at 2:03 AM, Vyvyan B. said:

Make them out of what felt? Do you have link to the specific material you are using? I think I read in one post here that these were actually made out of rabbit hair.

Hi,

 

So there are probably differing opinions and I'm not saying my way is right - but it has now worked for 3 of my drives and also a few others who I've sent replacement pad to.

 

In short, I went to the local hobby store and purchased a felt square (30cm x 30cm) for about $3. I made sure it was the softer felt rather than hard as it seemed slower to the original pad texture on the 1050. I also bought some double sided tape. This wasn't the thin stuff, rather it was about the thickness of the felt sheet. Finally I purchased a leather hole punch. it's the type that looks like pliers and has a coating wheel on it to chose different hole sizes. I think it's typically used to make holes in leather belts.

 

The process I used was to get a few cm of the double sided tape, remove on side of the protective strip and stick it to the felt sheet. I then used the hole punch to punch through the felt/tape which produced a little "dot". I had to trial and error until I selected the right size on the hole punch that was about the same size and the felt pad on the 1050 drive.

 

I then removed the old pad from the 1050 and removed any residue of previous tape. I then removed the second side of the double sided tape and placed that where the original felt pad was.

 

It worked a treat! Super cheap to make and easy to make more in the future.

 

Again, lots of ways to solve this issue but this is the one that worked for me.

 

Good luck!