9114 disc drive issues

[John Garza (3665)]

New battery, charged overnight with a spare Topcat charger. Not running with the unit plugged in. Battery power only.

Most of the things in the repair guide I've already done. They just seemed obvious. A little penetrating oil cleared up the gummy old lubricant.

The heads look good. They don't look bent or loose. The top one is on a springy 'floating' platform, but I think that's normal. Watching the mechanism as I insert a diskette, the head seems to land gently on the surface of the disk.

The error message I get is towards the end of the process - the head goes back and forth a few times then back to the outer rim and starts stepping in a track at a time. It does that until the head is at or very nearly at the end - then the error message. If the head was dead I'd think it would error before that. But I could be wrong.

-John