HP 9895A 8'' Floppy Drive - Problem

[Michael Fehlhammer]

(12-18-2019 04:08 PM)Paul Berger (Canada) Wrote:  You are right I don't think you could make that Siemens drive look like a Shugart (I think the originals are Shugart) If you where to get a replacement Shugart, even if it was a 115V 60Hz you could swap the motor and pulley from you current drive.

Ok, I will look out for a Shugart drive!

(12-18-2019 04:08 PM)Paul Berger (Canada) Wrote:  Did you swap that drive electronics between the two drives when troubleshooting? Head failures are pretty rare, and since they typically have a glass surface it take a lot of use to wear down the heads. Another issue is alignment, if the drive gets a bit out of alignment, it could read diskettes created on it, but would fail to read diskettes from another drive.

I think my technician swapped the drive electronic boards in order to isolate the source of error, but I have to check that.
I understand that the surface of a read head can't easily be damaged. What about the coils? Could problems with the power supply (overvoltage) damage these?

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions! We won't give up soon, such a precious piece of computer history deserves big repair effort.
By the way, I just have heard that only ten years ago a 9895A, along with an HP 9845 computer, have been trashed at a German university. Well, that probably has been the fate of many old electronics devices, but still - it hurts.