Editing Floppy Drive Repair (section)

=== The heads ===

{{Warning|'''Do not clean floppy drive heads by hand as a first resort.''' Tandon's service manual for the TM100 series states: '''"Do not use cotton swabs, solvents, or otherwise clean the head(s) by hand. Damage to the head(s) may result."''' Its position is that good media normally keeps the heads clean, and that where contamination is severe a '''cleaning diskette''' should be used according to its manufacturer's instructions.<ref name="tandon">''Tandon TM100-1 / TM100-2 48 TPI Operating and Service Manuals'', Tandon Corporation, manual part number 179022-001 Rev. B, July 1983 — hosted on this wiki as [[:File:Tandon TM100-1 TM100-2 48TPI Operating and Service Manuals 1983.pdf]]. Section 6.1 and 6.2 (symptom diagnostic techniques and soft errors, including the caution against cleaning heads by hand and the soft-error checklist), section 5 (maintenance checks and adjustments, alignment tolerances, the Dysan 224/2A certified alignment diskette and the one-hour temperature stabilisation requirement), Table 2-1 (300 RPM ± 1.5 %, 250 kbit/s, seek and settling times) and Appendix A (spare parts list). Tandon's instructions are specific to its own drives but the head-handling caution reflects general practice of the period.</ref>}}

In practice:

# '''Start with a cleaning diskette.''' This is the manufacturer-sanctioned route. Cleaning diskettes are mildly abrasive, so use them when there is a reason to, not on a schedule.<ref name="mzd" />
# '''Heavy oxide contamination''' — where a perished diskette has wiped a thick brown layer onto the heads — is beyond what a cleaning diskette will shift in one pass. Restorers do use isopropyl alcohol on a cotton tip here, very carefully, and report that clearing a thick layer can take minutes of patient work.<ref name="mzd" /> That is a considered departure from manufacturer guidance on a drive that is otherwise unusable. It is recorded so you know what you are trading; it is not this page's default advice.
# '''Never use a dry swab, abrasive, or a solvent other than isopropyl alcohol''' near the head.
# '''Throw the offending diskette away.''' A disk that sheds oxide will foul the heads again within seconds.<ref name="mzd" />