Cleaning 5.25 inch floppy drives
 

Anybody know of a good source of cleaner for these - thanks.

Re: Cleaning 5.25 inch floppy drives
 

Isopropyl alcohol on a cotton swab is good for cleaning drive heads. The drive needs to be striped down for best results.

Re: Cleaning 5.25 inch floppy drives
 

That is exactely how I do it, Isoprop on a lint free cotton bud. while your in there clean and re grease the runners the heads ride on. if they have sticky old grease on them it can give same symptoms as dirty heads.

Re: Cleaning 5.25 inch floppy drives
 

Also clean any dust from optical sensors (Index, Write Protect, Track 0). I've had problems caused by those being blocked in the past.

Unless you have an alignment disk and know what you are doing, don't disturb anything that affects the head position. Do not remove the head carriage, etc. If you do have the equipment to do a full realignment, then I strongly suggest measuring the position of the parts as accurately as possible before you remove them. And put them back in the same place. This will not be accurate enough to be aligned (the tracks are only about 10 thou wide on an 80 cylinder drive), but it will be near enough that you will be on the alignment pattern so you will have something to look at on the 'scope.