Mac Plus refusing to read disks

Question

OK, so I was gifted a Mac Plus a couple weeks ago, and finally got it up and running a couple days ago (had to wait for mouse and a couple lots of disks for it to arrive, since it came as just the Mac and keyboard).

The first batch of disks worked fine and I spent a good afternoon testing things out, flipping things back and forth as requested, etc.

The second batch arrived today, and it took a bit of a different course. I put in the first disk of the Microsoft Word 5.1 install set and it read it fine. Not having an HD for the Mac at present I decided not to run the installer, but I thought I'd put disk 2 in to see how it came up.

It came up with a message that the disk needed minor repair, and offered to do it. I said sure, and accepted the offer to repair the disk, which it ejected thereafter.

From there on every disk I inserted would be greeted with a message "This disk cannot be read" along with an offer to eject the disk or reformat it as a one- or two-sided disk. Even the System 6.0.8 disk I booted that session with produced this when I put it back in.

Even after a restart it's still rejecting any disk I put in there, including known good boot disks.

Did I just watch the disk drive fail in real time, or is there something else that might be in play? Looking for suggestions on what to do next.

Answer 1

This is typical of a drive failure. Your best bet is probably to try to clean the drive first, since a dirty drive is the most common (and easiest/cheapest to fix) way a drive can stop functioning. A moldy or very dirty disk can muck up the drive in a single load.

You have a couple options here if that's the troubleshooting route you want to take:

1. (easier, but less precise): Use a floppy drive cleaner like this one
2. (Slightly harder, and more tedious): Disassemble the Mac and clean out the drive. This can be a bit tricky given the CRT and the hard-to-reach T15 screws that hold the case together, however with some patience and watching a few videos on the topic it's not too bad.

If you want to make sure it's not something more serious (e.g. the disk controller didn't die), you can plug in an external floppy drive, or floppy drive emulator (like the FloppyEmu), and if that drive works it's likely just the original drive that has gone bad.

Best of luck!