Fixing an old disk drive with 3D printed parts (Tandon TM-100)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- #diskdrive #3dprinting
Tandon TM-100 drives have a design flaw that causes the front lever to break, rendering the drive useless. This happened to me on one of drives, so in this video, I set out to fix it.
TM-100-1 - 48 TPI SS/DD 40 Tracks
TM-100-2 - 48 TPI DS/DD 80 Tracks
TM-100-3 - 96 TPI SS/DD 80 Tracks
TM-100-4 - 96 TPI DS/DD 160 Tracks
TM-100-3M - 100 TPI SS/DD 80 Tracks
TM-100-4M - 100 TPI DS/DD 80 Tracks per Side
--- Video Links
Tandon TM-100 door pivot point:
www.thingivers...
Tandon TM-100 door:
www.thingivers...
Repairing a TRS-80 Model III motherboard:
• TRS-80 Model III garba...
Adrian's Digital Basement Merch store:
my-store-c82bd...
Adrian's Digital Basement ][ (Second Channel)
/ @adriansdigitalbasement2
Support the channel on Patreon:
/ adriansdigitalbasement
-- Tools
Deoxit D5:
amzn.to/2VvOKy1
store.caig.com/...
O-Ring Pick Set: (I use these to lift chips off boards)
amzn.to/3a9x54J
Elenco Electronics LP-560 Logic Probe:
amzn.to/2VrT5lW
Hakko FR301 Desoldering Iron:
amzn.to/2ye6xC0
Rigol DS1054Z Four Channel Oscilloscope:
www.rigolna.co...
Head Worn Magnifying Goggles / Dual Lens Flip-In Head Magnifier:
amzn.to/3adRbuy
TL866II Plus Chip Tester and EPROM programmer: (The MiniPro)
amzn.to/2wG4tlP
www.aliexpress...
TS100 Soldering Iron:
amzn.to/2K36dJ5
www.ebay.com/i...
EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter:
www.eevblog.co...
DSLogic Basic Logic Analyzer:
amzn.to/2RDSDQw
www.ebay.com/i...
Magnetic Screw Holder:
amzn.to/3b8LOhG
www.harborfrei...
Universal ZIP sockets: (clones, used on my ZIF-64 test machine)
www.ebay.com/i...
RetroTink 2X Upconverter: (to hook up something like a C64 to HDMI)
www.retrotink.com/
Plato (Clone) Side Cutters: (order five)
www.ebay.com/i...
Heat Sinks:
www.aliexpress...
Little squeezy bottles: (available elsewhere too)
amzn.to/3b8LOOI
--- Links
My GitHub repository:
github.com/mis...
Commodore Computer Club / Vancouver, WA - Portland, OR - PDX Commodore Users Group
www.commodorec...
--- Instructional videos
My video on damage-free chip removal:
• How to remove chips wi...
--- Music
Intro music and other tracks by:
Nathan Divino
@itsnathandivino
Design flaw 1990: Holds only 30 years
Design flaw 2020: Breaks slightly out of warranty, aka 2 years. 😁
1990s? Try 1970s!
HAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!! This is pretty amazing and seems so true.
Design flaw 1923: Still working 100 years later (radios). Back then even the capacitors lasted forever same as the 01A tubes!
2020 isn't a design flaw. It's very much intentional, and a testament to how advanced and sophisticated engineering and material science has gotten, that they can build to a specific lifespan with such precision.
Progress! Except it's in the field of 'planned obsolescence'.
Woz, the best Steve in Apple history
I disagree Woz was "just" a good engineer. Without the creativity, Ego, looks and taste, excessive use of LSD and sales talent of Jobs Apple would have gone down like thousands of other startups with talented engineers at that time. You don't have to like Jobs to acknowledge that he was the spirit of apple.
@@fischX Yes, but you could have had Jobs' taste, creativity, drive, and marketing skill without his a$$h0lery and his aversion to open/repairable/upgradeable architecture that persists at Apple to this day.
@@briannickel5131 That is actually a question and a good one too. Because it's interlinked the open and complex nature of computers made them hard for causal users, writers, creatives non engineering type. Making products attractive for nerds keeps the target audience away somehow. The computers where created to work or not work at all, try to reduce need for hacks, user manuals and maintenance. Engineering loves complicated things that lead in the 80's to over complicated products like VCR remotes with 70 buttons you have to program with binary code. We love that for the same reason everyone else hates it, Jobs was the representative of "everyone else" back in the day when nerds made technology for nerds.
Woz is merely a "good engineer?"
@@stannovacki2406 He’s a great engineer, and a gentle giant with a big heart. And I totally agree that he would be fixing people’s Tandy 1000s if it weren’t for Jobs.
Nice fix! FYI: The cura slicer has a setting called "fuzzy skin" which you could probably dial in to more closely match to the texture of that drive's faceplate. You can use modifier shapes to make sure only the front of the plate that is printed "fuzzy".
Hmm but it doesn't seem to be possible on the side facing the bed, so you'd have to print it with supports…
@@francoisrevol7926 I think he said he printed it with supports anyway.
If it was me I would have used a textured PEI sheet with the model face down.
Remember that you can do work on 3D-printed parts after they're printed. You can easily sand down the extra thickness and even apply some textured paint to match the original. (Though I think the original paint is heat-cured and would probably melt the new part )
I wonder if you could sand down the broken part from the back to create a thin sliver of essentially veneer and glue that to a thinner (or sanded down) 3D-printed replacement.
@@ropersonline I imagine it would be difficult to remove that much material from the original part with the tools that Adrian (and most electronics hobbyists) would have, and be left with an even, thin veneer that would adhere to a 3D-printed part and (honestly) not look worse.
@@wbfaulk a better options probably plastic welding if you wanted to keep the part looking original
@@jaykoerner I have a sense memory of those drive levers and something tells me that it might not be thermoplastic.
If you're gonna sand it down anyway, just use a course sandpaper, that'll create a texture itself. Then there's no need to paint (or glue) anything.
Especially if your use an oscillating sander, the texture will be uniform, not showing the marks you would leave if you just pushed the sandpaper back & forth manually.
Hi Adrian. In addition to (pre)-printing some replacement floppy drive doors/pivots, go ahead and cut the brass rods to length, then put the whole thing into some little ziplock baggies, and label them as “drive door kits” (or some such.) Now you have some ready-to-go; store somewhere you’ll be able to find them when the time comes! 😍
That's the beauty of 3D-printers. Print what you need, not all kinds of funny models. Great video!
Nice fix to keep nostalgic electronics functional and out of the landfill. I'm more impressed with the development of your channel, steady build of diagnostic/technical skills, and the AdrianPedia you have become on retro hardware.
So much nostalgia for me with this video! I started my career doing floppy disk copy protection systems for the Apple ][. I added the same type of write protect toggle switch to my drives, and drilled a hole in the side of the case so that I could adjust the rotational speed while the drive was still in the case. I didn't know about the timing sticker on the bottom. Instead, I wrote some software to measure and display the rotational speed in real time so we could get our drives adjusted correctly. Apple's specs for rotational speed allowed quite a bit of variance. Since we mass produced our own disks, it was important that our drives be correctly adjusted so that the disks we shipped worked even with drives that were out of adjustment.
As far as the "lobotomized" Disk ][, many Apple peripherals of that era had much of the digital logic removed or simplified, and that work was done in software. Not only did it potentially reduce the cost of the hardware, it often enabled more features through software upgrades. For example, early Apple printers were able to print graphics because the software directly controlled the motors and print head -- back when few printers supported a graphics mode.
Yeah the way the Apple II controls the head stepping using address lines from the CPU is brilliant, and so damn smart. All the complexity is in software and you aren't relying on any kind of floppy drive controller. Those PROM chips on the Disk II card just have some simple look-up tables for encoding, AFAIK. It's super clever.
In a way, the Commodore disk drives work in a similar way, but just use an entire dedicated 6502 for the task. Definitely less elegant but at the same time I have to think it would be possible to use the Computer's CPU and a 6522 to control the 1541 directly and at full speed.
That design made it relatively simple to accelerate and decelerate the head while seeking. It's just a matter of changing the delay between steps. It's faster for long seeks, and also quieter. You get a gentle whoosh instead of a chattering or grinding sound typical of other home computers of that era.
Must be nice to have a basement!
I live in a part of the country where we're all at sea level, and NOBODY can have a basement. (Yeah, there's frequent flooding, too--whenever the tide is NOT low, lol.) At least, where I grew up (Atlanta area), we had a basement. You can bet that where we retire will have one, too, because I miss having one! It'll be dry and warm, too, you can bet on that.
Good job, Adrian! Thanks for the video.
This is totally the reason I purchased a resin printer. It can print those small parts with amazing precision, and even produce the texturing. Using black pro ABS-like resin with a model that has all the texturing in place would make the door cover so close to stock as to be unnoticeable from a distance.
Adrian, I have been watching your videos for quite some time now, and it occurs to me that you have a lot of knowledge about retro computing. I really do believe that you could really benefit the retro computing community if you were to put all that knowledge into book form. I am quite confident that it would sell very easily for you. Just food for thought my friend.
Sadly, at least right now, all of my spare time is taken up making videos for the channel. It would be awesome if viewers might go back through back catalog and add videos into a Wiki or library or repairs, possibly the one that Shelby over at Tech Tangents is working on. I think people right now would rather see videos though versus me working silently on a documentation project. :-)
Nice save! Love those old TRS machines... I can't believe RadioShack is actually gone. They built quality stuff.
They left Europe, but there are still hundreds of stores in the USA franchise.
That texture appears to be a miniature version of "knockdown texture" found in the drywall industry. I wonder if the technique could be miniaturized using some thick resin/glue and a teflon roller? The trick would be to apply random globs everywhere, then flatten them out. Tricky. Great video, love the channel and content. Cheers!
I love seeing cameos of your Model III in the background.
I’d like to see an 8-bit Dance Party on it. :)
Atari and Commodore also used those drives mechs with different electronics like Apple: the Atari 810/815 diskdrives and the Commodore 2040 and 4040 disk drives.
Those doors did not break due to age as some are doing now - I was fixing them as early as 1988 on Atari, Apple and PCs for the school I taught in, the Computer Clubs I was affiliated with and for many personal clients I worked for - both individuals and small & large companies (including other schools as I was the Bd of Ed's only Tech at the time). It was apparent to me at the time constant opening and closing of the door introduces cracks to the plastic and over short time after would break. Back then there were no such thing as 3D Printers, so a lot of repairs were use of epoxy, melting of plastic with a soldering iron and lots of cutting and drilling to get repairs to fit into place. Consider in a school, that the computer lab is being accesses every period every class da with about 7 class periods (plus 1 lunch period for an 8 period day) a day, and the average student opens and closes drive door 4 to 6 times during the class period. Times that with a 190 school day year (average 186 - 188 days per day but lets round it up), and that drive door is being opened and closed 9120 times a year and that does not count after school or weekend maintenance I must do to the lab's equipment in order to keep things going. That is a lot of flexing, twisting and sliding those pieces must do. And they must perform flawlessly year after year after year until the school gets an upgrade, which is about every 10 years. Consider that a paperclip breaks if you bend it back and forth before the 20th bend...
These drives were breaking long before many of the viewers were even born. Those that are breaking now are the survivors of of those times - already weakened in battle and made to start their duties to work again after a 20 - 30 year nap in storage. Of course they will break now.
Excellent video, and excellent repair. Good work Adrian!
Mt first job after leaving the TV Repair industry was as a computer repair technician fixing and aligning Floppy Disk Drives. I must have done thousands of Tandon TM100 drives not to mention CDC, Shugart, Micropolis et al. I had them stacked up at the side of my bench 20 or 30 drives a day, five days a week. Common faults on Tandon were track zero switches, yokes and door latches, rarely had to change the head assy unless it was physically damaged (usually top head on double sided drives) they usually just needed cleaning and aligning. Happy days.
I fixed a broken tabs in accessory box for a sewing machine using super glue and backing soda. 40 year old box, back as new. Magical… it allow reinforcement of parts and build thing like c clamps from thin air…
I just replaced a floppy drive in a 28 year old Toshiba laptop with the help of stereolitography.
I 3D printed a faceplate for a 'new' drive which didn't have one by design (it came from a newer laptop where faceplate is a part of a laptop and not the drive).
'Upgrading' a disk drive like that avoids all the problems with DC brushed spindle motors and perishing, hard-to-find belts on older drives that were shipped in older laptops.
We used to use the fluorescent lights in the shop to set the drive RPM.
Computer Reset had an entire pallet of new old stock double sided clone drives. I managed to grab two of them. One of which in now in my TRS-80 model III. The drive I replaced had the same broken latch which I can now fix with a 3d printed hinge. Thanks!
Ah neat! And if it's the Texas Peripherals one that part is on there too. Those old drives aren't getting any more common!
14:43 That metal plate will not prevent you to insert a disk while a disk is already inserted. That metal plate will make the disk go all the way in and hold the disk in place.
What will prevent you from inserting a disk? Easy, the black plastic door you close.
HAHA good point!
i have one Tandy fullsize 5.25 "
for quite some time it did indeed work..
but now.. many of the drives fail basics
and i got stack of floppies to process
if one drive works - other drivers can be fixed
after making a master boot disk
and cloning these.. on various brands
using 360k and 1200k media.
If you are interested in getting the texture on the front. Spraying paint through a stocking stretched over the nozzle will give a similar effect.
It would be great if someone put together a resource guide on where you can find all these cool replacement parts.
Excellent work and video as always! Thanks for sharing!
You could try fuzzy skin option in cura or other slicer like superslicer or prusaslicer for a finish more alike the original
Yeah I need to try that! I use Cura and I saw that setting in the experimental settings.
3D printers have really been a game changer for the home hobbyist. Perhaps one day I'll invest in one. Any recommendations?
I wouldn't call this issue a design flaw, it's more of a design trade off. They could have designed the pivot and latch mechanism to be more robust, but with added expense during manufacturing with very little return for it. Most of these drives have lasted far longer than their designers ever intended, so why add to the cost of manufacturing?
another great video Adrian, thanks!
I have to ask though, where DO you store all the stuff you have (and yet to have) worked on?
do you have a storage shed in your back yard made by the same team that built the TARDIS?
I wish a TARDIS were possible! It's just very efficial storage systems plus I give stuff away to my local friends
Thanks this is awesome! One of my model III drives has this exact issue. What material did you use? I plan to use ASA for mine (going to print it right now lol)
It's just PLA with 100% infill
@@adriansdigitalbasement PLA has surprisingly good mechanical properties if it's kept cool so it will be fine many years to come (as long as it does not go into a hot car or attic 😀).
Isn't it 5 1/4 inch (5.25 inch) and not 5 1/2 inch?
I tiny drop of silicon oil would have make it even smoother to open and close.
Nice job on the fixes.
Nice. I wonder if the fuzzy skin setting on Cura would give a closer approximation to the original.
I noticed that under experimental, and I have never tried it. I'll need to experiment a bit. ( use Cura even though Prusa Slicer seems to do a better job with sharp corners. Less bulge...)
3D printers are going to be an absolute necessity in the years to come, as spare parts for devices become nonexistent.
I really want the day to come where we have high resolution and accurate 3D scanners, so I could put the broken part in the scanner and then just need to fix the broken part in software, then print a new part.
@@adriansdigitalbasement you can actually use a 3d scanner that they use to do teeth molds :)
@@adriansdigitalbasement You just invented the 3D photocopier!
@@adriansdigitalbasement absolutely. Photogrammetry apps can do a decent scan with phones sometimes, but not quite reliable enough to not be too much of a PITA to fix. I do suspect a phone with a solid state lidar and multiple cameras will be the basis for such a scanner though.
Holy sh#t I think this is exactly what I need to fix my kaypro 2. I need to check the drive type but they looks similar
Tandon drives were extremely popular. My assumption is they cost far less than the SA400 from Shugart -- plus they supported a full 40 tracks while the SA400 was only a 37 track drive.
i had to fix the bottom drive on mine. i super glued something in place of the broken part, kind of like a strap over that part, and i think i made a pin out of a small nail.
Lol I love the voiceover correction you did! You should do that going forward, instead of a subtitled correction. it made me giggle :)
I suppose someone could add a textured pattern into the face, since the original pattern has some big splotches.
One could have repaired the original disk latch if one wanted to keep the original look. I would probably do that because it looks nice to look original.
Good timing, I am starting to work fixing up a couple of model 4's this week.
Would I be correct in thinking that it's hypothetically possible to replicate the door texture on a 3D printer, but you'd essentially have to design the texture yourself, which would presumably be a fairly tedious process? Or do the relevant CAD apps provide for surface texturing, and whoever designed that door simply chose to go with a smooth surface?
It is if you print it on a textured build plate. I have a Creality PEI textured spring steel build plate and the texture is very similar. The problem with this floppy door part is that the door is not completely flat. There is a raised part where the disk slot is when you close the door. That means you would not be able to print it flat (why he had to print it on its side) so as to get the texture. Trying to replicate the texture so that it actually prints would probably not look good as it would require too much detail.
With a FDM printer (melted plastic) of the kind Adrian has details on that level is not possible to reliably produce, it's quite possible if you have a resin printer though.
As Racer says, you can use a textured print bed on an FDM printer, which gives A texture, but that is closer to the sandy texture of a C64, not the flakey texture the IBM drives have. And you only get that bed texture on the very bottom layer, so the surface you need the texture on must be completely flat.
This is the build plate I have , but as mentioned it's not flat. So I printed it on its side which means the side has a nice texture LOL
Great vid!!!
Probably not a great idea, but maybe try printing that part face down with a raft.
When I started 3D printing, I frequently used rafts, and they helped the prints stick, but didn't leave a smooth surface. Maybe that's what you would want for this print. ;-)
Probably not, but... ;-)
Heh I had issues sticking but I have resorted to glue sticks and that solved all my issues. They are so cheap and they wash right off the bed with soapy warm water so win win.
If you kept the original front latch and really want to keep the original look, I think you could rebuild the broken piece. It would certainly be easier if you had the piece that broke off but I think you still could do it without that piece.
At least the door. I could probably try to carefully remove those broken table and then print just those -- and glue them on. I think alignment would be really tricky, especially for people like me who are CAD/CAM challenged.
@@adriansdigitalbasementsuperglue + baking soda is the best tool for such jobs.
@@volkhen0 i'd say 'melt weld' with acetone or MEK is better to 'stick' plastics like these, superglue can crack off, i've had it happen many times
@@andygozzo72 polymerizing super glue with baking soda always worked great. But your method is also good.
@@volkhen0 superglue can still 'come off' plastic, i find it isnt very 'super' 😉, plus its too brittle when set, you can get more 'flexible' types, even ones containing rubber, they might be better, but are much more expensive
Great job!
Perhaps a silly suggestion but to get a bit closer to the texture of the original, could you heat the printed one and press it against the front of one of the drives?
It would be a negative copy but perhaps less noticeable than the print lines.
16:35 - Couldn't that texture be 3D printed?
I have a ZX81 still in it'd box with the Manual
try passive jet heat sink (triangle shaped pulsejet heat sink tower, no power source other than the heat to be sinked, in air)
Can you upgrade to doubled sided or DSDD drives with that system with it's controller?
If the controller supports double sided, then yes you can stick in the DS drive and it'll work. If you put in a DS drive in a single sided controller, it will just ignore the extra side. (No harm done)
@@adriansdigitalbasement And if you cut the notch, you can use both sides of the floppy.
It freaking works! 😅
I wonder if that piece would look a little smoother if it was sprayed with some black latex or lacquer paint ...just a thought.
Someone else suggested the bed liner spray. The problem with 3D printed parts is when you apply thin paint to them, it just gets absorbed right into it. It would need something thicker I think.
It'd be so nice to have a 3D printer to have stuff like this made at home so easily, but the cost of them here in the UK is still stupid, granted the prices are dropping, but for someone like me on a low and limited income, it's still a cost I can't justify just yet... :(
And no I don't expect them to be like the notorious £30-50 range Epson printer type of price where they ding you on the refills, cos those were junk, and we knew it, and still bought them and spent more than enough on the things to buy a decent laser instead...
I know these days are people are replacing their old printers with new ones as they have been around long enough -- so perhaps you can find some on the second hand market for a really low price. I know I gave my old printer to a friend -- it still worked, it just was a bit more fiddly than the new one I bought.
@@adriansdigitalbasement There is that option, it's just knowing osmeone who has one (who is in the same country!!), my being someone who is a habitual loner, autism & social life incompatibilities, I don't actually know anyone who has one that may want to offload, all I seem to get are literal junk (low spec and utterly ruined) modern computers and old washing machines it seems... :P
Nice!
The best restoration is going to be a silicone mold off a restored or non-broken part, and then casting with black urethane. Will match the texture, and be strong. It's actually pretty easy for small parts, especially such a simple geometry.
The next best thing would be a resin printer. FDM will usually look like junk, although I held some samples (printed on Markforged printers) that were really, really good.
Notification Squad! :D
First off, love your content. I know you deal with retro stuff, but isn't it time to start using standard units of measurement like the rest of the world?
Hey even today, I think a lot of stuff in stuff is in imperial measurements, at least in English speaking countries. Plumbing stuff especially and I think these brass rods were for use in welding. (As I had to buy a big package of many rods.)
If the parts you’re going to use are in imperial units, then you use imperial units.
I don’t make the rules. I just pick my battles. And that two sets of units exist and are both in current use is not the hill worth dying on.
No, most plumbing stuff in the rest of the world is metric. Copper pipe is 10, 15 or 22 millimetres in the UK.
PVC drain pipe is in inches though, i think.
@@adriansdigitalbasement Actually if you look at the statistic, 98.5% of countries world wide use standard units of measurement (we don't call it 'metric' that is a US/UK thing). Also, there are more than 2 billion english speakers world wide, and the vast majority of those obviously live in countries that use standard units of measurement.
There is no need to be haughty and condescending. Imperial system units are used around the world in a variety of applications. Even in China, for instance, a country in which Metric is official and that couldn't have less connection to the Anglosphere, you need to know your inches from your centimeters when dealing with electronics. It is the way it is. The world is not going to change just because you are convinced of the superiority of one system over the other.
print it in annoying orange or toxic green colors and pretend like it's intentional.
I think if it were bright green or red, it would actually look really cool.
cherry red + black is always a nice color combination
You can get the hammer texture paint and get a close match to the texture of coverplate.
Oh i didn't noticed we had the same ideia hahah. Oh well i was just 6 hours late 😂😂
FWIW, that's not hammer paint. I'm not really sure what it's called, but it's more like a sputtered powder coat.
Blast from the past. Not sure if it is the same exact model, but a local BBS operator ran his BBS (The Junk Drawer) on an old TRS-80 Model III running MTABBS (Mike’s Totally Awesome BBS) and I remember him speaking about having a switch on the drive to do write protect as they could save the BBS files to load on it and flip the switch to prevent changes, unless they needed it. Doubt it is the same Model III unit but probably was done for the same reason. :)
Ideamaker has a texture application mode, which lets you apply displacement mapped textures to existing STLs. I bet you could get a good approximation of the original texture using that.
I got a 3D printer in about August last year and its really changed my ability to fix things. Where Id have to give up on a broken plastic part, Im not able to reproduce replacement parts
Cool history lesson on how you got your start! I'd love to hear more about that. It's like this Model III is an old friend of yours, so fixing it is definitely a thing to do.
Steve Wozniak really doesn't get enough credit for his electronics genius. Apple Computer would not have been nearly as successful without his contributions. (This from someone who roundly dislikes Apple Computer...)
I *love* the idea of printing these parts in a contrasting color (e.g., red), as shown on ThingiVerse, so that anyone looking at the system can readily spot that it's not original - that's like an implicit "full disclosure". (Of course their exemplar is shown in red for contrast, but I like the idea for other reasons.)
If you can mould the texture and make a thermally conductive negative cast you could maybe either print directly into onto it, or heat it and push the print into it to melt the texture in.
or you could approximate it with the fuzzy skin feature in prusa slicer. I'm working on a car part for my dad and I played around with fuzzy skin until it matched the texture pretty closely.
the down side is only the sides of the print are affected so the front would have to be printed vertically. Should be ok though.
well he printed it that way anyway so yeah fuzzy skin would work fine
@@awilliams1701 oh that’s pretty cool
For one offs 3D printed parts, particularly small ones that don’t come out looking very good on a home 3D printer, I like to use JLCPCB’s Laser Sintering service. The resulting nylon part is strong, precise, and has a nice finish. Even if I have to wait a couple of weeks, I find the price very reasonable.
Hi Adrian, love watching your channel, nostalgic and informative. Over here in the UK a new computer museum has opened in Leigh called North West Computer Heaven. I think you'd be in hogs heaven with all these working models.
Whenever I speak to someone in either one of the tech communities or astro communities I'm active in who doesn't have a printer because they think it's too expensive, and they live close-ish to a Microcenter, I always recommend they keep an eye out for the $99 ender 3 pro deal that still seems to run fairly often. It's just such a handy thing to have and many are surprised how cheap they can be
Apparently some public libraries can 3D print parts for a nominal cost.
@@wesley00042 great point! Mine has a glowforge as well for what that's worth haha
Given that the original door is broken anyway, I wonder if it's possible to sand the back of it down so it can be used as a thin facade, glueing it to the front of a modified 3D printed door so it would look original from the front.
The printed door may become too thin and weak then? 🤔
(edit: typo)
@@gigaherz_ That should be fine if you glue it good. The original door should be at least equivalent in strength too the 3D print. It would be a lot more work though.
@@gigaherz_ Depends on the glue, I'm thinking an epoxy resin or a specialist plastic glue would do it.
I think that it could just be repaired with some epoxy
It would probably be easier to just print the pin loop and glue it or plastic weld it with bridge wires.
Would it be easier to "trim each disk" to make room for the mis-adjusted lever? Just saying :O)
I half expected you to swap the MPIO in at the end just since it is such a pristine system, but I'm happy you used the 3D printed part, which does look good as well and shows it is a modern survivor. Cheers!
Automotive spatter paint would be closer than hammer paint. You can also make a heat iron tip that will work with a soldering iron to texture the plastic. A diamond bit and a thick square of aluminum and patients.
You can also get textured print beds that memic a lot of textures used.
Your 3 printers need a little tuning and the end results will be far better.
Hi Adrian you could make the door with wider supports to reduce the stress and future breakages as its all internal anyway so cant be seen.
Indeed -- if this 3D printed door ever breaks, it wouldn't be a hard mod to fix this... especially when printing both the door and pivot point part.
I was thinking the same. With a wider support, it would also be feasible to glue in a metal (brass) sleeve in at least part of the support loop to give it even more strength.
16:42 Here we see Adrian stifle his rage about the door looking off. 🤣
I wonder if the 'clone' drives were bootleg or did they license the design? Or I wonder if they got a license due to 'second source' sort of agreements Shuggart would have had to make with big OEMs?
Yeah. That's a good question.
I had basically assumed it was the latter yeah. Just like AMD got their start being an extra source of Intel designs. It was just so common in the industry
Looks like this kind of defect could also be repaired with a steel pc slot bracket, some epoxy resin, a metal saw, a pair of pliers and a file to adjust the repaired hinge and flap. A small steel rod made from a paperclip and (with epoxy resin around it if it's too thin) and 4 small flat steel washers could also do the job
Or, if you're My Mechanics _"I make a new one."_
Otherwise, you can put stickers on each drive flap if the finish of the 3D flap isn't satisfying (even printed 0 and 1 or A and B depending on the computer you're using with it).
+1 on epoxy. Paperclip or steel washer are great ideas for keeping it from breaking again
Could you not 'rebuild the broken part (say with super glue and baking powder?) on the original door flap?
Might want to try acetone welding that drive lever's faceplate back together. That might cause some discoloration so it may require a bit of color touch up afterwards but the weld should be quite strong (depends a lot on the plastic they used whether it will acetone weld). Speaking of which, you can dip a sponge in black spray paint and daub it on that replacement drive lever faceplate to give it some texture to match the rest of the drive's faceplate.
Ben Heck had a method to texturize 3D printed plastic. I'm not sure how you would search for that or if you even care to. It may have been for an Atari 2600 hand held.
if you print that again face down on a textured sheet it might actually look a bit better
If I understand right, nylon dries out over time. We used to go through quite a few nylon tie wraps at work for one customer's product, and I recall that when I would request some from the materials department for repairs, sometimes I'd get the parts in an antistatic zip-loc bag that had a moist sponge in the bag along with the tie wraps.
Now you mention it, I've seen that with nylon zip ties too. Brittle and just snap. Interesting!
Very nice! Now, I need to see if the same files exist for Apple Disk IIs - I have one that is entirely missing its door.
Ah interesting -- I wonder if it broke off it someone broke it (with force) and now it's just missing.
@@adriansdigitalbasement That's a good question. Sadly, it came out of an attic where it was stashed many years ago, so that knowledge is likely long since gone.
Lasts 40+ years before breaking " it's just a flaw in the design ". Adrian's standards for product lifetime must be around that of clay tablets. :P
I think the biblical lesson of this video is ...."Spare the rod, spoil the disk drive".
There is a guy that made power switch printable part for 8500-9600 machines for mac and it saved the my 9500, they are unobtainable now and are all brittle like crackers
Hi Adrian, I just wonder if PETG wouldn't be better for those parts? I have the same printer, nice. I haven't tried Octoprint yet. Good repair.
I actually just got some PETG but hadn't tried it yet. It's stronger but I bet this will still be just fine as I printed at 100% infill. If it breaks, I'll just make another with PETG :-)
@@adriansdigitalbasement I have been using octoprint for a couple years now with my Prusa MK3. It works great. So many cool features. I love the fact that it calculates costs and keeps track of filament usage.
Nice repair.
In the mid-1980s, I was responsible for the Ontel product line at Visual Technology. Ontel offered both 8-inch and 5-1/4-inch Shugart drives. In my inventory were the doors and latch mechanisms for the 5-1/4-inch drives. I never had to repair any drives and to be honest I never knew how until I saw your video nearly 40 years later!
Personally, I think the repaired drive is just as cool or even cooler than the original. Now it's truly *your* drive, with custom parts. I really don't understand why people obsess with having things look "factory original" -- that's not what these were used for! They weren't showpieces, they were (and are) tools. So take pride in the fact that your drive looks different because YOU fixed it and now it's custom. People customized their computers all the time, and it becomes a part of the story of that machine. Erasing that to take it back to "factory" is what I think is awful.
Well that is pretty convenient, having the models of parts so you can 3D-print them, but, what you should do, is print like 4 or 5 for just one machine, and play with them.
Sand them down a bit, maybe work on the color, but more than that, the texture, if you really want to match the original. But other than that, great job!
I was an account manager at Tandon and helped managed the first IBM PC business. At the peak, we shipped 10,000 floppy drives to them every day.
And poor Murray gets a busted dataset and just has to scrap it. Darn the luck!
Don't know if Texas Peripheral drives have the same weakness as Tandon drives, but Texas Peripheral drives were unreliable back in the day. Don't remember if the Shugart 5-1/2" drive had a brass rod on the door latch.
Hey Adrian, I've been watching your videos here and there for the last couple of years. The last 6-8 months, I've been watching a lot more. You, LGR, The9BitGuy,
MPI, Micro Peripherals Inc., also made a line of fairly popular dot-matrix printers (the MPI 99 and MPI 150).
MPI also made the "garage door" drive mech for the early Atari 810.
Hi Adrian: do you have a link to the plastic non-conductive screwdrivers you often use for pointing and adjusting pots on CRTs, etc?
cool.. I just took apart my TRS-80 Coco2 "mini disk" 26-3029 drive and gave it a good cleaning/rails & head. Looks like the Tandon drive and says Texas Peripherals on the back circa 1983. works perfect now.
The way you say lever makes me think of (SPOILERS)
.
.
.
BETTER NATE THAN LEVER!
(Men of culture will understand.)
Another option might be electronics "grip tape". Amazon has something called Dragon Grips grip tape (black 5" x 7") that has a very similar textured surface. Cheers!
That lever probably is ABS, which welds well with acetone-based glues like UHU Plast… I'm quite sure you can save it, just need to find some other ABS part you can cut into the missing shape.
I thought I'd seen them all. 8", 5 1/4", 3 1/2", 3". There were even some smaller, I think. but I never heard of a 5 1/2" floppy drive before.
Just wanted to say how much I appreciate your videos, usually the highpoint of the week.. Even though I wasn't a commodore owner but a full Atari nerd I still love your videos from a technical point. Cheers Adrian!