EPS 16 plus old floppies won't spin

[joe914]

Hi All - I have an EPS 16 plus that has been idle for many years. It seems to work perfectly by loading and playing the internal sounds. But the old floppy disks I have only spin briefly, then get stuck. The floppy drive may work but I can't tell since disks are too worn or oxidized to keep spinning. Any suggestions?

[Ashe37]

try some HD floppies or order some DD ones?

[joe914]

Thanks - good idea! I found a few less-ancient floppies that seem to spin freely when manually spinning the hub. It seems to be a drive issue. The drive doesn't read them. After popping them in the drive I hear the shutter open as the motor runs for about 1 second then stops. I know this isn't a hardware forum : -) but would what workarounds would be expedient? I want to sell it, but would really like to get it in working order first, if it makes sense. TIA!

[Ashe37]

Hardware samplers are covered here... I'd ask Rhino what about it, iirc he knows about Ensoniq floppy problems.

[Rasputin]

First, get some new DD [720/800K] 3.5" floppies (don't use HD or HD disks with the 2nd hole covered).

Second, get a floppy drive head cleaner. Run that through the Ensoniq floppy drive a couple times.

Third, write a new OS to one of the fresh DD disks using Omniflop on an old desktop (or by similar means).

Fourth, attempt to boot the EPS16 with the brand-new OS disk you just created.

[blueknob]

I had similar probs, what I found was damp had got to my stash of floppies, if I looked carefully (in bright sunlight) I could see some mold or at least something on the disk surface. I found this would either cause read errors but most usually the drive would squeek and stop. I got a old stylee disk head cleaner kit, a felt disk and bottle of stuff which I first used to clean off crud from the previous squeeky disk situation.

Now I first inspect the floppy surface before I insert it into the ESP16+, if any sign of mold, don't insert it, dump it. I use the head cleaner as directed on the instructions, all seems ok now.

I'm rather sad to see 98% of my floppy stash in the bin, but my disk loading problems have now stopped.

[joe914]

@Rasputin and @blueknob thanks for the detailed suggestions! I'll try these and report back my findings...

[rhino]

If ALL your discs fail, I think the drive (maybe the head itself) is dead. If the drive can't find any readable data, it will shutdown in about a second or two. Try cleaning the drive: the head pull-down solonoid is not very strong, the head arm my be sticky.

[Ashe37]

Thanks, Rhino, i knew there was a couple solutions