Tandy 1100 FD
My Tandy 100FD (added to my collection in 2014)
- NEC V20 CPU @ 10mhz (NEC V20 is pin compatible to 8088 with 80186 instruction set)
- 640KB RAM
- MS-DOS 3.30 and DeskMate in ROM
- 3.5″ 720Kb Floppy Drive (soon to be a Gotek emulator running FlashFloppy)
- CGA Compatible LCD display
- Internal 2400 baud modem
I just into my Tandy 1100FD, and after removing the leaking battery, I got down to the floppy drive, which didn’t work. The belt had turned to a tar that had gummed up the motor pulley and filled the optical wheel holes and the optical sensor with tar. I cleaned this out very carefully with 91% Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA) and Q-tips and a soft tooth brush. Using a rubber band as a belt, the disk spins freely, and the optical sensors are sending out pulses , but the read write head refuses to move, except when I first power it up, it does a little positioning movement. After that, nothing happens. I understand the rubber band would cause problems, but I was just hoping for a little action to show I was on the right track. Does anybody have any suggestions, or any user manuals? I have no programs or disks, what does it run?
If there’s too much tension on the belt it might not be spinning correctly and the drive might refuse to move heads based on that, but I would also look into the stepper motor and track on the head carriage to be sure it can move freely might be gummed up in tar too.
There are some replacement drives and schematics for making a replacement from a standard 1.44 drive, I will link those when I am at my PC later.
Ryan – Where did you get the belt replacement? I have an 1100FD with the belt problem. I heard the part is an FRM7.5, (7.5 long, 0.22″ wide, 0.025″ thick/wall) but can’t seem to find that part for sale.
This is the belt I ordered for mine http://www.ebay.com/itm/Floppy-Drive-Belt-For-Korg-N264-N364-X2-X3-and-More-/162075192544
I uploaded a document I found with the pinout of the floppy drive if you wanted to try to modify a standard drive to fit. I will ultimately be doing this with mine, even with the new belt mine is out of alignment and will not read disks from another PC, it will read and write its own though.
http://www.acrpc.net/documents/1100FD_drive.PDF
Thanks!