I’ve got another troublesome old floppy drive to play around with! This time it’s an NEC FD1157C 1.2 MB 5.25-inch drive that isn’t working properly. What better way to spend some time than pulling it apart and seeing whether we can get the thing reading disks again?

After removing the outer casing, I’m having a look at the head assembly and attempting to clean away the residue that’s built up over the years. Armed with cotton swabs and methylated spirits, I’m giving the mechanism some attention in the hope that a decent cleaning might help. The drive certainly looks as though it’s seen better days!

Looking back, I’m not particularly impressed with the way I was going about cleaning it. If the drive was already in a poor state when I got it, and the previous owner had treated it with anything like the care I’m demonstrating here, perhaps cleaning alone was never going to be enough. Not exactly the most delicate approach to restoring vintage computer hardware!

Still, it’s worth documenting the attempt. The next question is whether any of this has made the slightest difference when the drive is connected to a computer. Fingers crossed!