The TEAC FD-505 Repair Saga (Getting a 3.5/5.25 Combo Floppy Diskette Working)

The woes of floppy drive repair... After receiving two TEAC FD-505 combo floppy drives (at a decent price I might add) I discovered one of them was perfect and well... the other not so much. Missing faceplate, loose R/W heads, broken R/W heads, cracked I/O boards and crumbling cables means someone must've not been too kind with it. Anyway this details what went into making it an operable unit once again...

1 - A metal tab that holds the 5.25 R/W head of the FD-155GF was bent upwards causing the head to not move correctly when doing operations thus skewing the alignment. Simply bending it back and refastening it fixed that problem.

2 - Head 1 of the 3.5 FD-05HF had been broken (one of the tabs that rides the top rails had sheared off). This caused head 1 to be stuck crooked but also pressed against head 0. In the end the entire R/W head was replaced with one from an FD-05HG which while not entirely compatible still worked.

3 - The biggest problem was the main I/O board had been cracked which broke at least four main traces. Those being the drive select 0/1 and motor on 0/1 signals for each drive (pins 10, 12, 14 and 16 respectively). After some ok soldering with spare ribbon cable the broken traces were bypassed and both drives could operate.

4- Lastly the flat ribbon cable for the 3.5 floppy had come apart at the drive end (the blue friction piece had separated). This made the delicate signal tabs at the end exposed and easily bendable/breakable. Eventually I got the cable into the drive with the friction piece and sorted some pins that had trouble connecting up.

So aside from a missing faceplate the drive now works and resides within my Packard Bell Legend 100CD.

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