As Doc Brown said “Unbelievable that this little piece of junk could be such a big problem“ in Back to the Future part 3. In my case the failure is a rubber belt that connects the floppy disk drive motor to the spindle which spins the disk whilst it’s being accessed.
Backing up a little, I’m referring to the floppy drive on my Toshiba T4700CT laptop. A fantastic little computer that I’ve many fond memories of using over the years. However age is rarely kind to anything, especially mechanical devices.
I’d inserted a disk full of MIDI files into the laptop to play about with Wingroove, only to be greeted by the unpleasant sound of a spinning motor without the reassuring whir of the disk also spinning.
Thankfully the original Toshiba T4700 CT service manual is still available online and has detailed guides to opening up the laptop.
Unfortunately the disassembly process itself is rather complex, which lots of different types of screws in use.
Even worse, to get to the floppy disk pretty much the whole laptop needs to be taken apart! The memories of dismantling various electronic systems as a kid, without then being able to successfully reconstruct them is still a strong memory for me. So taking apart such an old and precious laptop is not something I undertake lightly.
After a delicate process I finally made it to the floppy drive itself, only to find that it wasn’t really designed to easily be user serviceable. Getting to the drive belt itself may have resulted in further damage to the drive sadly.
At this point I’m trying to track down a replacement drive for the laptop, which is easier said than done...