been fighting my pig off and on with failing disc drives for a while, today figured out whats wrong...the 30 year old discs and the drives themselves are fine- except one little tiny issue. if you have a failing 3.5" YE-DATA brand drive, bust a neodymium magnet and take a tiny sliver and stick it next to the little projecting magnet on the rim of the drive motor. all my drives, that little magnet was weakened by time, the hall device couldnt read RPM and drives were overspeeding to 400-465 rpm instead of the exact 360 rpm required...stuck that little tiny bit of a magnet to the motor rim, it reads 360 rpm dead steady, all my old/previously unreadable discs work again (except a few i tried to write to when drives were too fast).
have a nalbantov usb adapter thats still not able to be used yet, but they are working on it and assure me it will work- cant wait to pitch the floppies finally- we still use a lot of old zero-A controls and when something needs added, the pig is the only way...theres been times it sat for years put away, but when we need it, we need it...this one died, got out the spare that I knew had 2 good drives last time used- exact same issue...gauss meter showed 1 gauss on one 1999 year drive that still kinda worked intermittently, barely anything on all the others...
anyways, hadnt been in here in a long while- but found this weird little issue, thought I'd share...all because one disc I had made a rubbing noise, and by ear I could hear rpm was off when put in various drives. funny too as years back, had read somewhere about these being 300 rpm- nope, not on a PG MKII, they run exactly 360...till the lil magnet goes dead