Starting point

This is a common Chinon FB-354 (Rev E) floppy drive for an Amiga 500. It does not look too bad, but unfortunately it is described as "non-working". Refurbishing, including repairing, Amiga floppy drives are not always a success. But, I will do my best to make this a working drive again! And who knows, even if it turns out that this drive is beyond repair I might learn something on the way.

From the outside there is only a little bit of dust and grease. And there are no signs of damage. So even if this drive is described as "non-working" there are no obvious exterior signs of issues preventing it from working. What is very nice is that there is a date code on the top metal chassis saying "01/90". So I think we can assume that this drive was manufactured at the same time as the Amiga it was originally installed in.

Refurbishment plan

To refurbish this internal disk drive the plan is to do this trough the following actions (some of them in parallell and different order):

- Clean the interior
- Clean special parts such as R/W head and stepper motor shaft
- If required: replace electrolytic capacitors
- Verify operation by testing

Disassembly

To remove the top cover the three screws are removed first. There is a (very) small screw at the top rear side, and the one on each side of the drive.

Banner picture credits: Medvedev