Fairlight-CMI

Hi David. Having repaired a lot of these drives, allow me to offer some advice: 

First make a whole bunch of system and QDOS floppies on a known good machine. Sometimes a bad drive will corrupt a good floppy, and you'll need a good reference.

Forget about mains frequency pulleys. This was only an issue with the older ugly full width beige drives. Since the later black half-width drives are DC only, they work with any supply.

Top trick! The toggle switch on the floppy controller board switches the IDs of the two drives, therefore RH drive becomes system, LH user files. Handy for isolating problems..

Lastly, I've fixed many a dirty oxidised R/W head in the following, fabulously lo-tech way: Put an old expendable floppy in the drive and arrange for the CMI to try and access it. At the same time gently push the head against the floppy surface. Obviously try this at your own risk!

Hope this is helpful,

Regards,

Peter 

Horizontal Productions Sydney