Read fail on floppy drives

[markjw]

Both the 6128 systems I picked up recently had drives with broken belts, same with the two spare drives that came with them - so far I've done the following on three of the drives:
Removed the drive PCBs
Cleaned both the small and large capstans of the belt remains
Fitted new belt to each drive
Cleaned the drive head.

One drive now seems to be working OK and reading discs, while the other two attempt to work (spinning the drive and moving the head) they both give a Read Fail on any disc I try (even ones that seem OK on the working drive) . Rechecked the connections from the drive mechanism to the PCB and look ok, confirmed that the drive cable is plugged in correctly (ie not misaligned on the pins)

I have seen that there are test programs available for the CPC drives, however I have no way of connecting a 2nd drive up to the machine or loading anything onto a 3" disc, though I could look at hooking up a Gotek but can you 'hot swap' floppy drives with the system powered up without killing the machine?

Any help /suggestions on what to look at next would be much appreciated as I'm new to the Amstrad CPC and this is a learning experience for me.

[Bryce]

Check the PCBs for dry joints, especially the power header and the connector headers on the PCBs.

Bryce.

[markjw]

thanks Bryce - I'll check


also just spotted that the working drive is an EME-157 with the 5v motor whilst the two non-working ones are EME-156 / EME-156V which have a 12v motor so I'll also check I'm actually getting 12v stable on that line.