Does anyone know of a good video or instructions for tearing down and cleaning a SuperDrive floppy?

For the external case teardown, iFixit has it: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Apple+3.5+Drive+External+Floppy+Drive+Teardown/92324

For cleaning, @Branchus of course:

Thanks! Those are good for the 800k drive but I'm looking for something on the FDHD (SuperDrive).

Here is a video about both of the 800K and the FDHD (1.44MB) and cleaning of them.

>> AtariYinzer said:

Thanks! Those are good for the 800k drive but I'm looking for something on the FDHD (SuperDrive). Click to expand...

The auto inject 1.44MB drives use the same mechanism as this video. Is there a particular step you're stuck on?

@JDW has a good video on YouTube.

>> AtariYinzer said:

Thanks! Those are good for the 800k drive but I'm looking for something on the FDHD (SuperDrive). Click to expand...

The take-apart and restoration procedures are pretty much the same.

FDHD Technical Procedures Manual (PDF)

The SuperDrive terminology refers to the 1.44MB version floppy drive, as opposed to the 800K and 400K drives which came before. The overall procedure for the 800K is very similar to the 1.44MB though. In the video below, I show the SuperDrive disassembly, compare Molykote lubrication (basically what the stock lube was) to SuperLube, show how to replace the ejection gear, then reassemble. In that video, I found that a guy in Italy made a very high quality gear. It works well. More recently, I found that Kay Koba's (Japanese) gears are even better (smoother to the touch and pretty much flawless under a microscope), so people might want to check those out now, although there's nothing wrong with the Italian gear technically.

SuperDrive teardown & lube & gear replacement:

Italian Gear:

Japanese Gear:

I love having all of these pointers to the various videos in one place.

Thanks, everyone. Super useful.

>> AtariYinzer said:

Thanks! Those are good for the 800k drive but I'm looking for something on the FDHD (SuperDrive). Click to expand...

As mentioned by others, the 800K and FDHD auto inject drives are very similar. Are you perhaps referring to the manual inject drive? The one with the black flap at the front?

Here's a photo of the "black flap" manual inject drive from my Color Classic...

>> Branchus said:

As mentioned by others, the 800K and FDHD auto inject drives are very similar. Are you perhaps referring to the manual inject drive? The one with the black flap at the front? Click to expand...

Yes. It's from my Power Mac 6100/66

>> AtariYinzer said:

Yes. It's from my Power Mac 6100/66 Click to expand...

Ahhh... THAT SuperDrive.... Sorry about the confusion. The one you have there is, it looks like, the Mitsubishi MF355F, and - yup - repair / restoration procedures certainly appears to be a hole that needs to be filled. I've never taken one apart myself, haven't had the need. This is the only reference to service I've come across, but it doesn't say anything about disassembly: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...for-128k-512k-macintosh.2185992/post-27498424

Yeah, the drive is working. I just wanted to take it apart, clean and lubricant it.

>> AtariYinzer said:

Yeah, the drive is working. I just wanted to take it apart, clean and lubricant it. Click to expand...

Many of us have thought you mean the "other" SuperDrive from the Macintosh SE FDHD... sorry for our misunderstanding,
and thanks for @desertrout for his research and for the MacRumors post.

>> fehervaria said:

Many of us have thought you mean the "other" SuperDrive from the Macintosh SE FDHD... sorry for our misunderstanding, and thanks for @desertrout for his research and for the MacRumors post . Click to expand...

My bad, I probably should not have referred to it as FDHD. Even better I should have initially said it was from the 6100. [grimacing-face]

>> AtariYinzer said:

My bad, I probably should not have referred to it as FDHD. Even better I should have initially said it was from the 6100. Click to expand...

Hey that's okay. Maybe, if you're up to it, you could do us the favour of documenting your disassembly. And there are also some content creators here who may have been alerted to a new subject idea!

Here's the gear @Stephen made
https://www.shapeways.com/product/8...ve-gear-x20?optionId=233884059&li=marketplace

They are a lot cheaper than the Ebay ones. Some of the Ebay auctions are basically his model from Thingiverse sold at crazy prices. If you have an SLA printer you can print some yourself.

>> alxlab said:

Here's the gear @Stephen made https://www.shapeways.com/product/8...ve-gear-x20?optionId=233884059&li=marketplace They are a lot cheaper than the Ebay ones. Some of the Ebay auctions are basically his model from Thingiverse sold at crazy prices. If you have an SLA printer you can print some yourself. Click to expand...

Thanks for linking, @alxlab. For anyone in North America, @Drake may have a few left from his 3D printing test; they came out in amazing quality:

Left is my design from Drake's 3D printer, right is the original Apple gear.

The gears from Shapeways work just fine but they are not as high quality and will be noisier. This is a limitation of Shapeway's printing.


I know the image quality isn't amazing. I was using my cheapie digital microscope but this should be enough to give a good indication of variations in print quality from different sources.

>> Stephen said:

Thanks for linking, @alxlab . For anyone in North America, @Drake may have a few left from his 3D printing test; they came out in amazing quality: View attachment 1765 Left is my design from Drake's 3D printer, right is the original Apple gear. The gears from Shapeways work just fine but they are not as high quality and will be noisier. This is a limitation of Shapeway's printing. View attachment 1766 I know the image quality isn't amazing. I was using my cheapie digital microscope but this should be enough to give a good indication of variations in print quality from different sources. Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing Stephen, it takes me quite awhile to hand craft these artisanal gears. They are non-GMO and gluten free.

I also will send them freely to anyone that needs a couple, just pay postage ;)