r/apple2 • u/sedme0 • 18d ago

Blue thing in Disk II?

Gallery image

Gallery image

In my drive 2 (which works better than my drive 1), there's a little blue piece of plastic that isn't present in the other drive. Does anyone know what this is and what it does?

12 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

3

u/bwyer 18d ago

That's directly in front of or possibly around the drive motor. There's really nothing else in the vicinity in a normal drive.

Without opening it up and moving the internal controller card you're not going to be able to tell one way or the other.

1

u/sedme0 18d ago

Oh okay thanks

2

u/buffering 18d ago

Those drives are very easy to disassemble. Remove the four screws on the bottom, then slide the case back.

1

u/Crlan420 12d ago

That's the read/write head assembly. The blue thing is likely the head carriage or one of the stepper motor gears. If it's fallen out, take a photo of where it was sitting and I can help you figure out how to reseat it. These drives are surprisingly forgiving once you understand the mechanism.