On 1/10/10 5:05 AM, Tony Duell wrote:
  Firstly, clean the heads -- not with a cleaning
disk (no matter what the
 manuals may say), but with a cotton bud and propan-2-ol. 
 Be EXTREMELY careful doing this. At least on 800k Mac floppies it it very
 easy to bend the flexure on the upper head so that it no longer has enough
 downward pressure to make contact with the disk. 
Odd. All 3.5" double-head drive service manuals -- in fact just about all
double-head flopply drive service manuals -- that I've read warn against
cleaning the heads 'by hand' with a cotton bud and insist you use a
cleaning disk.
I've always used a cotton bud though, and had no problems at alll.
Perhaps I am jsut very careful, but I have never distorted that gimbal
spring during cleaning.
-tony