From: Blackepyon01@yahoo.ca   
      
   On Thursday, 29 December 2022 at 15:27:06 UTC-8, jfrior...@gmail.com wrote:   
   > Hi All,    
   > I recently purchased my first computer. Tandy 1000EX and it works great with   
   one exception.. When I try to format a 5.25 floppy to use to copy some of the   
   software I have I continue to get an error. Was wondering if maybe the write   
   head is not doing    
   well, or needs to be cleaned. I have no issues when I format and write to my   
   3.5 external.    
   > Any thoughts?    
   > Thank you all!    
   > John   
      
   Take the drive apart. Clean the heads and rails with alcohol soaked Q-tips,   
   then apply some lithium grease to the rails (make sure not to get any on the   
   heads). Even just cleaning gunk off the rails with alcohol will allow them to   
   slide more freely, and    
   may improve the error rate. After 35-40 years, all these 5.25" drives need to   
   be cleaned out and lubed. That's just to eliminate the obvious.   
      
   Can we assume that you're using 360K disks and not 1.2MB, and that you've   
   verified the disk is good on the other machine you're copying software from?   
   I've been doing the same with a PC-Jr I recently acquired. I thought at first   
   it was the drive that was    
   the issue, only to discover that the drive itself is good, and half of all my   
   disks are bad.    
      
   Also, make sure the drive that came with your EX is actually a 360K drive, and   
   not 1.2MB. You can use a 1.44MB drive in lieu of a 720K (one of the drives on   
   my HX is actually a 1.44MB, even though the machine can only recognize it as   
   720K), but a 1.2MB    
   drive can NOT be used on that controller.   
      
   I'm jealous that you have an external Tandy floppy though. Those are hard to   
   come by these days.   
      
   ---Kyle   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)