Technical and Repair Assistance

[keiffer01]

I just bought and received a Famicom Disk system from JC and replaced the drive belt in it. It powers up, but, when I put a disk card in the system, a message pops up saying'' Now Loading...'' and it just stays there. The system doesn't make sounds at all...infact it does nothing. All I can see work is the loading light on the front. So I opened it up once more and found out the motor doesn't spin and gets hot. Any suggestions?

[133MHz]

Maybe it's shorted? Try to power it from an external source and see if it spins (assuming it's a DC brushless direct motor). Also remove the load from the motor, maybe the spindle mechanism is stuck and the motor cannot move it, and overheats. If the motor works fine, check the transistors or the IC that drive it, maybe something shorted out. Touch the ICs while the FDS is working (on the Loading screen you say) and see if any of them gets too hot to touch. If it does, replace it.

BTW, I've never seen a FDS in person, but I've repaired Atari and PC disk drives which I think are similar.

[keiffer01]

I turn the gears for a while while the system is on. I insert a disk, the loading screen appears and the head starts to read down. But for some reason the head stops reading half way and just stays there. I try the same procedure again and again but the head always stops at the same place. I wonder why it does that...I think i'm going to film what happens and put it up on Youtube to show what happens.

[kite200]

wait so the motor is turning the gears by itself or are you forcing them to turn? because if it stops halfway while the motor is doing it your gear alignment is way off.

[keiffer01]

I think you just found my problem!   Well, when I insert a disk the motor is unable to turn the the head for some reason, so if I turn the gears for a while and then insert a disk, the head moves down but it stops at halfway. I'll reopen my system once again and check if the gears are properly allignied

[keiffer01]

Oh shit...I noticed that on one of the gears two teeth which are side by side are slightly bit off...think I found my problem to why the head doesn't move to the end...

[kite200]

wait, that's not it I dont think, do the steps on http://jfgoods.net/disksystem.html , the part where he says "Here comes the most important part" until the end of the article

[keiffer01]

Yeah that's the guide I used to replace the belt...maybe I did something wrong but I'm not shure what

[keiffer01]

I just discovered that when I turn the drive on its back, the head continues to move, so the problem is not with the teeth. Now it seems to load, but there is always error 21 or 22 that appears after it tries to load. I checked on the site what those errors are, but I don't really understand what they mean...what are they and how do I correct them?

[kite200]

2 things need to be done

Ensure the gears are aligned, here's a more in depth description then what JFGOODS captions say


1. turn the gears until the metal portion in the slot becomes as small as possible. now turn a little bit more and metal will fill the entire viewing portion of the slot. Now, use a wrech to turn the head to face foward like in the picture. Once this is done, the foward facing head should corrospond to the part where the metal suddenly changes from being small to super large.

After that, check if it works, if not try step 2

2. If you look at the motor, theres a plus and minus sign on it. There is also a hole with a screw in it and a rubber cover. You do not remove the rubber, simply insert a screwdriver and grip the screw underneath. (its flathead). Turn it all the way to the plus sign and then test, then turn it very little (like barely anything) towards the minus sign and test again, keep doing this until you find a spot that works

[keiffer01]

The gear is really scrap...too bad because the system itself seems to work perfectly. If anybody has a broken disk system could you please let me know. I just want the bottom gear next to the circular round metal plate inside.

[133MHz]

Is it that strange? Maybe you could get it frome some old 5 1/4" drive.

[keiffer01]

I don't think I could find one in another drive because the disk cards Nintendo made were made smaller than other disk from other drives, so not a single drive out there would have the same gear size.

[madman]

The only place you might find those gears is in a quickdrive, which will generally run you more than a FDS.

[133MHz]

Could you post a picture of the busted gear? With enough eyeballs here maybe somebody could have a solution