Floppy drive repair KN2000

Topic

Hi all,

Since 1994 I have been the proud owner of a Technics Kn2000. Around 2006 the floppy drive broke down. So unfortunately I couldn’t play my own home made arrangements anymore. That same year I bought another KN2000 with the floppy drive working. A year later that floppy drive broke down aswell so I dicided to buy a used KN3000. The floppy’s of the KN2000 can be loaded in the Kn3000 but the arrangements don’t sound exactly the way I meant them to sound on the KN2000.

A couple of years ago I dicided to try to repair the original disk drives of both KN2000’s. I replaced the driver belts because the old ones were stretched out. When I tried to load the floppy the following message displayed in the screen: error 02! there is no disk in the disk drive.

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to give it anather try. I opened up both drives, dismantled all parts and cleaned and lubricated them. I used contact spray for the switches and connectors and alcohol for cleaning the head. All springs are okay, the head seems lined out correctly, the steppen motor does work, the floppy rotating motor is okay and everything seems to be moving smoothly. Still when I reconnect the floppy drive to the flat cable of the KN2000 and try to load a disk the screen displays 2 different messages random:

• ERROR 00! the data on the disk that you are using is for a different product
• ERROR 02! there is no disk in the disk drive

I am sure that the disk’s themselves are ok: I bought an external USB floppy drive and checked if the files are on the disks. I can read and copy them to my PC. A thing to mention is that the external floppy drive can only read most of the 2DD 720k disks. It cannot read HD 1,44 disks.

Does anyone have an idea how I can make the original floppy drives work again on my KN2000’s? I attached some pictures of the floppy drive and a video of the movement the head makes when I lift it up a bit while loading a disk.

Greeting,

Jeroen

 

 

Attachments:

You must be logged in to access attached files.

Replies

Hi Jeroen,

It’s such a pleasure that you wrote a detailed post because it helps us to understand the issues. I’m going to come back to this post in a few days with more detail because I’m under pressure with academic work at the moment.

With floppy drives the most important part is usually to format the disk on your keyboard not the computer. Sometimes it needs to be formatted a few times on an older keyboard which might have issues with head alignment. Often using a head cleaner on your keyboard’s drive helps a lot. Run the head cleaner 10 times or so.

I also have two KN2000’s and only one of them has a disk drive. I’ll be fitting a USB emulator to it but I’m struggling to find the time.

Error 00 – maybe you are trying to load KN3000 files into KN2000 which won’t work.

I’ll return to this topic soon.

Mike

If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture. Quincy Jones

1 user thanked author for this post.

daaaman

Hi Mike,

Many thanks for your quick reply! Great to have a a forum like yours where we can help eachother with this issues.

What does a floppy drive head cleaner actually do? Is it worth buying one? I did clean the heads of the drives a couple of times with some isoprpyl alcohol on a cotton bud. Unfortunately without results.

The floppy disks I use have been formatted on my KN2000 somewhere in the 90’s. I have never formatted disks on my PC or KN3000 or saved KN3000 data to that same disks. I only loaded KN2000 data to the KN3000 so I could play what I made on my KN2000. My main goal is to save the data of those old KN2000 disks and be able to play that arrangements on a KN2000 again. Therefore I also bought a USB Gotec floppy disk emulator which I am trying to install on one of the KN2000’s.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Jeroen

 

daaaman wrote:

Hi all,

Since 1994 I have been the proud owner of a Technics Kn2000. Around 2006 the floppy drive broke down. So unfortunately I couldn’t play my own home made arrangements anymore. That same year I bought another KN2000 with the floppy drive working. A year later that floppy drive broke down aswell so I dicided to buy a used KN3000. The floppy’s of the KN2000 can be loaded in the Kn3000 but the arrangements don’t sound exactly the way I meant them to sound on the KN2000.

A couple of years ago I dicided to try to repair the original disk drives of both KN2000’s. I replaced the driver belts because the old ones were stretched out. When I tried to load the floppy the following message displayed in the screen: error 02! there is no disk in the disk drive.

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to give it anather try. I opened up both drives, dismantled all parts and cleaned and lubricated them. I used contact spray for the switches and connectors and alcohol for cleaning the head. All springs are okay, the head seems lined out correctly, the steppen motor does work, the floppy rotating motor is okay and everything seems to be moving smoothly. Still when I reconnect the floppy drive to the flat cable of the KN2000 and try to load a disk the screen displays 2 different messages random:

• ERROR 00! the data on the disk that you are using is for a different product
• ERROR 02! there is no disk in the disk drive

I am sure that the disk’s themselves are ok: I bought an external USB floppy drive and checked if the files are on the disks. I can read and copy them to my PC. A thing to mention is that the external floppy drive can only read most of the 2DD 720k disks. It cannot read HD 1,44 disks.

Does anyone have an idea how I can make the original floppy drives work again on my KN2000’s? I attached some pictures of the floppy drive and a video of the movement the head makes when I lift it up a bit while loading a disk.

Greeting,

Jeroen