Magneto Optical drive repair

In case you haven't been following the drive repair work log, a discovery of how to fix the magneto optical drive has been made for the vast majority of drives.

Replacing the capacitors on drives that power up, and ingest/eject drives, has been identified as a cure for likely most drives. If your drive spins up and spins down but won't read the disks, a recap should return your drive back to proper operation.

There is some discussion as to how to approach the repair for those that don't have the technical skill to perform the capacitor replacement themselves.

If a repair service was setup, would you want your drive repaired? And, how much do you feel the service should cost including shipping return?

Chime in to this forum so we can get a partial head count of how many people want their drives repaired.

Keep in mind, that labor would be around 2 hours, and parts about $20, when factoring in how much you feel the service would be worth to you.

Assuming I didn't have the tools to do the desoldering I would very much pay for a service so someone with a little more experience could do it.

Were you thinking of a service that would repair each persons drive and send it back to them, or more of a core service where you send yours in and get a working drive from the pool?  Might make things quicker, and end up with a larger group of spare components for repairing drives further gone.  This assumes that there is a good way to test/triage a drive when it arrives to determine if a re-cap will probably fix it, or if further work will be required.

Quote from: "nextchef"Were you thinking of a service that would repair each persons drive and send it back to them, or more of a core service where you send yours in and get a working drive from the pool?  Might make things quicker, and end up with a larger group of spare components for repairing drives further gone.  This assumes that there is a good way to test/triage a drive when it arrives to determine if a re-cap will probably fix it, or if further work will be required.

I have discussed both scenarios with GTNICOL. He has a large stockpile of drives, and they could be recapped and then used as a swap for core drives users send in.

Testing whether a drive will work with a recap is a fairly fast test. Probably under 15 minutes. You just take an unknown drive that at least ingests/ejects/spins up and swap the digital, analog, and motor board out and see if the chassis/laser is functional or not. I suspect that test will give you at least 90% confidence only a recap is needed.

I spent some time developing a fast test procedure using a windows machine to check that the drive formats and reads and writes without having to crack open a cube everytime.

My only comment on this is that I hope you properly value your time and expertise on this, otherwise you'll quickly end up overwhelmed. From what I can gather it's usually about $100 to send out a typical motherboard to be recapped. Using that as a guide I would expect that you would charge somewhere around $300 per drive. If it ends up that the majority of the drives just need new caps then a core type service would be the way to go, otherwise the diagnosis time would go up substantially I would think. All the same I wish you luck and the work you've put in so far has been inspiring.

--
Brian Archer

Quote from: "barcher174"My only comment on this is that I hope you properly value your time and expertise on this, otherwise you'll quickly end up overwhelmed. From what I can gather it's usually about $100 to send out a typical motherboard to be recapped. Using that as a guide I would expect that you would charge somewhere around $300 per drive. If it ends up that the majority of the drives just need new caps then a core type service would be the way to go, otherwise the diagnosis time would go up substantially I would think. All the same I wish you luck and the work you've put in so far has been inspiring.

--
Brian Archer

Thank you very much for the comments. Much appreciated!

I'm not planning on doing this service directly. But I'm willing to set it up for a skilled tech to do the work to get these drives resurrected and preserve the legacy of the Cube.

I feel it should be a non-profit type setup, with the cost covering the parts and labor..

I like the idea of doing it as a core exchange.

It is wonderful that you are considering offering this service to the community.

I need to test my MO drive, but I'm 90% sure it's non-functional. If so, I'd be interested in getting a repair service like this done. I think I'd prefer to have my drive repaired vs. doing a swap.

Depending on what the service entails, somewhere in the range of $100-200 sounds fair. Someone suggested $300, and at that price point, I would think twice. I'd do some serious homework on performing the repair myself and buying any additional tools/parts that I could use in the future.

That's my two cents. Thanks again for even exploring the possibility of offering such a service!

Because of the base cost of the capacitors we currently can't charge less than $50 and that's assuming $40 for the cap kit and $10 for work. Shipping an MO drive is another $15 one-way for most cases because they aren't light or small. So that's $80 to do it all and that assumes there's no international shipping.
Asking $300 is robbery unless your time is worth about $220 per drive.
I don't expect a massive demand for the job so asking $100 for the work, caps and shipping  sounds especially reasonable if you have something like two or three boards a week. Work on them on a Friday night and have them in the mail Monday morning.

Well, violin teachers charge $50-$75 dollars and hour... so I could see paying $200-$300 to have it recapped and tested. Also, the alternative, as far as I've found, is a Canon drive, the cheapest of which seem to go for $750 or so...

How much is a blank MO disk going for these days?

I think, as part of the service, a MO disk should be included in the package going home, with 256MB worth of NeXT software goodies.

Thank you all for your input so far-

I think, in guesstimates, that $100 won't cover expenses, and $300 is too expensive.

$200 is probably about right. But, this will be a non-profit venture, so it may be +/- from that figure.

For $200, you get your drive repaired, cleaned, and a MO disk of goodies shipped back to you.

If your dive can't be repaired you can get an estimate of additional cost based on chassis, analog, or digital board swap. If you don't want to go further in to it, your drive is returned to you and your money minus shipping return.

1 year warranty on parts and labor seems fair.

$200 breakdown-

$20 parts
$20 shipping
$?? MO Disk
2 hours tech time for test, recap, test $160 ($80/hour)

Tech labor might be reduced $10-$20 an hour. I don't know until I recruit someone for the project.

QuoteHow much is a blank MO disk going for these days?

MO cartridges were something like $10-$20 back in 2010 when I bought my massive lot of 20something for $75 but that's mainly because we still saw them as display pieces only. The last blank cartridge that sold on ebay went for $25. The Software Releases seem to fetch more, especially the older 0.x releases. I have not seen one of those in a while.

If you want your drives fixed send them to a real professional Charles. He's been doing these repairs for LOTS of NeXT users including myself. His email is hardwaremack@gmail.com

I've never heard of him before.

If you want your stuff done right, honestly, and by the best in the business send it to Charles. I've got the largest private prototype Apple collection in the world. He's the only guy I would send ANYTHING to. He is also the guy who Rob, from Black Hole Inc send all his boards, and MO drives.

I think he will recap a NeXT MO drive for $80 with return shipping. You can't beat that, period.

Quote from: "haplain"If you want your stuff done right, honestly, and by the best in the business send it to Charles. I've got the largest private prototype Apple collection in the world. He's the only guy I would send ANYTHING to. He is also the guy who Rob, from Black Hole Inc send all his boards, and MO drives.

I think he will recap a NeXT MO drive for $80 with return shipping. You can't beat that, period.

That is a great deal! I am happy if everyone can get their drives recapped.

I'll put on hold looking for a tech to do the service.

If anyone else uses his service, let us know how it goes.

PS - What's in your collection?

Whats in my Apple or NeXT collection?

I've got a NeXT Cube 68040 in the factory box (socketed CPU w/Sample chip), with all accessories. NeXT branded power cord and hex tool with a NeXT display also in the box both in perfect condition with original NeXT Maxtor HD, MO drive, floppy drive, 64MB RAM, recapped board and MO drive. I've got another 68040 board recapped with many extra HD's. Every piece of NeXT OS release on MO discs. Every manual NeXT produced for the Cube, plus a bunch of internal NeXT release documents.

My prototype Apple collection and general Apple collection is way to much to list. Anything from prototype Lisa 2 to 5x iPhone 2G prototypes, iPhone 3G prototypes, Transparent Mac SE, Transparent PowerBook 140, unreleased Dual PPC PowerBook, chrome 17" PowerBook and things like that.

Nice collection!

I think this is the guy you refer to. He sounds like he can easily handle the job as he does a lot of work on vintage macs too. His prices look really good-

http://maccaps.com/MacCAPS.COM/Macintosh_Recaps.html

Thanks I try to find fun stuff.

That's him. Like I said, you want it done right, for a fair price, by a professional and a straight shooter he's your guy. If he can't do it, or thinks there's a larger issue he will let you know before hand. He hasn't been let me down yet, his prices are extremely reasonable, and his turn around time is very very quick. He's getting really busy because he is so good at what he does. Charles is a god over on 68kmla. Hope that helps and solves the issue of where to get these things repaired

Quote from: "haplain"Thanks I try to find fun stuff.

That's him. Like I said, you want it done right, for a fair price, by a professional and a straight shooter he's your guy. If he can't do it, or thinks there's a larger issue he will let you know before hand. He hasn't been let me down yet, his prices are extremely reasonable, and his turn around time is very very quick. He's getting really busy because he is so good at what he does. Charles is a god over on 68kmla. Hope that helps and solves the issue of where to get these things repaired

I'm really glad there is guy out there to do this. I'm not the guy for this type of thing, which is why I wanted to find a tech to do the work.

Thank you for bringing him to our attention!

I'll send some stuff his way I think... I have a couple of Dimension boards and a few Turbo slabs etc. that need recapping.

I'll second the recommendation for Charles. He's did awesome work bringing a Mac Classic II board back from the dead for me. Quick, excellent work at reasonable prices.

Has anyone availed themselves of the recap service? Did it help, or did he give a more complicated diagnosis?


http://maccaps.com/MacCAPS.COM/Macintosh_Recaps.html