Cleaning a zip drive's heads?

[Eric]

Greetings,
I have several zip disks and a couple of internal scsi Zip100 drives. One
of my drives is producing lots of errors when I run TIP on it even after
lubricating the head assembly's guide rails. I was wondering if it's
possible to clean the heads using a section of material from an old floppy
head cleaning disk along with the floppy head cleaning solution? This, of
course, would have to be performed with the drive disassembled and by
holding the section of floppy head cleaning material with a pair clamps
(such as a hemostat) and carefully moving the cleaning material back and
forth. Any thoughts on this proposal, or other ways that it might be
possible clean the heads, would be appreciated.

Thanks, Eric

[Jay]

with the cover off, you can move the heads forward by defeating the retract
mechanism's spring lock. When you move the heads forward (without a disk
inside, of course), they will be visible and expanded away from each other.
Most often these heads are NOT very dirty because they pass over a piece of
a modestly abrasive material each time they retract back into their resting
place.

Once you've exposed them, a little solvent on a Qtip or such with light
application should resolve any issue of dirt on the heads.

Post by Eric
Greetings,
I have several zip disks and a couple of internal scsi Zip100 drives. One
of my drives is producing lots of errors when I run TIP on it even after
lubricating the head assembly's guide rails. I was wondering if it's
possible to clean the heads using a section of material from an old floppy
head cleaning disk along with the floppy head cleaning solution? This, of
course, would have to be performed with the drive disassembled and by
holding the section of floppy head cleaning material with a pair clamps
(such as a hemostat) and carefully moving the cleaning material back and
forth. Any thoughts on this proposal, or other ways that it might be
possible clean the heads, would be appreciated.
Thanks, Eric