Cleaning and recapping the Micropower 2000 part 1

Over a year ago I bought a strange Dual floppy drive.
The drive is called Micropower 2000 and was build by “Analog Digital”.
On the internet I couldn’t find a lot info, I only found some info on the website of Richard Lagendijk <Here> .

He also had a hard time getting more info on the drive.
The difference between our drives are the markings on the front of the drive.
First I thought it could be a prototype of the MSD SD2 As the drives have a lot in common.
To test I programmed 2 eprom’s with the firmware of the MSD and placed them in the drive, and it still functioned.

To get some more info about the drive I created a thread on forum64 <Here> to see if someone else had more info about the drive, but till today there is no reply.
One thing I know now is that the drive can’t be a prototype as the MSD SD2 was introduced in 1983 and my Micropower 2000 is produced in 1984.
So I think it’s a clone.

On use the drive is responding and loading most floppies, but has some issues while formatting and loading of long files.
As the Micropower 2000 uses the same drive units I searched the web and ended on the page of Ray Carlsen <Here> and found that the drive units have capacitors that will leak over time.
After disassembling the drive I could clearly see some corrosion on both drive units. 

I ordered a new set of capacitors to replace them, and will start replacing them soon.
Other things that needs to be done is:

  • a good clean 
  • replacing the feet (only one of four left on the unit)
  • Add missing screw
  • Optional replace power supply
  • Dump original eprom’s for investigation