I’m just wondering, ’cause I’m the one that wound up with them. 
Originally, I wasn’t going to get them, but after I contacted the seller she offered to let me have both drives for $4.99 plus actual shipping, which turned out to be a significantly less than ebay’s calculated shipping.
So far I’ve done a little bit of light cleaning on them and hooked them both up. I can’t get the white one to read or write anything as of yet, and I have to nudge the platter to get the disk to turn, but the silver one actually seems to operate properly.
I guess it’s a good thing that the silver one is the working one, as it looks like I could put any full height drive into the white one, which makes an easy repair. The silver one looks to have an extra-long circuit board, so I’m probably stuck with the drive that’s in there.
By the way, has anyone heard from John of GIMEchip.com in the past week or so? I never got the MB8877a he said he was sending me and I haven’t seen him post anything here or send anything to the mailing list recently – I’m hoping he’s alright, I remember him making that post about his health that one time.
This post was submitted by jmetal88.
Quick update: The white drive reads disks pretty well, but when it tries to write to them it ruins them.
jmetal- I’m still here – I’m fine as long as I remember to take all of these icky pills. I just haven’t been to coco3.com in awhile (actually haven’t been much of anywhere in awhile – haven’t left the house much). A friend of my neighbor sold me an Apple IIgs ROM 3 with onboard 1.125M RAM, I hooked it up, played with it for awhile, got bored and went back to playing with the CoCo. Eventually I’ll find the GS/OS install floppy set on eBay and maybe play with the IIgs some more, but it just isn’t as cool as my CoCo 3. I’ve actually spent a lot of my downtime scanning CoCo Docs into searchable pdf’s rather than just straight up images. This takes considerably longer but is of much more value to someone who needs to search the docs. Anyway, I’ll be getting back to full swing with the coco stuff shortly. I’ve really been thinking about getting back to work – the doc hasn’t released me so my regular job I’m sure won’t let me back without a release, but I am going bonkers. I want to get out and do stuff…. Anyway, I’ll fire off on email to you in a bit. -John
Ah, good. I’m glad you’re doing alright. I can understand being distracted by a new classic computer – I’ve been messing with a broken TI-99/4a and a PCjr this week.
John, do you have my correct e-mail address? It should be jmetal88@sbcglobal.net. I didn’t get anything from you last night or earlier today, so I was just wondering.
jmetal88, Hi there – I am John’s Father (also John, though he isn’t named after me – it’s a long, but not so strange, story). I am trying to take care of all of his Vintage Computer Business while he is away. Could you please send me your mailing address to: gimechip@live.com. John was very insistent as of my last visit that I should mail you a Fujitsu FDC chip for a 26-3022 Floppy Controller and I promised him that I would. I actually created this CoCo3.com account the last time little John was in the hospital (he’s 21 – I suppose I should stop calling him Little John at some point) and John has pretty much taken it over – At any rate, I will get that chip in the mail to you Wednesday if you’ll e-mail me your shipping address. While he has been away, I have placed an order for a 12×32 pre-fab building to be brought out and set up – I plan to surprise my son with his very own “shop” for working with this antique technology that he loves so much as well as doing PC repairs. Hopefully they will get it out here soon so it will be in time to surprise him. I also went to the thrift store that my son recently discovered. I thought I’d like to have a look around. I was able to pick him up a NEW (yes, this thing has never been used) Commodore 128D. Total cost was $7. I also grabbed him a complete Sega DreamCast for $9.98 (he’ll probably end up installing BSD on the thing knowing him as I do). I also won an auction for him for a complete TI-99/4A system. I know none of this has anything to do with the CoCo, but knowing John, he’ll find a way to use these systems as terminals to a CoCo under OS-9. My ultimate goal is to get him that shop set up so he can do PC repairs – he really hates not being allowed to work (his job won’t have him back until the Doctor signs a release…) I think a shop would be very good for him. Thanks to all of you wonderful people – my son hasn’t really smiled a lot since he and then Carolyn became ill – but talking to all of you has helped him a great deal. You’ve given him purpose and for that I thank you. Thanks to Roger Taylor and Mark Marlette for inspiring him as well. You folks are better than medicine. Thanks – Big John
Big John, you’re an awesome dad.
I pray health & prosperity to you, Little John, Carolyn, & family.
Mike