Quote Originally Posted by AdamAnt316 View Post
I suppose it's possible, albeit unlikely (and if that were the case, the belt would be bad, in all likelihood). If the smoke was caused by something being stuck in the drive mechanism itself, I'd be worried about the source having been the motor, or something else hard to replace. According to another of Ray's articles, a possible source of smoke in a 1541 is one or more of the tantalum capacitors, which is definitely a possibility. With any luck, the cause is something like that, rather than anything in the drive mechanism itself.
-Adam
The motor is separate from the spindle that turns the floppy disk. The belt goes from the motor to the spindle that turns the disk. If the disk spindle is slightly sticking, it will cause a whirring sound, because the belt is slipping ever so slightly. You can hear a similar sound with a car's fan belt, if something like the AC pump, smog pump or water pump are starting to have lubrication/worn bearing issues. My Mustang GT was making that same kind of noise, until the smog pump finally stopped turning, the belt started smoking and finally snapped. I only brought that up, because he had said that he'd heard a whirring noise.

If it is a tantalum capacitor that gave out, it would definitely smoke like he described. He should see a burnt capacitor if that did happen.

https://www.reliabilityanalysislab.c...talumCaps.html