It seems that the FDHD in the SE/30 (and IIcx) is very prone to failure. I posted to
comp.sys.mac.announce a while back and got over 300 reponses reporting problems. I have seen an entire roomful of IIcx floppy drives fail simultaneously. Our lab machine (SE/30) also went through a phase where it couldn't recognize the formatiing on floppies, and then the problem disappeared.
There are numerous different problems that may be related to two things.
1) Dust is drawn into the SE/30 case through the floppy slot. This is the
most common cause of problems it seems. A comercial cleaning kit will fix this
for a number of cases.
2) There seems to be some kind of alignment problem with the "sensors" that
touch the disk when you insert it. There are apparently two. One is involved
in recognizing 800K vs. 1400K, and this is leads to symptoms of confusion
between the two.
I never heard any official reaction to this problem, except for rumors that
Apple does indeed know about it. Overall I feel that for the amount of money
spent on computers, they represent one of the poorest cases of responisibility
in marketing. After spending $2500 on a new SE/30 both the SCUZI controller/HD
and the power switch went out within the first year. Ever time I use the floppy
drive I fear the worse. I bought during the first year of the long-overdue
