Our Campus owns 25 Apple ][/+ and ][/e computers, and for reasons we won't  go into now, the small arm which actually detects the write-pritect tabs exist ance has broken off (worn out ... whatever) on about 1/3 of our drives.  After consulting with our local Apple dealer, I find out that the small black plastic  arm can not be independently replaced, but would require the replacement of th e whole bottom of the disk drive (at $100 each !!!!!).       IS THIS TRUE ???  If anyone out there knows if it is, or a quick solution  to the problem, I'd appeciate the info.  It seems to me that you should be abl e to jerry-rig the thing to work, but I'd rather like to have more opinions.                                          Thanks in advance,

     Our Campus owns 25 Apple ][/+ and ][/e computers, and for reasons we won't  go into now, the small arm which actually detects the write-pritect tabs exist ance has broken off (worn out ... whatever) on about 1/3 of our drives.                                              GLENN S. PIPER                                            O05 @ PSUVM                                            (BERKS OPERATOR)  Your users probably realized that breaking off the write-protect mechanism allows them to write on both sides of a floppy disk without punching a hole in the disk's other side (this has nothing to do with the original question,  but it is most likely that the write-protect did not wear out.)                                    Dean Espinoza                                 ...bellcore!dfe

 won't  go into now, the small arm which actually detects the write-pritect tabs  exist  ance has broken off (worn out ... whatever) on about 1/3 of our drives.                                              GLENN S. PIPER  Your users probably realized that breaking off the write-protect mechanism allows them to write on both sides of a floppy disk without punching a hole in the disk's other side (this has nothing to do with the original question,  but it is most likely that the write-protect did not wear out.)                                    Dean Espinoza Couldn't you also just install a switch to enable/disable the write control line? This would fix your problem without getting a new plastic gizmo.