Hello,
First of all, the Mac 128k is not compatible with the 800k external drive.
The fact that the Mac boots from the disk sporadically is peculiar... a couple of things could be wrong, as I see it.
The disks have gone bad/lost some of their data over the years. It's possible, but for it to happen to so many disks and produce the same result, I don't think this is the issue.
What could be the problem (I've had the same issue) is your floppy head may be dirty, which could impact the disk read quality. Especially if you've been running old disks through it constantly, it may have gotten dirty just from that. I've cleaned mine before using a q-tip, a 50-50 mixture of rubbing alcohol and water, and very (very!) soft pressure. Most of the time, it's helped get my drives working at a much lower failure rate.
I'd give that a shot and see what happens. Feel free to message me for any other minor questions!
First of all, the Mac 128k is not compatible with the 800k external drive.
The fact that the Mac boots from the disk sporadically is peculiar... a couple of things could be wrong, as I see it.
The disks have gone bad/lost some of their data over the years. It's possible, but for it to happen to so many disks and produce the same result, I don't think this is the issue.
What could be the problem (I've had the same issue) is your floppy head may be dirty, which could impact the disk read quality. Especially if you've been running old disks through it constantly, it may have gotten dirty just from that. I've cleaned mine before using a q-tip, a 50-50 mixture of rubbing alcohol and water, and very (very!) soft pressure. Most of the time, it's helped get my drives working at a much lower failure rate.
I'd give that a shot and see what happens. Feel free to message me for any other minor questions!