Try formatting a floppy in the suspect drive. If it formats successfully, and you can read from and write to that floppy, then the drive is basically ok, but needs alignment.

If it can't even format its own floppy, then it could be dirty, or has a loose cable or ...

Since it's easy to clean the heads, do that first and retest. If that doesn't fix it, open it up and do a more thorough clean of the mechanism, check cables, etc.

And yes, electrically the auto- and manual-inject versions are compatible. Mechanically, there are minor differences that may require a little modding.