a1200 wont load floppies

[xdanger]

Ive just bought a 1200 in very good condition but nothing will load,
The floppy drive spins and the screen goes purple so the amiga knows theres a disk

ive tried dpaint4 aga and chaos engine aga also workbench 3.0 disk

I have a 600 around here somewhere, Should I try swapping the floppy drive?

[Harrison]

The floppy drive from an A600 should work fine in an A1200. Is the A1200 a Commodore, Escom or Amiga Technologies model? The non Commodore A1200's used converted PC drives which caused problems reading some Amiga disks. However as you can't read any it does sound like either your A1200's drive is broken or the motherboards CIA chips are faulty.

[xdanger]

Is a faulty CIA chip something I can do anything about?

Can I pop a new one in?

[Buleste]

Do you get the purple kickstart screen with the disk animation? If you do just check the connector from the dd to the mobo. Other than that is try a different drive, although i'm not sure if the 600 DD is compatable with the 1200. The other option is to try a floppy drive cleaner disk.

[xdanger]

http://i19.ebayimg.com/05/i/000/f2/bc/71ac_1.JPG
Is this a 1200's CIA ,The 8520???
Yes I get the purple disk animation ,when i put a disk in the screen goes all purple but then just back to the anim.

I'll see if I can find a cleaner but the machine is in top condition otherwise, Really clean and no broken warranty stickers.

If nothing else works will I be able to pull some chips from my a600?

[Buleste]

Sounds like the Disk Drive may need a good clean as it's recognising the fact that Disks are being inserted. Firts just try blowing air through to get rid of dust buildup then try a disk drive cleaner (If you can still get them) otherwise its trying long Q-Tips and CD cleaning solution.

[xdanger]

I have 100% ethanol, Is that safe?

But like I said the thing is super clean as they used a dust cover, I think it was just used for word processing.

[Buleste]

Probably. But give it a good few minutes to evaporate before testing the DD.

[Harrison]

If they only mainly used it for word processing then I expect the drive wasn't used that much, so the problem is probably just a build up of dust and muck in the drive. And as the unit is detecting a disk being inserted then it sound more like the drive than anything else.

[xdanger]

I just blew out the cobwebs with a little pump, still the same ,I'll try changing the drive later.
Thanks :D

[Zetr0]

@xdanger

Hello there, welcome to the boards :)

Glad you have found the retr0liciousness of the Amiga1200 now its time to help you use it :)

Firstly the CIAs in the A1200 are nothing like that in other previous models of Amiga, they are integrated into VSLI chips. however i must thank you for the hardware pr0n of the A500's CIA's very nice indeed :D

Now the Floppy drive has very little do with CIA's as these are mainly for timing latches of memory locations such like chip ram, pcmcia, joyport etc (mouse port is controlled by paula).

As you have discovered, FDD's usually get incredibly cruddy and will refuse to work, sometimes the only way is completely strip and clean the drive. I have read some where, where some clever spark managed to change the heads of the FDD from one of a PC FDD and it worked flawlessly. But when a drive is beyond repair it is because the drive motor that fails to spin properly and hence the sync constantly fails (error city!)

Changing the FDD is perhaps the best thing to do at this point, once you have this you can then getto grips with cleaning the old one, and with a little luck you could end up with a working spare to sell or keep :)

again, welcome to the boards theres so much mischief to get upto so kick back, releax and enjoy the chocolate coated retroness that this fair board provides :D

[xdanger]

My little a600 is about to get reaped for its FDD

something like "card drive" shows up in the boot options of the 1200 ,Is that just the card bus/controller for a possible drive?

And whats that slot for on the right at the back next to the mouse port, a hdd?

I had an a500 back in the day so aga is new to me.

[Zetr0]

xdanger

the A1200 is essentially the baby brother of the Amiga A4000, it has PCMCIA like the a600 on the left, and two expansion ports, one underneath (the trapdoor slot) for accelerators and memory upgradesm and one rear expansion bay. (this is customarlly used if you have a as a SCSI card in your a1200)

Internally the A1200 has IDE, like the A600, but this is where the similarites end, the A1200 has a Clock Port Expansion port (some motherboard revsions have the headers removed but you can replace them :) if you are handy at soldering) this expansion port allows for things like USB, Sound Cards, mp3 decoders and of course.... a clock.. LOL

the trapdoor expansion port, has MANY expansions for it... most are memory to memory and CPU accelerators have a look here (http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a1200proc)

The A1200 is my love as far as Amiga go's, although i long to own an A4000 big box amiga, theres always that something about the A1200 :)

[xdanger]

I swapped the floppy drive and it works great :)

Also I have a HDD from a 600HD that was a bit ropey so I swapped it out, Cant remember what Workbench version is on there.

Can I format that drive for my HDD'less 1200 and install 3.0 onto it easily or would I need something else ?

[Zetr0]

....
Can I format that drive for my HDD'less 1200 and install 3.0 onto it easily or would I need something else ?

indeed you can its very simple :) you just need workbench 3.0 disks, attach the hard disk and put the workbench install disk in, and boot the machine... from this prepare the hard disk and then click the installer...

If memory serves though, under 3.0 you may have to boot using workbench and then set the drive up using HDToolsBox (tools directory). and then once you have configured the hard drive geometry you save off and then boot with the Install disk.

From this, you can just install as normal :)

best of luck :)

[Harrison]

However if you have a standard set of Workbench 3.0 disks that came with a non HD A1200 then you might not have the install disk as part of the set. You should however still be able to format the drive and install Workbench manually. If this is the case just install the HD, then boot from the WB3 floppy and then copy the contents of all of the Workbench disks onto the HD (making sure you copy all the content (show all files). Tip: copying the files from an AmigaDos Shell is easiest.

[Cortona]

I have the same problem as xdanger: neither the internal or external 3.5" floppies on my A1200 will read disks anymore. Until very recently they loaded a file or a game in maybe 1 in 20 attempts, and then I tried to clean them...

I bought a 3.5" floppy disk cleaning kit and tried that, but no dice. Gave them a good air dusting. Nothing. Read/write errors and grinding every time.

I have WB3 installed on the hard drive, so I can boot into that. If I insert a floppy in WB I just get the disk icon with DF0:???

So it seems like I have two options. 1) buy a replacement internal floppy - I'm sure I've seen one on eBay for about £20 - or 2) get a cheap n' nasty A600 and gut it for the internal floppy. Neither of which does anything for my external drive (God I hope this is a mechanical failure and not chip-related.)

Basically, I don't want to throw loads of money at the problem, otherwise I might just as well pick up another A1200 for £40+P&P, which would be silly.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Dan

[Harrison]

There are ebay sellers who sell just the drives from A1200's so you could just buy a replacement drive. Another alternative is to convert a PC drive to work. Some models of PC drive can be converted quite easily but I don't personally know too much about how to do it.

[Tiago]

some time ago i post some pc floppy drives that could be converted to Amiga. Most of them you only had to cross to wires from the cable... dont know if it's true, i try it and didnt work....

But i guess Zetr0 must know something about it :D

[Cortona]

Woop! The internal floppy drive I bought on eBay about three weeks ago finally arrived today; packaged in a Sainsbury's cat food pouch selection 'Chunks in Jelly' box. (Chicken & Turkey and Salmon, in case you were wondering. If only my cat was such a cheap date instead of being a Felix/Iams hog.) Not the most promising of starts but at least the drive was snuggled down in a bed of shredded paper and bubble wrap.

Now I just need to find the time to chuck it in my A1200. When you've got two offspring under 3 and a demanding spouse, there just isn't any time for anything. (I'm only on here now because the little one is clamped onto the wife, but that's probably more info than you need.)

[Cortona]

The ill-fitting and frankly filthy internal floppy drive I bought on eBay actually works, and my external drive is working now. I don't know if that's a coincidence or whether my faulty DF0 could have prevented DF1 from recognising disks.