A1200 woes

[Fern]

Right, so I decided to pick up an A1200 off eBay, as a birthday present to myself, and I've run into a few problems.

Given the item was described as being in good condition, full working order, never been opened etc, I was surprised, as you might imagine, to find that not a single one of the supplied floppies could be read without AmigaDOS whinging about disk block errors, or the software failure screen. Odd, I could have sworn the seller said it was recently tested...

So, I do the obvious thing and make sure nothing's taken a knock in transit. Time to check the cables and make sure there's no fluff or foreign objects in the drive. I opened the case up and was frankly horrified by the amount of rust and corrosion on the RF sheild, drive housing, and the phantom hard drive bracket I was not expecting to find. There's also huge amounts of dust everywhere (not a problem, it blows out) but my god! This is going to take me AGES to clean and that's after I've bought the right shit to do it with! Also need to wire-brush the TV modulator housing as that's rusty too. Has anyone else found unexpected electrical tape on their A1200 innards? I suspect strongly I've been lied to just a little bit by the seller.

Then we need a new floppy drive, because I wouldn't trust the old one as far as I can throw it (which incidentally I am about to find out exactly how far), a new cable because the current one seems to be rusting as well (wtf!?) in parts, and finally (I hope!) a whole new keyboard because I can't afford to take the 6 weeks off work it'll take to get all the filth out of this one. I'm sure I saw a pube in there earlier... I mean what the hell.

That's BEFORE I can even think about getting hold of a copy of ****ing WorkBench and have it running, nevermind any of the stuff I actually wanted to mess around doing.

I am rather cross and not having a very nice day. I honestly don't know whether I'd prefer to spend the money fixing it up or just throw it in the bin and try to forget about the money I wasted.

[Buleste]

First thing to do is contact the seller and try to get at least some refund. If he's not willing to refund you then open a dispute with paypal as the item is most definitely not as described. Hopefully you'll get at least some of your money back. Once you have some money back look at it as a restoration project, something to while away the hours when you don't want to speak to people and feel like banging your head against a brick wall. You could even post pictures of it here. Most of all look at it as a learning experience.

[Harrison]

It could well just be that the seller had stored the A1200 in their attic since last using it and that has caused the corrosion inside the system. One very good reason why you should never store anything electrical in the attic! And finding so much dust and crap inside the case probably does indicate it hasn't been opened up.

To source a replacement floppy drive I highly recommend you post a wanted advert on our sister site www.amibay.com. Someone on there should be able to help you our and not rip you off. You actually just missed out on someone selling two drives on there.

And if you need a set of Workbench floppy disks just ask. I can sort you out with a site for the price of postage. Just PM me if and when you need some.

[woody.cool]

I had a very similar thing happen when I bought an A1500 off ebay.

The A1500 had two floppy drives (both internal), an A2091 SCSI Controller card, Kickstart Switcher (with a front mounted switch) and a SCSI Hard Drive.
I was told in the auction that it was in A1 condition.

When it arrived, it was a different matter altogether.
The case was badly damaged and had a couple of massive dents in it as well as the case being completely buckled.
The front bevels off the floppy drives were hanging off and the eject button was missing from DF1:
I could hear rattling about inside, so I decided to open it up. I was horrified with what I saw, the A2091 SCSI card and the HDD were both rattling about loose inside the case, the A2091 card hadn't even been screwed in. I found DF1's eject button loose inside the case!!!!
Also, someone had done a naff bodge job on the internal PSU leads, and tried to add a couple of extra drive power connectors and had done this by cutting an existing lead, stripping back the wire, and twisting extra wires together ..... they didn't even cover the bare wire with electrical tape!
I decided to put it all together (I put the SCSI card back in the slot) and hooked it up.
I turned it on, and just saw a blank black screen, as well as hearing a horrible *CLUNK* *CLUNK* *CLUNK* from the hard drive.
I concluded it was either a loose chip, or the kickstart switcher (which didn't look like the wires to the switch were soldered very well, as they were quite loose fitting!)
I removed the Kickstart switcher and put the 2.04 chip in from the kickstart swithcer (on it's own) and now I got the grey boot-up screen colours, and that horrilbe noise from the hard drive. Then FINALLY the purple insert disk screen, so I concluded that the hard drive was buggered!
Other observations I noted were that the motherboard had loads of bent pins all over the place. It seems that for the system to access two floppy drives, they'd lost the jumpers so bent the pins together !!!
Anyway, the machine works, but there's no way I can fix that case - it's beyond repair.

Anyway, I contacted the seller, who gave me a partial refund (I got most of my money back) - I got a few games out of it, and a spair internal floppy drive, as well as a working A2091 card, all of which ended up in my A2000 but I would say that you should DEFINATELY speak to the seller, you never know, they might give you your money back!

btw If you want Workbench 3.0 disks, I have at least one spare set (minus the install disk) and I'm happy to let you have a set for a small fee.

[Harrison]

Do you think that the A1500 case and HD were damaged during shipping? And the cards were obviously shaken loose from not being screwed in place.

It is always a random lottery buying any second hand hardware. You never know the real history behind it and what has been done to it until it arrives.

[woody.cool]

Do you think that the A1500 case and HD were damaged during shipping? And the cards were obviously shaken loose from not being screwed in place.

It is always a random lottery buying any second hand hardware. You never know the real history behind it and what has been done to it until it arrives.

The damage is so severe,I doubt it could have happened accidently.
The A1500 had travelled down from Glasgow, Scotland to Northampton, England - so yes it had a long journey, but it could only sustain as much damage as that if it was thrown!!! The case front was pratically hanging off.

[Harrison]

How was it sent? RM/Parcel Force and I would believe the damage could easily be caused during transit. When handling parcels they do get thrown from location to location, not carefully handled. And any fragile or handle with care stickers are ignored.

[woody.cool]

How was it sent? RM/Parcel Force and I would believe the damage could easily be caused during transit. When handling parcels they do get thrown from location to location, not carefully handled. And any fragile or handle with care stickers are ignored.

If I remember correctly, it was sent by Royal Mail!
It's quite a while ago now, and I've since got an almost full refund. It cost £50 and got refunded £40, meaning that I bought a "spares & repairs A1500" for a tenner!

[Fern]

Thanks for the replies guys Now I've calmed down a little I'm more inclined to work on it as a restoration project. Given that the case and motherboard appear to be fine, and a brand new motherboard would cost more than I actually paid for the A1200, it's probably not a bad idea. If I didn't get a boot screen, I'd have been making noises about refunds... but given that it sort of works, and the amount of money is rather small, I've decided not to pursue a refund. But I have explained the reasons for his neutral feedback.

The hardest part for now I think will be cleaning the RF shield or sourcing a new one. Unless it's possible to just remove the thing and run the A1200 without one, but that might make mounting stuff inside the case a bit tricky. I'm thinking, remove it, and get happy with rust remover spray, and a wire brush on a drill! If that doesn't shift it, nothing will.

I have looked into the prices of a replacement internal FDD and keyboard, they seem cheap enough and will be bought next paycheck. Once everything is clean, fixed and happy to load WB, I will start putting together the rest of the project.

My wish-list for the A1200 is probably fairly standard, but hopefully as and when the money for parts becomes available, here's what I aim to accomplish:

1) 3.1 ROMs
2) Internal CF card storage
3) Possible internal CD-ROM... but everyone does this, so I'm tempted to get creative! Assuming the OS can recognise the drive, what I'd like is one of these:

http://www.minidisc.org/images/sony_mdm111.jpg

I think MO disks are really cool, and it'd be something a little different. Problems to overcome would be a suitable adaptor cable and power supply. Making the thing actually fit probably won't be that hard.

4) Accelerator card. The obvious choice is a Blizzard 1230-IV, + 50Mhz FPU and a fair bit of RAM. These are always expensive so this step might take a while.
5) Heavy-duty PSU to ensure stable operation


I am very inclined to take some pictures and document my progress. While the pros on this board have probably had worse to deal with, it might possibly be helpful for those less experienced (like me!) to have a guide on "What to do if you buy an Amiga and it turns out to be a piece of crap". Wish me luck!

[woody.cool]

3) Possible internal CD-ROM... but everyone does this, so I'm tempted to get creative! Assuming the OS can recognise the drive, what I'd like is one of these:

http://www.minidisc.org/images/sony_mdm111.jpg

I think MO disks are really cool, and it'd be something a little different. Problems to overcome would be a suitable adaptor cable and power supply. Making the thing actually fit probably won't be that hard.

I didn't realise that Sony did a data MiniDisc drive. I soooo want one of those.
I use MiniDisc a lot (even now that they're a bit old hat) and I think they're the most reliable format ever.

As for power, I reckon it'd be the same power connector as a 3.5" hard drive or an internal CD-ROM drive.
For the cable, if it's IDE, then it'll most likely be the usual 40-pin cable - if it's SCSI, it depends on the type of SCSI connector. SCSI would also present another problem ..... the A1200 doesn't have built in SCSI, so a SCSI controller card would be needed.