2 Amigas both with dodgy disk drives - what can be done?

[DisposableHero]

I recently dug two old Amigas (a 1.2 A500 with a trapdoor expansion and an A1200 with a 127Mb hard drive) out of my mum's loft, and initially both worked well. However, the A500's disk drive gradually started failing to load almost every disk it faced, finding various disk errors on disks I knew to be working (in a couple of cases giving errors midway through loading asking for the correct disk, which was of course already in there). At least the A1200 worked, so I could load most games.

That is, until the A1200 floppy drive simply stopped. It made a nasty sound when I put one disk in, and now is only spinning the disk 3 times before stopping - the Workbench on the hard drive is reporting any disk as DF0:???, as opposed to the more normal for Workbench 3 DF0:NDOS.

What can be done to resolve these, ideally without digging too deep inside the machine? Are the drives likely to have simply breathed their last at a similar time, or are there standard fixes that may work?

[lesta_smsc]

Use cotton ear bud dabbed on ISA and clean head. Not as ideal as opening drive but generally works.

[DigitalKeeper]

First thing to do -> open the drive and clean all Mechanics; and the Head's! Isopropanol 99% would work fine!

DON'T PUSH OR PULL AT THE HEADS TO MUCH! There are very sensitive.

Second -> the "Disk insert" Switch is defective - desolder it, open, clean the Silver Plates inside, reassemble, and it would be working

A1200 -> three Times Read - with no function > indicates a defective CIA (U8) OR defective Data Lines to Paula (Pin 40, 41, 42) OR defective Paula.

In most cases - defective Data Lines coz of leakage from capacitors....nor a defective U8

[DisposableHero]

Lesta, is that for the A500 (I'm assuming the 1200 needs more complex surgery)? By ISA do you mean Isopropranol 99%?

Capacitor leakage is a pretty terminal issue isn't it? Would taking the case off make the issue obvious?

I'm not sure either machine has anything wrong with the disk insert switch as such?

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by DisposableHero

Lesta, is that for the A500 (I'm assuming the 1200 needs more complex surgery)? By ISA do you mean Isopropranol 99%?

It should work on both drives provided you can access the head. Like I said its not ideal but you could test it to see if your disk reads any better.

Apologies, it should be IPA ie Isopropyl Alcohol 99%.