Slider thing at top of floppy bent slightly out of place

[Dreedo]

As you can see i don';t know much about floppies, but i have a copy of Lotus 2, and the top of the floppy is bent slightly out of place (the slider that you can pull back to see the black tape or whatever). It isn't perfectly aligned with the floppy as it were.

I tried running it in my Amiga, and after about 2 minutes the game did boot, it ran the starting animations, but once it reached the point where the Lotus logo is displayed almost fully on the screen, i got a error 'Disk Read Error 2'.

The game did make a squeaking sound as it was initially loading, im not sure if that was normal. And also it sounded a bit juddery as it was reading the floppy, like the normal deep grating sound you get when loading workbench 2.05 but it wasn't consistent.

Like 'uuuuuuuu-u-uuuuuu-u-u-u-u-u-uuuuuuuuuuuuu.' If that makes any sense whatsoever xD.

Any help appreciated, and if there is a way to fix the floppy i would really appreciate it. Not so easy to find Amiga games nowadays, even on ebay.

[s2325]

It's normal that Lotus II loader makes uuuuuuuu-u-uuuuuu-u-u-u-u-u-uuuuuuuuuuuuu. You can replace slider from another floppy but watch out for very little spring.

[deicidal]

Changing the metal slider is easy, just pull it off. Put a none beant slider onto the disk and then slip the spring into place. Well that how i seem to remember doing it anyway.

[fitzsteve]

Sadly Dreedo these old Disks are nearing the end of their useful life. I've had a number of disks, even those stored in dry conditions develop read errors.

Some can be retored by re-writing a clean image of the game back a few times but others the Disk surface its self has become mouldy or worn out.

I suggest the best thing to do is get a PCMCIA transfer kit from Amigakit (or in fact I have a spare reader & 128mb CF I could sell you along with the mouse if you take it) Then you would only need EasyADF from Amigakit.

EasyADF lets you write ADF's back to floppy and then you can play them, I used this method before I got a Ram expansion for my A1200 - now I play all my games off the HDD with WHDLoad

Amigakit did sell new DD Disks however I think they've sold out now but I'm sure you should be able to pick some up from Ebay or something.

Steve.

[Dreedo]

Thanks guys.

And Steve, i'll think about it, as i said my moneys a little thin at the moment, but in a few days i might be able to take you up on that, i'll look around on ebay and see how much and how easy to get hold of amiga floppies are.

Just wanting to try the above suggestions, how do i safely remove the metal slider without damaging anything? All links on the net point to removing floppy disk drives ect.

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Dreedo

Thanks guys.

And Steve, i'll think about it, as i said my moneys a little thin at the moment, but in a few days i might be able to take you up on that, i'll look around on ebay and see how much and how easy to get hold of amiga floppies are.

No worries Dreedo, I'm not going to sell this stuff to anyone else so take your time. I just want to help you out - its only Amazon charge like £2.75 just to list something that it adds to the price.

I've probably even got some spare DD Disks I can throw in and I can probably even make a bootable disk with freeware apps you can use to write ADF's back to disk.

Steve.

[Dreedo]

Well thanks for the help Steve.

[Dreedo]

I replaced (rather gingerly) the metal slider, and this time i got past the lotus logo onto the next screen, where its asking me to do an authentification thingie from the manual, like in Civilization 1, hopefully its working now, seems a bit too easy to me though. Amiga's are never this easy. :P

Beyond that i don't know, because rather irresponsibly, the joystick/pad that i ordered 2 days before the game hasnt arrived.