A1200 hard drive question

[Amiga1992]

I've got a strange HD configuration in my 1200... The previous owner installed an ultra-slim 3.5" IDE drive inside.. it fits tightly but it works fine... Now the question is... I dont know why, but he connected the drive's power to the power plug of the disk drive...but the 2.5" to 3.5" adapter inside has its own power plug...

Now everytime I reset the 1200, the hard drive shuts down and turns on again, and I quite dont like that :P My A600 never did this, when I resetted.

Do you think that, if I connect the power to the IDE converter's power plug, this 'problem' wil go away? I suppose that 'turn off/turn on' thing is something the disk drive needs, but that is not healthy for the HD.

Any help apreciated.

[jmmijo]

The adapter would have converted the 2.5" ide drive connector to fit a 3.5" drive so this is the best option to use with that drive. Another option would be to try connecting the HD to an external power supply to test if the reset still powers down the HD or not. I say it's better not to have all these power off's and on's when you reset as well.

Let us know what happens please

[Miggy2TheMax]

Akira, I posted about 3 weeks about putting in a second drive into a 1200. In that thread I think someone said that if you connect devices that require more power to the IDE power supply then the miggy will not be able to handle that. Therefore to overcome this problem we connect devices that need more power (eg 3.5" ide h/d) to the same power source as the floppy drive.

[utri007]

Power supply of A500 could solve problem

[Chuckles]

Originally posted by utri007
Power supply of A500 could solve problem

Really? I always thought that the standard power supply for the A500 was notorious for being underpowered. That's why I bought a replacement for mine way back when.

It's said to be better than the 1200 one but I would not connect my HD to it anyway. I bought my 1200 second hand and previous owner had a 2.5" HD which he removed. He provided power from the mainboard like that but I changed it by using an external ATX PSU and used a 3.5"HD+CD-ROM with that. It did not look good this way but it was better than frying my mainboard.

[Drake1009]

The A500 power supply is no good? I can't tell my A1200 and my A500 PSes from each other, and I don't really think I have power problems either.

[CodyJarrett]

From the power supplies I've seen, the A500 ones are larger, heavier, better-built and more powerful. The A1200 ones are smaller and seem to have less power.

[Chuckles]

I don't know that the A500 supplies are particularly "bad", but when the A500 was released, there wasn't much thought being given to the addition of other devices that would draw their power from the same supply. There were no internal HD solutions available yet at that time. Most peripherals for the A500 had their own supplies, with a few exceptions, like some of the external drives. The prevailing wisdom at the time was that if you were adding anything more than maybe an external drive that drew it's power from the Amiga's supply, you were probably better off buying a replacement.

I'm a bit surprised to hear that the A1200 may have had a less powerful supply, simply because of the fact that hardware reviews of the A500 had already noted that the power supply didn't pack much punch, and by the time the A1200 came out, things like internal hard drives were more common. You can't really judge though by things like the size or weight, or by that measure, you'd reasonably think that a "laptop" from around 1990 should be more powerful than it's smaller and lighter counterpart today. I'd think you could tell if there is any difference between an A500 supply and an A1200 supply by comparing the numbers that should be printed on each somewhere. I've never had my hands on an A1200, so I couldn't tell you.

[Galahad/FLT]

Ok, back in the looooong days gone by when I had an Amiga A12oo, the machine was only supposed to have a 2.5 drive, not the larger size.

The kit I got for it was originally external, but I figured out that as long as there was paper or some non conducting material under the drive, then there was no problem, and it is normal to connect it to the floppy drive, and I had no problems whatsoever with it.

As for A5oo power supplies, there are two variants. The original power supplies were very good, very heavy and could withstand quite a few extras being bolted on, the later models were lighter (costs) and as a result were not as able to give out as much power as the original supplies..

Put it this way, my 15 year old A5oo 1.2 is STILL using the same power supply.... I have gotten through 3 A12oo/A6oo power supplies in 5 years! You takes your chances, or, just to be on the safe side, check out for the name 'GOLIATH' on Ebay, this was a third party power supply that could run a city!!!

[CodyJarrett]

I had a Goliath for a long time - it was very good...

[shutter]

@ Akira

simply cut PIN 1 !! (Red) of the IDE cabe,when i have this rigt in my mind this would stop the HD do a reset erery - time
- i had done this at a Alfy Power A500 IDE Controller

cu
shutter

[shutter]

i ve checked it in the service-manual,

it is the right Pin ;-)))

have fun

[RetroMan]

Just my 2c here

The A1200 Power supply isn´t very good, but the A500 PSU´s came in two versions : one with 2,5A and one with 4,5A ! The big one (4,5A) can be used on an A1200 with Turboboard, HD and CDRom without any problems, while most of the dodgy A1200 PSU´s will give up at that time

[Chuckles]

You would think that given the attention that was paid in reviews to the marginal nature of at least SOME of the A500 power supplies, a reasonably intelligent management team would have made an effort to make the situation better in subsequent models, and not worse.

Oh wait! This WAS Commodore, so the previous statement obviously does not apply. Never mind!

[Overdoc]

Well, I am a little bit confused now, because there are 3 different PSUs overall:

1) The old, heavy A-500 PSU
2) The newer, lighter A-500 with 'switch-transformer' ( don't know if that's the right English word for it ? )
3) The A-1200 PSU.

Now, the old A-500 PSU has a maximum of 2.5A written on it, the newer A-500 one has 4.5A, and the A-1200 one has 3A written on it.
So if we can trust what Commodore wrote on their PSUs then the newer A-500 PSU should be the most powerful one, but it could well be possible that the old one with normal, heavy transformer will last longer. ( switch PSUs get bad more easily, I think )

@Galahad:
Maybe you never had a new A-500 PSU but only old A-500 PSU and A-1200/600 PSUs ?

[Amiga1992]

Yeah Ive got a spare PSU here, the guy who sold me the 1200 gave it to me just in case... it's a newer A500 PSU, a light one, BUT it says 4.5A...

I've been using the nominal A1200 PSU without problems so far, and he's been using that one since he bought the machine too.. I dont want to ad danything extra to the machine (likea cdrom), the PSU is supposed to withstand the consumption of a turbocard (mine takes 600 miliamp), a disk drive and a hard drive... that's all I have, it's just weird that he connected the power to the disk drive power slot, when the 2.5 to 3.5 adapter converted the power plug also...

I will try connecting it over there, I dont want this to keep happening, I reset the 1200 a lot (specially when trying to install new shite and it fucks up )

[shutter]

@akira

did u make the Pin1 IDE-Cable cut ?? this will definately fix the reset problem,this problem will NOT be fixed using another power supply

[Amiga1992]

I know, but I want to try swapping power ports first. Im not to eager to cut any cable, if it aint broke, why fix it eh? I dont want to end up with a non-working A1200 HD

[shutter]

okay , u must know im a radio & tv-technic so i know what i do..
and how to do it ;-))))

good luck