Mouldy discs (using greaseweazle)

[finite9]

I just got a GreaseWeazle. I've got a Citizen drive that was in the original Amiga 500 with a straight cable, and hooked that up to the gw.


I managed to read a disk and create an adf, that I then tested in FS-UAE and it worked fine. I then wrote a Workbench 1.3 disc to a magazine cover disc that I first erased, and that worked fine in my A500.


Then I got a Worms disk out that I bought off eBay earlier this year, and tried to load that into my A500, and after several seconds it started making some nasty noises and stopped loading. I took it out, then tried to make a copy of it using the other drive connected to greaseweazle and a similar thing happened but I took the disc out before as soon as it started making nasty noises.


Then, I tried loading Workbench on the A500 and it had a read error. I tried writing more disks to gw and it started failing all the time with:

[andrew@homer Creatures_Amiga_EN]$ gw write /data/media/games/retro-Amiga/games/Creatures_Amiga_EN/CREATUR1.adf --drive=0
Writing c=0-79:h=0-1
Format amiga.amigados
T0.0: Writing Track (Flux: 200.0ms period, 219.9 ms total, Terminate at index)
T0.1: Writing Track (Flux: 200.0ms period, 219.9 ms total, Terminate at index)
T0.1: Writing Track (Verify Failure: Retry #1)
T0.1: Writing Track (Verify Failure: Retry #2)
T0.1: Writing Track (Verify Failure: Retry #3)
** FATAL ERROR:
Failed to verify Track 0.1

Did the mould just ruin both my drive heads? I examined the Worms disk and sure enough it looks a bit patchy in some areas of the disc through the viewport. Is it enough to clean the heads again with IPA or is it possible more permanent damage has occured?

[lesta_smsc]

Just clean heads. I had this issue several times. You are very unlikely to damage the head this way unless the head came onto some very hard debris and scored the disc as this potentially damages drive head.

Just clean with IPA and cotton swab or filter paper and you should be good to go.

@RobSmithDev has done a nice YouTube video on how to make a disk drive cleaner / custom disk that serves this purpose. You can use your GW to run the disk cleaning routine then.

[finite9]

thanks for the quick reply. I just cleaned the drive connected to gw and tried it again and it was much better, but I still got a couple of failed tracks when writing. reading worked fine. Will have to do the drive in my A500 now.

[derSammler]

Because of this, I would just use a cheap PC drive for the GW. Unlike with 5.25" drives, it does not matter with 3.5" drives if it is HD instead of DD. If you ruin a PC floppy drive, it's not a big loss.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by finite9

thanks for the quick reply. I just cleaned the drive connected to gw and tried it again and it was much better, but I still got a couple of failed tracks when writing. reading worked fine. Will have to do the drive in my A500 now.

Try another clean. Also remember to clean top and bottom read headers. Did you open up drive to clean or clean blindly with cotton bud/q-tip?

[finite9]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

Try another clean. Also remember to clean top and bottom read headers. Did you open up drive to clean or clean blindly with cotton bud/q-tip?

I dismantled the drive to get full access to the heads and cleaned them with a cotton bud and >99% IPA. Is there a better item to use than cottonbuds?


I was careful not to let the heads bump together when dismantling.


I was given my bother-in-laws A500 from his childhood recently (I stupidly sold all my stuff back in the day), and it came with a non-standard floppy drive with an eject button that looked hacked together, stuck out even when ejected, and was shoehorned into the case, with the area around the eject button hacked away with a file to allow the weird eject button. I don't know what kind of drive it is, but it's not an Amiga original. It uses a straight data cable though. I now use this with the gw, and bought an original Amiga drive off eBay to replace it.

[finite9]

Originally Posted by derSammler

Because of this, I would just use a cheap PC drive for the GW. Unlike with 5.25" drives, it does not matter with 3.5" drives if it is HD instead of DD. If you ruin a PC floppy drive, it's not a big loss.

I do have an old PC floppy drive, but I didn't know I could use it with the gw to read Amiga discs. Thanks for the tip.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by finite9

I do have an old PC floppy drive, but I didn't know I could use it with the gw to read Amiga discs. Thanks for the tip.

Oh yes of course. I never use Amiga drives for GW! You can buy NOS PC Floppy Drives at reasonable price.