Amiga 500 Internal Drive problem
 

Hi Guys.

I have a problem with 1 of my Amiga 500 Internal Disk Drives.

When there is no disk in the drive, it sometimes randomly makes buzzing noises, like burping sounds BRR BRR :).

Anyone familiar with that problem mentioned above?

Also reading disks doesnt go to well. when i try xcopy checkdisk it works sometimes and then it doesnt (gives bad blocks etc).

Now i already cleaned it once because before cleaning it didnt do anything at all it was even worse.

I ordered this disk cleaner from amigakit.com but i dont know how it works because there is only a disk, no manual alcohol or anything else included :confused

How does amigakit disk cleaner work anyone knows? just put it in the disk drive and let it read or something?

The problem isn't with the heads being dirty, it's related more with either the drive logic or controllers.

Inspect the ribbon cable going to the drive itself, clean the disk detect switch and write protect switch in the drive. Reseat the A500 chips, the socketed ones by pressing down firmly on them.

The drive switches can be cleaned with isopropyl alcohol or contact cleaner, place a heavy drop on top of the switch and then press the switch down about 50 times, repeat once more.

Voltage rails can also cause similar problems, so check that your supply is ok voltage wise.

Failing all that, borrow a drive and check to see if it's motherboard or drive that's faulty.

I'll put another A500 drive in since i have a few spare ones. That way i can quickly isolate the problem to see if the motherboard is faulty or drive itself. Thanks for the information.

Yup, so also try a known good PSU if the drive swap did nothing.

I had a similar problem with A1200. The drive worked, but when the floppy was out it sometimes randomly made buzzing noises. I fixed it on replacing the power floppy cable.

One of my old A500's had a squeaky floppy drive... It worked fine but just had an annoying squeak!