Help needed! Amiga 1200 HD not booting up
 

Hi,

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but I have just bought an old Amiga 1200HD and it booted up the first time I turned it on from the HD. However, it hasn't done so since. It has an internal and external floppy and I have put the WorkBench 3.0 disk into each and still no joy. The screen goes from static to like a plain grey colour, so it's tuned in OK (I think). It beeps three times on startup, and I've read on some forum that in an Amstrad this means there's no bootable disk, so not sure if it's relevant here. Any help on what the problem is, or further info on how to find out what the problem is, or a place I can go online to find more info would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Steve

There is nothing that could or would beep in an Amiga. So unless you have some custom beeping hardware (which is very unlikely), there is something going terribly wrong.

The most probable reason is that either the power supply or the HDD has died.

You should open the Amiga case and disconnect the HDD. If it still does not boot it is probably the power supply. You should also check which part creates the beeping sound and replace it.

... Amstrad? erm, yeah I reckon its the hard drive, but it could be something else... my PS2 hard drive (was a maxtor) screwed up a month or so ago and it started making what sounded like a mobile phone ringtone!.... very odd indeed! .. could be similar though

Amiga 1200's do not beep at startup, do they? At least mine doesn't.

Thanks for your replies. The power supply is a bit flaky, sometimes it doesn't seem to produce enough power to turn the Amiga on and you have to turn it off and back on again. It does seem to be the HDD making the noise, three high pitched sounds - could be the disk spinning really quickly three times or something. Anyway I've had enough of it now, think I'll download an emulator instead :)

once met a guy who gave me a 200 meg hd for my old A1200 years ago, his mate turned it off/on too quickly and it wouldn't boot. When i installed it in place of my standard 40 meg (could never work out how to use both but anyway) i found that it wouldnt boot when i switched it on. However if i left it on - let the hd spin up - then reset the sod with control amiga amiga keys it would work fine! free 200 meg hd! just so you know i did the right thing and passed my 40 meg onto a young chap with a bbs running of an old A500!