Can not boot from Floppy drives: A4000T

[c0dehunter]

Dear all,
When I insert a bootable diskette in my A4000T drive, I can not boot from it. Why?

When I bought it (please see my original post here

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=101640&page=2

It was sporadic, meaning most of the times it would, but no always. The previous owner has installed two floppy drives in the system.

Funny thing is, in Workbench (which thankfully I can boot into, when I turn the system on) when I insert a floppy diskette, I don't even see the icon for it. (I used to be able to see the icon)


Seems like it is just disabled.


Please help!
Thanks!

[lesta_smsc]

Seems like it is not detecting the disk if you cannot see it appear in Workbench so no surprise it won't see it during boot.

Maybe need to check internals of floppy drive for capacitor issue. The drive detect is likely at fault as that should send signal of disk insertion whether it then was able to read disk correctly or not is another matter. The only other possibility is the floppy cable is faulty... try another?

[c0dehunter]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

Seems like it is not detecting the disk if you cannot see it appear in Workbench so no surprise it won't see it during boot.

Maybe need to check internals of floppy drive for capacitor issue. The drive detect is likely at fault as that should send signal of disk insertion whether it then was able to read disk correctly or not is another matter. The only other possibility is the floppy cable is faulty... try another?

Thank you, will do that, but BOTH floppies failing? (if I can boot from my secondary internal drive that is)

When I press both mouse buttons upon startup, I indeed get the boot menu, and both drives are enabled. But these drives seem to be not functioning somehow.

[solarmon]

Have both floppy disk drives been cleaned? Clean the read)write heads, regrease the track motor worm gear and glide/guide rails, and clean the disk presence switch.

And are you using known good working floppy disks?

If you can get Amiga Test Kit on there, you can use its floppy drive signal tests to check both drives are functioning OK.

[c0dehunter]

Originally Posted by solarmon

Have both floppy disk drives been cleaned? Clean the read)write heads, regrease the track motor worm gear and glide/guide rails, and clean the disk presence switch.

And are you using known good working floppy disks?

If you can get Amiga Rest Kit on there, you can use its floppy drive signal tests to check both drives are functioning OK.

They were just working fine this morning, and all of a sudden, *poof*: they are not working. Can both gone bad at the same time?

p.s. the joystick port also never worked (mouse works however)
Oh, and before they go bad, in X-COPY, I constantly received the "Not disk" message, even though I had inserted a good blank floppy diskette.

[solarmon]

So sometimes they do work?

Have you tried it with just one drive - as DF0?

[solarmon]

Also, has this Amiga had any battery and/or caps leakage and repairs done to it?

I'm not familiar with the A4000, but if there has been any battery and/or leakage damage then that may impact the floppy disk functions.

If you have another Amiga, you can also try to test the floppy drives in that.

[hooverphonique]

If both drives seem to have the exact same (faulty) behavior, chances are one of the pull-up resistors on the motherboard for the control signals is bad (unless it's just a case of an intermittent ribbon cable).

[c0dehunter]

Thank you guys.

[alexh]

I'd put money on CIA chip(s)

https://www.techtravels.org/2008/09/...eads-floppies/

Usually something else stops working if the CIAs break. Joystick, Mouse, Serial, Parallel etc.

If you can burn your own EPROMs then you could try the CIA timer test in DIAGROM

http://www.diagrom.com/

[trixster]

Yep, I was about to say CIA.

My A3000 drive worked, then didn’t work, then worked, then stopped completely (plus there were other issues with sound and a few other things). I swapped out one of the CIA’s for a working one and everything started working again.

[Acill]

If its on a 4000T it may even be the ports board has gone bad. Have you checked it out? I have had to recap and repair several of them in the recent past.

[c0dehunter]

OK, I opened the case, checked and (re-inserted) all the cables, and voila! They both work now! I am not sure what was the issue. Also no leak or anything on the main-board.

[lesta_smsc]

Probably worn or loose connections. Sometimes this can occur with general movements eg how people have found reseating chips helps in an otherwise untouched Amiga.