A1200 drive floppy drive just gone bad?

[rarr]

Picked up a re capped A1200 a couple of weeks back and just started playing with it. With it I picked up some cover disks and started going though them.

Put one in tonight and the drive sounded realllly bad so I popped it out, reset and put in another disk. It loaded for a bit and then made that dreaded disk error sound, you know the one that has a low tone then a high tone?

Another disk, same thing.

Put in the workbench disk and it did the same thing, now I know this disk used to work.

Is the drive busted? Does it need an oil? I don't want to take it apart and do things to it before I've heard from the experts.

Ta.

[indigolemon]

It's possible one of the disks that first failed was full of something, perhaps mould, and has now coated the heads in the drive with it. This means it's not going to have a good time reading anything.

There are guides online to cleaning the heads with ISO ALC, Google should sort you out there.

It's deffo worth pulling the cover back and having a visual inspection of any unknown disks before inserting them into the drive going forward!

[rarr]

offt ok thank you for your reply and the tip. I think it was sensible moon that killed it, was rather looking forward to playing that.

Rather annoying since I just got the serial port communicating with my laptop via a homemade cable.

I now have yet another shopping list for tomorrow.

edit: love the avatar!

[indigolemon]

Originally Posted by rarr

offt ok thank you for your reply and the tip. I think it was sensible moon that killed it, was rather looking forward to playing that.

Rather annoying since I just got the serial port communicating with my laptop via a homemade cable.

I now have yet another shopping list for tomorrow.

How specced is the 1200? You could try for a WHDLoad version of the game in the meantime

Originally Posted by rarr

edit: love the avatar!

lol - cheers dude! I'm pretty sure Guybrush is my 'spirit game-character'

[rarr]

It's not specced at all. This retro hobby apparently isn't cheap! Some of those accelerator cards are like $800 AUD!

In the post is an 8mb trap door upgrade, an ide to cf adapter, an ethernet pcmcia card and some floppy disks. That's as far as my acceleration goes for now.

I've already got a CF card which I've used UAE to install workbench 3.1, lha, installer and Scalos. I'm hoping that'll just go into the a1200 and just.. work..? if it does I'll be amazed since I've no idea what I'm talking about.

I also have a Wemos d1 which has Zimodem installed on for BBS connection. I need to wire it up properly with that whole 3.3v vs 5v thing but that shouldn't be too hard.

Dude I can't wait to play Monkey Island on the original hardware. The disk swapping might be a drag though!

edit: oh I've already had fun hooking it up to a scandoubller and sorting through all the miss information out there lol

[indigolemon]

Your incoming upgrades are fine. With the 8m fast ram in the 1200, you deffo want to look into WHDLoad man! Double click an icon and boom - game running from your HDD - no floppy disk changes needed

[rarr]

Had a few drinks and decided what the hell so I took it apart. This is the state of the floppy drive.

Looks like I shaved my beard and left the trimmings inside.

[rarr]

enhanced

[indigolemon]

Yeah that looks lovely man! Make sure to keep them and you can felt them into a pen holder or something

[rarr]

Gave it a clean and got it working again. Not 100% happy with the sounds it making but it works.

Other good news is I put in the CF adapter and it loads WB just fine, very quickly too!

[indigolemon]

Originally Posted by rarr

Gave it a clean and got it working again. Not 100% happy with the sounds it making but it works.

Other good news is I put in the CF adapter and it loads WB just fine, very quickly too!

Good news on both counts!