Problems in booting up A1200 from DF0

I took my A1200 out of the closet after a 10 years of break and tried to boot it up. The device shows the Kickstart 3.0 screen, and floppy drive begins to click. When I insert a disk, the floppy drive motor spins for a second, the read head is moved for 3 times and then the Kickstart screen comes back again. I opened the drive, cleaned drive and wiped the read heads with pure ethanol, but it did not make any difference. I even tried to replace the drive and the connecting cable (and yes, tried the cable two ways) without any success. This happens with all my disks.

For one single time there was different behavior: A disk was read a bit further and it resulted as a window "DF0: ????" and soon after that the Amiga re-booted. I could not reproduce that anymore and otherwise the behavior is as I first described above.

Any idea what could be the reason? I have understood that the CIA chips may go bad, but could that happen just by storing the device unpowered?

[roy bates]

you could have a bad solder joint between floppy and paula or cia or bad cia or bad paula.

if i read it right you have already tried a different floppy.

Yep. I've tried two drives with no difference. I shall check the cable connector soldering.
I do not love the idea of replacing the chips before all other sources for a failure have been checked.

I was also thinking if all my disks have commit a mass-suicide while being in the storage. But I think that should be quite unlikely, too.

[Amiga1992]

We always have to analyze teh simplest solutions, before delving into ocmplicated matters.

For one, both disk drives could be faulty.
Another and the one I'd check first, is your disks. I have bought a couple of Amigas "with non working disk drives", and what wasn't working was any of the seller's diskettes. Disks in storage can get bad real easy and it is my experience that all disks I had are getting bit rot about now, so I would blame the disks first and foremost. It is not unlikely at all. Last A500 I bought had about 400 NON WORKING disks.

Do they smell in the slight bit mouldy or humid? Were they stored in a cool dry place or in an unattended attic/basement?

Try to get help from someone with a working Amiga and rule out disk drive and diskette failure before going crazy trying to replace surface mounted chips or even suspecting them.

I'm starting to believe that the disks could be dead.
I tried both A1200 and A500 which I have and they had the same issue.
It's hard to think of storage problems as the stuff was stored in a dry and warm place.
I have to ask around friends if they have any Amiga or verified floppies lying around so I can test with them... Thanks.

[Amiga1992]

I have stored my disks all my life in their own disk storage boxes, away from dust (putting the storage box inside a bag) and in warm, dry places outside of direct sunlight reach. They have been very well taken care of. Nevertheless, they have started failing.

Floppies are phasing out. This is why floppy replacement solutions are so important nowadays. If you are serious about using an AMiga, invest in an HxC floppy emulator or even just go full on hard drive. I haven't touched a floppy disk in many, many years. Even buying "new old stock" floppies nowadays sounds like a load of wasted money, ad no matter how new they are, they are magnetic media and are not bound to last forever. ~10/20 years is already a lot past their expected life cycle.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Akira

I have stored my disks all my life in their own disk storage boxes, away from dust (putting the storage box inside a bag) and in warm, dry places outside of direct sunlight reach. They have been very well taken care of. Nevertheless, they have started failing.

Same here, I've always had my Amiga floppies in a drawer/closet in my apartment, so no basement storage at any point. About a month ago I went through them, ripping the originals and formatting/verifying the others, and I had to throw out about 50% of them as they had developed bad sectors.

I think the optimal storage place would be a cool environment with a constant temperature, like a floppy disk fridge.

I do use floppies on the Amiga once in a while but not very often.

I also recently went through my C64 tapes and were surprised that I could actually get all the data from them, despite them being much older than my Amiga floppies.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by demolition

I think the optimal storage place would be a cool environment with a constant temperature, like a floppy disk fridge.

Bit rotting is an unavoidable fact. No matter how you store the discs, they will lose their magnetic properties at some point and lose your data. Storage and care just extends this time a lot, but its destiny remains teh same.
If there's a method to freeze the advance of bit rotting, I haven't heard of it.

I also recently went through my C64 tapes and were surprised that I could actually get all the data from them, despite them being much older than my Amiga floppies.

This is totally a thing. My 5.25" C64 disks, albeit older, hold data better than my Amiga disks. I think it has to do with density: the denser the media, the faster it bit rots. That's why HD disks get screwed faster than DD floppies.

So a cassette seems pretty safe, also because it's analog data instead of digital, it's less prone to errors.