A 600 won´t boot

[Zwerg]

Hi,
i am a complete newbie to Amiga but was asked for help by a friend of mine. She bought an used A 600 on ebay, to play the games of her childhood.
Now, after switching on the screen appears to insert a workbench disk and everything looks fine so far. However, none of the disks she got would work, the drive is working for a few seconds and the screen reappears. I figured the drive might be broken and she got an additional external one, but again with the same result.

I searched the web a found several posts concerning colored screens at bootup indicating different errors. But in this cas it´s the boot screen. I tried different disk drives and different disks. I would not expect that both drives are broken and neither should all the disks she got from different people be bad.

What else could it be? Do we miss some basics (after all, we are newbies) or is something broken?

Thanks a lot for your help.

[Boot_WB]

Hi, it sounds as if the disks either
1) are not formatted for the amiga
or
2) are not bootable disks (ie they are designed to run through the workbench).

Are there any original amiga disks with the computer, for example any which say 'workbench' on them?

It is always possible the disks are bad - they are, after all, over a decade old.  Especially copied disks will deteriorate in that time.

[countzero]

When you say you tried with an external one, did you mount the drive inside the A600 ? (as a replacement for df0 ?) or did you try to boot as df1 ?

[Zwerg]

First, thanks for answering, your help is greatly appreciated.

@Boot_WB:
the disks were both original disk for workbench 2.x and some bootable game (Lemmings I think) and copies for workbench 1.3.
These disks came from at least two different sources on ebay. I cannot be sure that they are working but that would really be bad luck if ALL disks she bought were broken.

@countzero
I just plugged the external drive in the slot on the back and when i inserted a disk i got the same reaction as with the internal drive: the ´insert disk´ logo disappears for a few seconds and then reappears.
As I said, i am newbie to Amiga and i am not aware how to mount a drive before boot.

[amigagr]

the disk may are faulty or the drives may need some cleaning. buy a floppy clean disk put it in the drive(s) a lot of times to clean them up. try to find workbench disk that you will be sure that it is working on another amiga.

[kd7ota]

This problem actually sounds familiar.

I had an Amiga 500, and the second a disk went in, it would click for a second, then instantly show the disk inserting screen..... Nothing was wrong with the drive, but turns out the floppy part of the board was shot....

I dont know how you fix it or what chips control it, but if I knew at the time, I would have still kept my amiga.

[CLS2086]

Hi,
simply send your drives to me, i will make them work again.
Read you soon,

[motorollin]

If the same thing happens with both drives, and with all disks, then it's unlikely to be the drives or the disks.

The floppy drives are controlled by Paula. So if that is faulty, then none of your drives will work. I think you can buy replacement Paula chips, but I have no idea whether the chip is socketed.

--
moto

[TjLaZer]

I would get a 3.5" drive cleaning kit and with some alchohol and run it on the drives.  Surely they are dirty.  I would also open the metal shutter and inspect every disk surface for any dirt or mold, etc. and make sure the disk surface is clean before using!  Disks will gum up drives and make them not work, happened to me before.  I had to clean all the drive heads vigurously before they worked again.  Other than this the only thing I would suspect is the drive is bad or the disks are just bad.  I don't think the A600 MB can go bad in something like this, but its know to happend.

[ajlwalker]

I could be wrong, but you can't just plug an external drive in and expect to boot from it, can you?

Don't you have to select DF1: as your boot drive from the ealry startup menu?

Try holding down both mouse buttons and switching on.  At the early start menu, choose DF1: as your boot device.

Then click okay and try the disk in the external drive again.

It's worth a try anyway.

[motorollin]

If there's nothing in DF0 and no hard drive, then you can boot from DF1 by just inserting a disk.

--
moto

[Tomas]

What happens if you have no floppy disk at all in the drive? Does it click every other seconds or so, or does it click for a few seconds and then stop?

Also how did you get the disk shipped to you?? If it was from another country, it might be that they xrayed the floppies which i have heard will erase the floppy in many cases.

[motorollin]

Tomas wrote:
it might be that they xrayed the floppies which i have heard will erase the floppy in many cases.

That's not true. X-rays have no effect whatsoever on magnetic media.

--
moto

[countzero]

sounds like a dead CIA (8520) to me. It can be replacable in an A500, but in the case of an A600, I'm not really sure what can be done.

[orange]

if possible try more diskettes because the problem might be FDD head calibration.
does the drive make any sound (heads moving) after inserting diskette?