A1200 tower

[Mosher]

Hi ppl

I've been out of the amiga community for quite some time, but have dusted off my A1200. The 1200 is mounted in a tower, with an ATX PSU and keyboard adapter, working quite well.

To my disappointment, i can't get my floppy to work, it might be dead. I've tried quite a bit with the cable and removing the blizzard PPC and bvision card it was running on back in the days.
I even bought Amiga OS 4.1 classic edition from Hyperion, they even sent me a floppy. But turns out it can't boot.

I can't seem to find the df0: in the early startup menu.

As i said, it's been quite a while since i've done serious amiga stuff, so i have forgotten many thing, but i want my kids to see what i was doing pre-internet.

The 1200 have both a HDD and SCSI cd-rom, but the HDD won't boot, but it is spinning.
Need a bit of advice on how to get my 1200 up and running. Is it wise to buy a GoTek so that i can get started? I want to eventually install the OS on my HDD and run things from there.

Please advise on how to proceed.

Mosher

[AmigaOldskooler]

Hi ppl

I've been out of the amiga community for quite some time, but have dusted off my A1200. The 1200 is mounted in a tower, with an ATX PSU and keyboard adapter, working quite well.

To my disappointment, i can't get my floppy to work, it might be dead. I've tried quite a bit with the cable and removing the blizzard PPC and bvision card it was running on back in the days.
I even bought Amiga OS 4.1 classic edition from Hyperion, they even sent me a floppy. But turns out it can't boot.

I can't seem to find the df0: in the early startup menu.

As i said, it's been quite a while since i've done serious amiga stuff, so i have forgotten many thing, but i want my kids to see what i was doing pre-internet.

The 1200 have both a HDD and SCSI cd-rom, but the HDD won't boot, but it is spinning.
Need a bit of advice on how to get my 1200 up and running. Is it wise to buy a GoTek so that i can get started? I want to eventually install the OS on my HDD and run things from there.

Please advise on how to proceed.

Mosher

Hi Mosher!

If your disk drive is dead, you can get a new one at Amigastore.eu (suitable for A1200 in tower) for 27,75 EUR. These are new drives and comes with guarantee.

http://amigastore.eu/en/327-internal-floppy-disk-drive-for-amiga.html

You can also connect your HD to a PC and use WinUAE to prep it. There are guides for this. Nowadays it is also popular to use Compact Flash (and other variants) cards for hard drives. There are so many options these days compared to the past.

Personally I'd get a new disk drive and then install Worbench and the lot.

Best of luck!

PS: I remember the nickname Mosher from the demoscene. Is that you? Just curious.

[Mosher]

Hi

Thanx for the advise, i would very much like to use floppy and later get to use the HDD for workbench etc. Having a working floppy is also great for demos and games, which i have lot of on CD's.

Apart from that, if you boot your amiga, and press both mouse buttons, should you get the option to boot from df0 if the floppy is working?

Yes, i was quite active in the demoscene. Was in a couple of groups here in norway and was present a TG quite a few times.
Hung out quite a lot with fellow amigans from my area which started Razor 1911, they are close friends today. Those were the days.

Mosher

[Rob]

Have you made sure the drive cable is the right way around?  I think if it's the wrong way the system hangs with a black screen but worth checking anyway just in case.

[Mosher]

Hi

Yes, several times as these things are possible to mount the wrong way.
The system rarely hangs, but i can see the feedback on the LED on the drive when it's mounted the wrong way.

This being said, the amiga starts normally bringing me to a purple-ish page with a picture of the familiar hand and floppy (this being rom 3.0).
I can hear the familiar sound from the floppy, this ticking every other second or so.
After inserting the disk, a few scratching noises that sounds like read error, and i get the error saying "not a DOS disk in DF0".
I using the Hyperion boot disk for OS 4.1.
If i turn the cable around, the LED on the floppy is solid green and it will not try to read the disk.

Sounds like the drive is working, but it won't communicate with the disk or the computer. But the read head might be damaged for all i know.

Mosher

[scuzzb494]

Hi ppl

I've been out of the amiga community for quite some time, but have dusted off my A1200. The 1200 is mounted in a tower, with an ATX PSU and keyboard adapter, working quite well.

To my disappointment, i can't get my floppy to work, it might be dead. I've tried quite a bit with the cable and removing the blizzard PPC and bvision card it was running on back in the days.
I even bought Amiga OS 4.1 classic edition from Hyperion, they even sent me a floppy. But turns out it can't boot.

I can't seem to find the df0: in the early startup menu.

As i said, it's been quite a while since i've done serious amiga stuff, so i have forgotten many thing, but i want my kids to see what i was doing pre-internet.

The 1200 have both a HDD and SCSI cd-rom, but the HDD won't boot, but it is spinning.
Need a bit of advice on how to get my 1200 up and running. Is it wise to buy a GoTek so that i can get started? I want to eventually install the OS on my HDD and run things from there.

Please advise on how to proceed.

Mosher

Hi

The trick is first not to mess with too much as in truth the machine may need a warm up first. Stuff will have degraded and I don't want to suggest the 'c' word but those little blighters are everywhere. I have similar issues with a number of my Amigas but I just tend to talk to them nicely and wait a while and reboot a few times. Amazingly I get days when I get nothing out of the 1200 tower and then others she works a charm.

So first things first... Ribbons. Dunno if you have a buffered interface. That is your first port of call. All of your ribbons and connectors and clean the pins etc. Press hard check for failed ribbons etc etc. Nothing else.. just ribbons and the buffered interface.

Next try lying the tower on its side or remove the hard drive and lying on its side, upside down. Here is the thing I recently stuck four Amiga drives in the freezer and that didn't work so I hit the things with a blunt end of a screwdriver and they came back to life and still work. Trick with HDs is get them working and run em every day. I have a 2000 which I lay on its side and it came back to life. And a Viper in a 500 that I left running all day and magically it came back to life. My Ateo Concepts 4000d tower was the same.

TLC, just check the cables and such. The floppy has switches on the very front and they are stuck. Just clean the front end and see if you can press them in a few times. The computer can't see them by the sounds of it. Silly girl... she just needs a little help.

Warm the computer up. Log your activities. Take pictures and then gently tweak all the connectors. Be carful with doing too much cus in the end you will be the reason why she fails. She was working before SHE WILL WORK NOW... just takes a bit more effort.

The very best of luck. Welcome back to yesterday when things were a little more slow. A cencept that takes a bit of getting use to.

[kreciu]

I say you need to massage her feet and she will be fine.

Don't even try to install AOS4.1 if you can't use OS3.x. First test if everything works and MAYBE then you can try AOS4.1 installation/use, but... get ready for a WAR.

[goldfish]

Have you tried another psu I had floppy drive issue due to a faulty psu. It would power the amiga ok but the floppy drive would to read any disks. Maybe unplug some non essential stuff to reduce the load on the psu

[Mosher]

OS4.1 vs 3.9 is not the issue yet, as i've not had the chance to get anything working yet.
I might have a different PSU laying around, will have a look at that and do some tests.
Might as well try to remove the PPC and BVision just for the test aswell.

The disk drive sounds like it did in the old days, but are considering buying a new from the link i was sent, as the price wasn't that bad.

Thx guys

Mosher