Old A500+ issue..

[orange]

nice work.
about the floppy drive, try cleaning the two sensors (disk_present+writable) with alcohol.

[orange]

then try recalibrating it, do you have another Amiga or working external fdd?

[orange]

@mastersetter
I take it you don't have HDD+controller either?

@mike
I have exact same joystick, bought it brand new few years ago from Vesalia:
 http://www.vesalia.de/e_cruisercolour.htm

[orange]

I'd connect the a500+ floppy drive to escom A1200. just take care of the READY signal.
IIRC, escom ignores it, so it should be easier than other way round.
If it has the same symptoms, at least CIA chips are ok.
then you can run X-copy on A1200 to test drive.
recalibrating is fiddly, but not too hard, I've done it by hand.

[orange]

I'd consider getting vampire for one of them. it is rather expensive now, but price should drop, hopefully. keep in mind that first batch was, like, 90eur or so.

you can also connect PC floppy, they are dirt cheap. Just find one that can be modified (to provide READY signal).

[orange]

Well there are some cheap IDE controllers that attach on 68000. But, you need extra RAM for whdload, obviously, that might be costly. I don't like gotek.