Amiga 1000 will not load workbench

[InTheSand]

Hi,

Welcome to A.Org!

I presume you haven't forgotten the fact that the A1000 needs to load the Kickstart disk before you attempt to load Workbench?

 - Ali

EDIT: D'oh! Beaten to it!  :-)

[InTheSand]

Are you able to check your Workbench disk in a different Amiga?

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

There are a few old 1.3-based disk checking utilities, the most well-known (and most notorious!) being the original Disk Doctor. I'm not sure if the more recent utilities such as DiskSalv work on 1.3, I'm pretty sure they are 2.x onwards only.

But in order to use any such utility, you'll still need to be able to boot at least into a shell via a bootable disk with the required files on it.

And... in order to create such a disk, you'll need some sort of working Amiga environment (or a PC with a Catweasel card)... It's a bit of a catch-22 situation!

Where abouts are you located? Perhaps a friendly Amiga owner near you can help you out with a working 1.3 Workbench disk?

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

It's bizarre that the Kickstart disk loads but Workbench doesn't... At least your floppy drive and the basic hardware would appear to be OK...

Unless there are a couple of subtle read errors on the Kickstart disk that are preventing the machine from going further? Presumably, this disk would have some sort of checksums on it to prevent the Amiga from loading a bad image?

What happens when you boot the Amiga? Presumably, you're seeing the "Kickstart hand", waiting for the KS disk to load, and then seeing the "Workbench hand"?

Once you're at the "Workbench hand" and insert the Workbench disk, is there any activity? Does the A1000 even attempt to load anything?

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

Heh! Lazarus indeed! :-)

Disk Doctor is fairly crappy, it has to be said...

Getting into a CLI on 1.x just requires a bootable disk that has been installed with a standard boot block (e.g. "install df0:" from a working Amiga environment). This will then at least allow you to get past the "Workbench hand".

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

Hmmm... Could be a keyboard-related problem??

What happens if you start the A1000 up and insert the KS and WB disks with the keyboard disconnected?

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

Cool! At least that shows the A1000 itself is undamaged!

Good luck with finding a replacement keyboard... but I think you'll have a difficult job getting one. The A1000's keyboard connector isn't used on any other Amiga (the A2000/A3000 use DIN plugs and the A4000 uses a PS/2-style plug).

It might be worth undoing the keyboard's screws and seeing if anything small has worked its way into the keys themselves... Look around the "ESC" / "`" / "TAB" and "1" area and check underneath everything. If you're lucky, it might just be that something's forcing the "`" key to make a contact continuously...

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

Paul1000 wrote:
I cleaned my keyboard throghly and it now works.

Excellent news!

And stay on the forums! There's always plenty of classic Amiga discussions on here...

 - Ali