Restoring Amiga 500 after years of neglect

[Dingo_aus]

Firstly, Hi, first post here and all.

Anyway, I've just pulled my old Amiga 500 (ah the memories) out of storage and fired her up.

Firstly the Commodore Screen went wonky, no sweat I'll run it through the A520 on my TV.

So now I have the 1.3 Kickstart image on screen, all good.

Next problem, I placed a disk in the drive, no noises, no floppy drive activity. Nothing. It is like it hasn't detected the floppy went it or anything.

What do the gurus here say I should do next? Should I pull apart my Amiga 500 and clean everything in sight? How do I go about cleaning the disk drive? Is it safe to just wipe everything down with alcohol cleaning solution? What should I be careful about?

Sorry about all these questions, I searched the forum but nothing resulted from my searches (didn't really know what to search for)

Thanks,

Nigel (aka Dingo_aus)
Brisbane, Australia

[Dingo_aus]

Thanks for the info.

Good point about the battery back up, I'll have to attend to that.

Any tricks with the "Torx" screws on the underside of my amiga? Or anything that is going to fall apart into a million pieces if opened?

BTW, I nearly didn't recognise my Amiga, it has turned a bright shade of yellow, I'll have to post photos to compete with the "Golden 2 year aniversary edition A500"

[Dingo_aus]

Wow, super lucky. The RTC clock battery hasn't leaked! After over 10 years storage, it looks (from the outside at least) like the day the PCB was assembled.

.....Unlike all the bulging Caps on my modern motherboards

Now to find a torx screwdriver that'll fit...........

[Dingo_aus]

Ok, having problems with the Floppy drive.

I've stripped off the cover and had a look at it in operation.

I think the stepper motor that drives the heads forwards and backwards on the screw is not working properly.

So my questions for all the gurus (meditating or not ) are:

1) Can I use a floppy drive from a PC with a custom cable?

2) Can I test the stepper motor? It only has 4 leads. I'm used to unipolar motors from Printers, but don't know how to handle just 4 leads (used to 5 or 6).

[Dingo_aus]

Seems like I've got some success.

Cleaned the floppy's mechanicals, no luck.

Then lightly did the heads. Still refused to play.

Then really got a lot of Alcohol onto the heads and let them dry thoroughly.

Whacked in Wonderboy in Monsterland and is got to the intro screen!

Haven't tested it further but so far so good!

Thanks everyone, my Miggy is back!