Newbie needs help...

[Spectrum75]

Hi all,

I am new to the world of Amiga, and need some help:

1) I have a standard A500 (no expansions) that won't boot.

It shows the screen with the hand holding the blue disk, where you can read "Kickstart 1.3".

If I insert a disk, the A500 will make some very soft noise (not like when the A1200 is reading a disk, read on...) and nothing else.

It resets if you press CTRL-Amiga-Amiga.

What do you think ? Dead disk drive ? Defective ROMs ? Floppy cable -- badly installed ?


2) I have also an PAL A1200 with 800 MB HD, 3.0 Kickstart and WB.

- Wich is the max size (Gigabytes) of a IDE HD for the A1200 ? (with or without using new drivers?)

- Can I expand the RAM by installing Fast RAM without an accelerator board (only with the RAM simms) ?

- Where can I find info on classic Amiga hardware ?
(Amiga hardware books ? Linux docs ? AROS docs ?)

Thanks !

Regards.

[Spectrum75]

Thanks for the help.

I tried several original amiga disks (games). I think in the boxes said they were compatible with both A1200 and A500.

I will try again with other disks.


[EDIT]
Just one thing...

I think the hand holding the disk moved to ask you to insert the disk ? Or it was only a specific version which did so ? In my A500 it is completely still.

[Spectrum75]

It asks for WB disks.

And now I'm sure the disks I have tried are A500 compatible ones, and in good status.

OK, I will try to use another disk drive.

It has the drive spinning all the time, and the two leds (power and disk) are ON all the time.

Anybody here has the Amiga hardware books ? If I get to kwnow the proper title of the books, or their ISBN's, I will search on Ebay to try to get them.

[Now returning to read on in the "minimig" thread... there are quite a few posts there!! :-D]

[Spectrum75]

Uhm...
I tried to conect the floppy cable in both ways.

I also used a working external amiga disk drive, that I had used (and can still use) with the A1200, and nothing happened.

The A500 should boot with a external disk drive ?
How could I do it ?

If one of the CIA's is toasted, if I swap both of them, what will happen ?

@All: Thanks for the advice !  ;-)

[Spectrum75]

Hi,

I used another floppy cable on the A500 (also reversed it) and the drive is working now. It loads games and utils... Good sound and graphics. Mouse is working, too.

(When the caps lock led flashes twice while loading a disk (a game), that means the disk has bad sectors ? It happens whith one disk.)

Now the problem seems to be the keyboard.

Caps Lock led, turns on sometimes, and the A500 reboots if you press CTRL-Amiga-Amiga.

But I have tried games and they dont respond to keyboard at all; and tools like AMOS editor, or Kindwords word processor, do not type anything or respond to keyboard commands, even when the menus they work with the mouse.

Any ideas ?

[Spectrum75]

Hi,

I used another floppy cable on the A500 (also reversed it) and the drive is working now. It loads games and utils... Good sound and graphics. Mouse is working, too.

(When the caps lock led flashes twice while loading a disk (a game), that means the disk has bad sectors ? It happens whith one disk.)

Now the problem seems to be the keyboard.

Caps Lock led, turns on sometimes, and the A500 reboots if you press CTRL-Amiga-Amiga.

But I have tried games and they dont respond to keyboard at all; and tools like AMOS editor, or Kindwords word processor, do not type anything or respond to keyboard commands, even when the menus they work with the mouse.

Any ideas ?