Can't find HD? Insert disk icon

[t1200]

I received my grandfather's Commodore A1200 Amiga. I have fond memories from my childhood on this computer. But when I tried to turn it on, it just repeats an animation of inserting a floppy disk. I don't think it can read the hard drive. What can I do?

I don't know how to troubleshoot these types of computers.

[t1200]

Does it even have a hard drive? Can you hear whirry noises from under the left-centre of the machine?

Before opening it up, try rebooting by giving it the three-fingered salute (press Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga, the big A keys either side of the space bar). If the hard drive is slow to get spun up from power-on then this may get things going.

Yes, I hear a muffled machine gun sound from the left side, then the floppy lights up and makes noise, then the animation.

Rebooting it with the keyboard just repeats this process.

On the Amiga A1200 a hard drive was an optional  add-on (We're talking an era before most computers had hard drives at  all). It may be that your Amiga does not have one installed.

If this is the case, then you will need to load any software from floppy  disk (hence the insert disk animation).

If you wish to determine if there is a hard drive, you can remove the  screws from the underside of the case (around 8 screws from memory), and  lift off the top half of the case. The hard-drive (if present) will be  located in a caddy towards the top left corner of the case, partly  underneath the keyboard (if memory serves).

The hard drive type will most likely be* a 2.5" (standard laptop size)  PATA drive, which is powered from the motherboard via the 44-pin ribbon  connector cable (40-pins standard PATA + 4 pins +5V/Gnd).
(* There are hacks to connect a 3.5" drive internally, but they are a  bit messy imho, and a standard 2.5" drive is far more likely)

Let us know if there is/isn't a hard drive present, and we'll do our  best to help you fire up your Grandfather's treasured system from there.

All the best, welcome to Amiga.org, and sorry to hear (for whatever  reason) that your Grandfather has had to pass on his system.



Rich

Thanks. Papa is in failing health and wants to give his family mementos now instead of waiting for a legal will.

I was able to take the case off and pull out the hard drive. My plan is to connect it to my desktop and make an image of it, if possible. I burned System Rescue CD and plan to use ddrescue to make an image. Then I would use an emulator to pull files off the image. Does that sound like a good plan?

I flipped it over to start.


I removed all the screws.


I removed some panels.


I flipped it rightside up. The top part is almost off.


I turned the top sideways and flipped the keyboard upside down. The hard drive is just sitting there.


I took out the hard drive and put the pieces back in place.


It says Conner CP2088.

[t1200]

Sorry for the late reply. I'm waiting to get at my desktop and will test out that hard drive next weekend.

Meanwhile I found an old CF card and adapter I had laying around. It's a Viking 512MB and an Addonics adapter. I plugged them in and put the case back on. I found the Amiga install floppy and booted it. It didn't exactly work.

I ran the installer. It went OK until it complained that Install3.0 is write-protected. Well I don't want to write to that volume, that's the floppy!

I ran HDSetup and entered '0' for the hard drive type. It gave the error: Sorry... an Error Has Occured! LOL they need spell check in 1992. Could not partition this hard drive! I exited and did it again, with '6' this time. I got the same error.

So I quit the tool and ran HDToolBox. It had one drive listed, which was listed as SCSI, Address 0, LUN 0, Status Unknown. All the options were greyed-out except Change Drive Type. I clicked it and it had a preset for the old drive: Conner Peripherals 84MB 2.37, and it was under the SCSI type, not XT. Then I chose to define a new drive. I clicked Read Configuration and it gave the error Unit is not a disk (type 7)! Yet it correctly read the number of heads, sectors, cylinders. I clicked Ok and it gave the error Install3.0 is write-protected.

Now I am at a loss.