Floppy drives

[Bigbronc]

Is there some thing that kills Amiga floppy drives, I have replace the cables and can not get one drive to work.( I have 5) can I clean them? Put a magnet on the head? Something, even my external drive will not work. I could get one of those gotex drives but every thing I hav is floppy based.

[Brunty]

I've had a similar problem, I've also got half a dozen floppy drives. I cleaned the heads in all of them with a good solvent and managed to get one working, but then all of a sudden it stopped again!

I usually get DF0:? when I insert a floppy once WB has loaded, rarely I get a DF0:NDOS, and extremely rarely I get a disk loading but with loads of read errors.

Today I received a Gotek, but I'm struggling to get it to work... :/

[darefail]

Is there some thing that kills Amiga floppy drives, I have replace the cables and can not get one drive to work.( I have 5) can I clean them? Put a magnet on the head? Something, even my external drive will not work. I could get one of those gotex drives but every thing I hav is floppy based.

Have you tried to swap the cia chips?

[matt3k]

I had a bunch of drives fail and I repaired them all.

They all failed differently, but a very thorough cleaning fixed them all.  I found a bunch of amiga floppy repair videos on youtube and cleaned and lubricated as they described and it fixed them all.  

Just search for Amiga Floppy Cleaning on youtube and have at it.  I watched a few before I even started the project.

I found that a few drives still didn't work after the first cleaning, I went back and did it again and it began working.

One drive the switch that gets pushed down when a drive is inserted need lots of cleaning and work, the others need need the heads cleaned, the rotor drive lubed, and mostly the sensor that detect track zero was dirty.  The track zero was the biggest issue for the drives I repaired.  

This is one video that was real good:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XESsxQFMxSg

[gregthecanuck]

matt3k: Thanks for the cleaning points. I have one A1000 with a failed floppy drive and your info is a great help. Cheers!

[Brunty]

Thanks for the tip, I only cleaned the heads so will have another look.

[scuzzb494]

Is there some thing that kills Amiga floppy drives, I have replace the cables and can not get one drive to work.( I have 5) can I clean them? Put a magnet on the head? Something, even my external drive will not work. I could get one of those gotex drives but every thing I hav is floppy based.

Have you another Amiga to try the external drive. You may be flogging a dead horse cus it could just be the motherboard.

What Amiga are we talking about ?

By the way doesn't have to be a whole Amiga just a motherboard. Connect the external floppy drive and be very carful not to touch electronic components and switch on. After a while it will boot the floppy even without an internal floppy on the motherboard. Just that you really always need another Amiga in such situations to avoid wasting time.

There are other components by the way that will halt the activity of a floppy drive. I fitted one of these flash cards to an A600 yesterday and it locked the floppy drive out completely. I then swapped it out onto another 600 and worked a treat. If I had only the one 600 I would have rejected the card. There is definitely something wrong with the motherboard and that'll get swapped out. Just becomes a future project and I can get onto other things. There isn't anything wrong with the drive. If I stuck two drives in a machine and both didn't work I wouldn't be thinking the drives were at fault. I would be looking for another problem. Not all control chips are removable easily so that is why I asked which Amiga are we talking about.

On a side note I have a plastic tub full of busted floppy drives. They are all broken from machines I received. I really have no idea what folk do with them to break them like this. None of my floppy drives have failed. My original on my A1200 from 1993 still works. I just keep them clean, don't use rogue disks that look unhealthy. Remove a disk immediately if it starts to make noises and clean them with head cleaning kits. Its all about keeping the kit running and following a few simple house rules. Have an old external for dodgy disks that you collect. Certain degraded floppies can kill a drive almost immediately and each and every subsequent disk will fail. Just clean the heads with a head cleaning disk as soon as this happens and don't put another disk in till its cleared.

I can spot a dodgy disk a mile away. Pretty well all my original disks still work.

[Bigbronc]

I had a bunch of drives fail and I repaired them all.

They all failed differently, but a very thorough cleaning fixed them all.  I found a bunch of amiga floppy repair videos on youtube and cleaned and lubricated as they described and it fixed them all.  

Just search for Amiga Floppy Cleaning on youtube and have at it.  I watched a few before I even started the project.

I found that a few drives still didn't work after the first cleaning, I went back and did it again and it began working.

One drive the switch that gets pushed down when a drive is inserted need lots of cleaning and work, the others need need the heads cleaned, the rotor drive lubed, and mostly the sensor that detect track zero was dirty.  The track zero was the biggest issue for the drives I repaired.  

This is one video that was real good:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XESsxQFMxSg

This my friend (Amigo) worked. I disassembled all of them and used my air brush to blow the crap outta the inner workings and bingo I have at least 3 working. Great video the things are dirty. I always thought it would be a alinement issue. I did replace the floppy cable with a new one from amigakit. Fast delivery great price. Thanks everyone that commented helped fix my problems.

[paul1981]

@scuzz

I agree, that's pretty much my experience of floppy drives and disks. There is a higher likelihood however of floppy drives 'failing' due to dust because on most Amiga models there is no dust flap on the floppy drive. In dusty environments i'd guess it would make an impact on reliability, particularly with the switches/sensors. Of course, cleaning brings them back but prevention is always better than cure.

[orange]

..I always thought it would be a alinement issue..

well it can be that too. I'd try formatting&reading the diskette.

[scuzzb494]

@scuzz

I agree, that's pretty much my experience of floppy drives and disks. There is a higher likelihood however of floppy drives 'failing' due to dust because on most Amiga models there is no dust flap on the floppy drive. In dusty environments i'd guess it would make an impact on reliability, particularly with the switches/sensors. Of course, cleaning brings them back but prevention is always better than cure.

I learnt a long long time ago the value of both disk boxes and dustcovers. When not in use all my computers have protective covers. I only stack junk disks outside of disk boxes. On the whole they are vertical and in closed boxes, or their original boxes. The other thing is to have a dust free environment and clean regularly.

I once travelled in the dead of night to Bovington camp to pick up an Amiga 1200. Cost me £200 cash back in 1995. I was horrified to see the guy using a fork to remove a floppy from the drive. All the disks he gave me had abrasion and ripped covers where he had hacked out the disk. Little surprise that the PCMCIA slot was busted. I replaced the drive, still working... Lovingly known as ' Tank '. Work that one out.

I have also had the sad experience of visiting an Ebayer whose old dad was merrily hacking open 500s with the power on and using a scrubbing brush to clean the motherboard. In the kitchen, hadn't got a clue what he was doing. He had all these Amigas all over the place. I recall he was complaining about the floppy drives being bust. I suggested he ought to not keep plugging stuff in and out of the computer with the power on. I can't recall how much I paid for that 1200. I do recall the OS being 1.3 [ very silly ]. Its written on the sticky I put on the bottom of the machine.

Like so many things.. look after it and it will always reward you... and last a long long time.