Problems with my Amiga A1200

[puracz]

Hey everyone,
   
  I am a gamer, and I have bought an Amiga mainly to play the games on it, because I pretty much like the old ones, but now I am having a bad feeling that I should not have bought it.
   
  I think that my Amiga does not work at all. I own the A1200 one and I have also received some floppy discs with it.
   
  When I have turned my Amiga on, I saw this error popping up: Workbench has a checksum error on disk block 71530.
   
  Unfortunately, I don’t know what does this mean. I thought everything will be smooth and ready for gaming, but I was so wrong.
   
  So then I have also tried to insert some of the floppy discs I have received. The most of them did not react at all, and I remember that one of them has made the file DF0:NDOS and I have tried to launch it, but it did not react at all too.
   
  Then I have tried to browse through the files saved in Amiga and I have found a few games installed. Some of them did not react at all, a few of them have launched, but I was not able to turn them off (I have tried all the combinations, what can close the computer game on PC) and there was only one game which was working and able to close, but my scores in it won’t save, so it’s quite pointless to play it too.
   
  I think I am facing a problem which I cannot solve myself, that’s why I am trying to ask here. I am sorry that I am bothering you, but when I was buying an Amiga, I thought everything will be okay and that I’ll be able to game without any problems, but I was pretty stupid, because I did not read anything before buying.
   
  So, thanks for your replies beforehand and if you have any useful tutorials for total newcomers like me, please give them to me, I really don’t want to bother you with every little problem further.

[Karlos]

When you get the "checksum" error, this is without a floppy disk inserted?

If this is the case, then it sounds like you have a hard disk installed and it has a validation problem. This should be fixable, but as your first interest is in retro gaming, let's look at the other issue for a moment:

the NDOS disks sound like old floppy games that are expecting you to boot them up directly. Instead of powering up the system and then inserting the disk, try inserting the disk before you power up. If the disk is an old bootable game disk and the previous owner hasn't messed about with the boot priority of the workbench partition (again, assuming it is a HD), your A1200 should boot from the floppy you inserted instead as it is assigned a higher priority.

Back to the checksum error, did the machine come with a set of disks for the operating system (Workbench, Storage, Extras, Locale and Install) ?

[Jiffy]

Hey everyone,
 but I was not able to turn them off (I have tried all the combinations, what can close the computer game on PC)

The key combination you are looking for is CTRL-AMIGA-AMIGA, which resets any Amiga and is comparable to CTRL-ALT-DEL on a Windows pc.

The 'Amiga'-keys are next to the spacebar (left & right) and are marked with an 'A'. Quite often, the left Amiga key is marked with the Commodore logo instead of the Amiga logo .

[puracz]

Hi again,

yeah, the error pops up everytime I launch my Amiga, it does not matter if the disk is inserted.

So I have tried to insert the disc first and it has worked, but once I launched the game, it has stopped reacting the same way as the installed ones. (the black screen) I am not sure how long does the Amiga game take to load, but it's definitely not more than 10 minutes. I needed to take down the game by newly learned CTRL+AMIGA+AMIGA command (thanks for pointing me it out)

Then I have turned my Amiga off and inserted another floppy disc, but now it creates the new   DF0:?  file everytime. Maybe it needs to rest a bit? I really have no clue lol.

I think these problems are appearing because of some other bigger problem, which I'd like to solve first - and it's the harddisc one probably. Now I don't care about the floppy discs much, I have received about 200 of them, and I have paid much more money because of these, but I was stupid and the time cannot be taken back, so I'd like to make the machine working first. The discs are not original anyway, so the most of them don't even work probably.

So, I really don't know if there are some useful Workbench, Storage, Extras, Locale and Install utilities. I may take a look, but I don't know what exactly I should look for.

I really appreciate your help, guys.

When you get the "checksum" error, this is without a floppy disk inserted?

If this is the case, then it sounds like you have a hard disk installed and it has a validation problem. This should be fixable, but as your first interest is in retro gaming, let's look at the other issue for a moment:

the NDOS disks sound like old floppy games that are expecting you to boot them up directly. Instead of powering up the system and then inserting the disk, try inserting the disk before you power up. If the disk is an old bootable game disk and the previous owner hasn't messed about with the boot priority of the workbench partition (again, assuming it is a HD), your A1200 should boot from the floppy you inserted instead as it is assigned a higher priority.

Back to the checksum error, did the machine come with a set of disks for the operating system (Workbench, Storage, Extras, Locale and Install) ?

[Karlos]

Hi again,

yeah, the error pops up everytime I launch my Amiga, it does not matter if the disk is inserted.

Congratulations, you have a hard disk Unfortunately, it seems a bit poorly.

So, I really don't know if there are some useful Workbench, Storage, Extras, Locale and Install utilities. I may take a look, but I don't know what exactly I should look for.

Hopefully, something like this (AmigaOS 3.0, or commodore era 3.1):


or possibly this (Escom era AmigaOS 3.1):


Of course, you might have OS.3 or 3.9, but these came on CD only.

If you click "Cancel" on the error that pops up (it might pop up a few times), I take it the machine boots into Workbench (the desktop GUI) ?

What we need to do, is to see if we can repair it. There is a tool called DiskSalv that might be able to do the trick, but depending on the severity of the error, there might be a quicker fix.

The first thing to do, is make a backup of the existing Workbench drive. Or at least as much of it as can be copied. Do you have any other disk icons that appear on the Workbench screen after it has booted? Is there one called "Work" for example?

[murple]

DiskSalv by David Haynie is the usual tool for fixing validation errors, see if you have a copy.