Return of the A1200 ribbon KB cable

[xaccrocheur]

Hiya

This '1200 is in bad shape.
It's been stored underground (it was used by a band in a rehearsal mm.. room). and at first, seing the nasty rust spills on the bottom of the case, I though that I would be lucky if it even boots. I will post IMGs, you won't believe the state this baby was in...:angry:

It did'nt, by the way, so I opened it, cleaned it carefully, and removed the small 200Mb Caviar HD to check it, with very little hope, in a laptop, and it proved the drive was dead.

I then connected a new, much slimmer 10Gb 2.5 drive, and then the miggy booted happily into the Kikstart 3.0 "Disk needed" routine.

Only after reconnecting the (very, very hammered) floppy drive, I had numerous problems w/ it, as a strange reboot-inducing (with the full gamut of all sort of error color-code possible) short-circuit occured at the slightest touch of its thin metal case, that I later removed.
I decided to test & intall this A1200 with one of my 4000's (internal) floppy drives, and put the rusty one aside, to check it later.

Question : Is a A4000 internal floppy drive compatible with a A1200 ? I understand that it's a High Dens. drive, but is it at least usable in Double Dens. "mode" ? In fact, I just need it to *boot* the 3.1 install disk...

But the object of this (lenghy, but I wanted to give you the full picture) post is the keyboard ribbon cable. Everything looks fine, but it simply refuses to work, and to boot, it won't stay in place !

This is driving me nuts : The white motherboard connector does nothing to hold the damn cigarette-paper cable, witch joyfully pops out at the slightest attempt to type anything ! I'm sure I'm missing something here. How the hell do you operate this white motherboard connector properly ?

And, perhaps even more concerning, why does any keyboard (I got 2 A1200s internal keyboards) refuse to work ? I managed to somehow hold the damn ribbon cable in place, and tried a ctrl+AA in the KS screen to reboot, but without any luck..?

I'd appreciate some help on this keyboard issue, because I can live without a FD drive (I checked the PCMCIA port, it works!), but hardly w/o keyboard..?

[BadBigBen]

1.) the Drives are compatible... the A1200 used HD Floppies...

2.) The KBRDs probably do not work because they aren't making contact correctly...

3.) the White Connector - look at it closely, you can lift it, then insert the ribbon cable and push down on the white frame of it, locking the ribbon cable in place...

4.) there are hacks and adapters which will allow you to use a PC style keyboard, either AT or PS2 style...

[SamOS39]

you shouldnt connect an amiga formated hd to a pc. i think it ruins it.

thats a mistake i made putting my a1200's hd in my win98 pc.

[xaccrocheur]

BadBigBen wrote:
1.) the Drives are compatible... the A1200 used HD Floppies...

Did they ? Are you sure ? I don't remember writing more than 880k on *any* floppy w/ my A1200, but then again, maybe I was doing this to ensure portability to PCs...

3.) the White Connector - look at it closely, you can lift it, then insert the ribbon cable and push down on the white frame of it, locking the ribbon cable in place...
(...)

Aha ! I can lift it ! Damn, that's a little fingers'job... Thank you very much ! Now I remember ! In fact, I tried to lift it gently, but the thing is so rusted & dirty it must be stuck

[BadBigBen]

Did they ? Are you sure ? I don't remember writing more than 880k on *any* floppy w/ my A1200, but then again, maybe I was doing this to ensure portability to PCs...

Well, at least mine did... Original COMMODORE A1200 (Chinon FZ357A)

Aha ! I can lift it ! Damn, that's a little fingers'job... Thank you very much ! Now I remember ! In fact, I tried to lift it gently, but the thing is so rusted & dirty it must be stuck

WD-40 does wonders... I use that for cleaning jobs once in a while, I fixed a CD Changer that got drenched in Liguid Soap, and it worked 5 yrs after that... I can also suggest Alcohol with at least 90% or higher , the higher the better...

[Zac67]

Apart from expansion slots there's no real difference between A1200 and A4000 so the floppy 'controller' is essentially the same. Electrically there may be minute differences, but if the floppy drive works at all, it'll do HD, too. You can even attach it to old A500s/A2000s, all you need is Kickstart 2.x.

[xaccrocheur]

Damn

Zac67 wrote:
Apart from expansion slots there's no real difference between A1200 and A4000 so the floppy 'controller' is essentially the same. Electrically there may be minute differences, but if the floppy drive works at all, it'll do HD, too. You can even attach it to old A500s/A2000s, all you need is Kickstart 2.x.

Damn great news.
I'm really wondering, apart from the floppy drive, how did this 1200 survived ? It was used nearly 24/7 (I saw it running 50 hours in a studio), got carried around (plastic bag (fits nicely a SDLR Records plastic bag, then hop in the subway:)) for ten years, fitted with all sort of exotic HW (MIDI, Action Replay, Appolo, then Blizzard, etc) and yet, it WORKS !.
In the meantime, I fried 3 (that's three) PC MotherBoards and a couple CPU's by basically turning them ON, and the said machines were mere towers in normal "household" usage  :-?  :crazy:

[BadBigBen]

one word: QUALITY...

The Amigas where usually made to a higher standard than the equivalent PC components...

prolly my own opinion here, but I got several Amigas and one C128D, which have traveled with me around the world...

the C128D even took a dive from more than 1m height right on to the pavement at JFK Int. Airport in 1989 broke off a few plastic standoffs and cracked the case, but still runs fine... even today...

[Chain]

i had similar problem.
simply put some adgesive tape at the other side of contact and it will be in place. .. three or four layers of tape will be better