Not booting

[sy278]

Hi Guys,

I have recently dug out my old A500 and bought an A1200 from ebay. Tonight I decided to set them up and to my horror none of them will run my disks.

One or two of them boot so far on the 500 then I get disk errors, the 1200 acknowledges the disc then immediately returns to the kickstart screen. So on the 1200 I connected my old exteral drive and set the system to boot from DF1, it went a little further this time.

So guys would you agree it sounds like the disks are knacked, or do you think its the drives?

If it is the discs, does any one have any suggestions on how I can recover all my software? I thought if I could get in to workbench then I could try using diskdoctor to try and repair the discs, but even my workbench disks have errors about half way through loading on the 500.

PS the drives are very squeaky on some disks but sound ok on others.

[Matt_H]

Easiest problem to eliminate is a dirty disk drive. Buy a cleaning disk and run it through each drive a few times.

It sounds more likely that your disks are fried, though. Never, ever, use DiskDoctor under any circumstances, but try DiskSalv instead.

Data recovery is a tough process. Use the salvage mode (rather than fix-in-place) to pull as much as you can off a disk without the risk of overwriting anything.

Non-DOS disks, like most games, may be beyond repair, but you might still be able to install them to hard disk using WHDLoad. The corrupt data may be a problem, but the authors of the installs might be able to tell you how to manually rip disks - their tools can make multiple passes at a disk track to try to read it.

Consider contacting your nearest dealer to get a new set of Workbench disks.

[sy278]

OK Thanks,I'm assuming that DiskSalv is an amiga program, but how do I get it onto the Amiga?

[sy278]

Would it be possible to format and setup workbench on a CF card using the IDE/CF interface in WinUAE and copy an ADF version of the WB disks onto the card then load the CF into the 1200 to get into WB and then extract the ADF's so it recreate the floppy disks?

[sy278]

***bump***


Anyone???

[amigakit]

You can use the EasyADF PCMCIA Compact Flash transfer kit to move files such as DiskSalv to your A1200

DiskSalv can be run directly from the Compact Flash card.  EasyADF will uncompress any LHA files from Aminet etc.

[DrDekker]

For the A1200 - take the top off the disk drive and check that there are no foreign 'bodies' inside.  I once had a similar problem and found the cause to be a large moth that had crawled inside and got squished in the read/write head assembly.  Basically, the moth prevented the heads returning to the boot track - hence no boot.

For the A500 - if cleaning the drive heads doesn't work, then check that the floppy media within the disk is free to rotate and there's no physical damage (scratches, corrosion, etc.)  If the disk is difficult to rotate, then try 'flexing' the outer casing to free it off a little.  It's worked for me on several occasions.