Amiga 500 internalfloppy drive problems?

[Funkigamoses]

Hello!

I have an amiga 500 at home and it's floppy drive won't boot discs, the original internal floppy drive worked for two days after I bought it but then it wouldn't read the discs completely, the wb 1.3 logo showed up and disappeared when I plugged in a disc only to come back. I couldn't do anything! Later I exchanged the internal floppy drive with a completely new one (at least he said so) and it worked for like an hour until it did the same thing as my former one, now it's back to the wb 1.3 logo.

I've started to think it's something else that is wrong, the case isn't in the best shape, maybe it puts pressure one some parts of the computer and that pressure causes some mechanics to not work properly.

Is it some bad soldering somewhere?

Anybody recognize the problem?

[Randhir123]

There is a chip on the motherboard that controls the disk drive functions and that chip could be bad.
If I recall correctly it could be the Gary chip, 5719.

[shaf]

Try swapping the 8520 CIA at U7 and U8, are U36 (7438) or U37 (7437) hot?
The Problem could also be the 8364 (Paula). Since the problem doesn't happen immediately but over time I suspect it is heat related and either the TTLs at U36 and U37.
I don't think the Gary is likely I've repaired a lot of A500's and never needed to replace the Gary.

[Cammy]

Are your floppy disks mouldy? Slide the metal over and check to make sure the surface doesn't have any small spots on them. I think your original floppy drive will work fine if you clean the heads. I've had about ten A500s come through here with floppy loading problems and every one of them was fixed by cleaning the floppy drive with a floppy cleaning kit. These things are old and dirty, and it's far more likely that the problem is simply dirty heads than chips going bad.

[Funkigamoses]

Are your floppy disks mouldy? Slide the metal over and check to make sure the surface doesn't have any small spots on them. I think your original floppy drive will work fine if you clean the heads. I've had about ten A500s come through here with floppy loading problems and every one of them was fixed by cleaning the floppy drive with a floppy cleaning kit. These things are old and dirty, and it's far more likely that the problem is simply dirty heads than chips going bad.

Thank you everyone for your answers!

I will check it out! But I don't really have any cleaning kit, do you know if I can use something alcohol based?

[_ThEcRoW]

Yeah, of course. I always clean up my a500 drives with alcohol and cotton swabs. Just do it carefully and without too much pressure on the heads to not misalign them, and your disks will be working again. Unfortunately, the amiga 500 drives were known for being prone to getting dirt quickly, as there are no doors that prevent dust and particles getting in.
One note, you will need to dissasemble the amiga and removing the cover of the drive in order to get access to the heads.

[Funkigamoses]

Yeah, of course. I always clean up my a500 drives with alcohol and cotton swabs. Just do it carefully and without too much pressure on the heads to not misalign them, and your disks will be working again. Unfortunately, the amiga 500 drives were known for being prone to getting dirt quickly, as there are no doors that prevent dust and particles getting in.
One note, you will need to dissasemble the amiga and removing the cover of the drive in order to get access to the heads.

Thank you! We have cleaned them but no success! How do you manually align the heads? What equipment do you need?

I think I might have put the ribbon cable (35-pole I think) to the floppy drive wrong, could this have damaged my motherboard?

I don't get why my Amiga is acting like this! I till buy a new wb 1.3 disk and see how it reacts.