A500 problems

[Sirion]

I've got an a500, it's about 12-13 years old or something and i got it from my brother, i have about 2-3000 floppies of games and progs, BUT, the problem is, the damn thing won't work properly. When i start it up, everything is looking fine and i get the blue screen with the "insert floppy" thing, but when i do insert a floppy, the machine doesn't read the floppy, which is frustrating me.
I would like to know what the problem might be, and how to fix it, 'cuz i wanna try all those programs and games i have. Any help is appreciated.

[MrZammler]

While on the disk screen, do you hear any ticks from the floppy drive? (that is without having inserted a disk).

[Sirion]

Yeah, it's kinda like that

[corsavert]

If the drive is clicking, it's looking for a disk. It wants either:

* an Amiga Workbench disk. You should have one in your stash.
* a bootable game disk. Not all are bootable.

Does it try to boot, and come back to the blue start screen? Or does it give you some error message?

[patrik]

@Sirion:

The screen should not be blue, it should be white and the floppydisk is the only thing that should be partially blue. Here you can see how it should look like. If your screen doesnt look like that you should check whatever cabling you use to connect the A500 to a monitor/tv with.

Before I get into the diskdrive troubleshooting part of this message there is a question I need to know:
- Does nothing at all happen when you insert a disk which you know should boot (for example the Workbench disk or the first disk of a game)? I mean, not a single sign of action, not even 0.5 seconds of disk-activity, the disk+hand image doesnt disappear for a quick moment etc?

The reason why your diskdrive doesnt sense when a disk inserted might be because the the little pin inside the diskdrive that senses if a disk is inserted has gotten stuck because of dirt. It is usually located next to the write-protect pin which senses if you have writeprotected your disk or not and you should be able to see it if by looking into the opening where you insert disks. Take a look into the opening and look for two pins which usually are close to eachother (disk-sense and write-protect-sense) which should be on the left side of the opening if you look straigt into it.

There could also be some problem with your extra-ram expansion if you have one. It might be one of those which also are equipped with a realtime clock and a battery which has started to leak, making the circuit-board traces corrode away leading to malfunction. To see if this is the issue, just remove the extra-ram expansion and see if it works better without it. It is located under the removable trapdoor you will find underneath your A500.


/Patrik

[Tomas]

Sirion wrote:
Yeah, it's kinda like that

also, does the floppy diode light up when you insert a floppy?
do you hear any different sound from the drive when inserting a disk?

It can be dust, or it can also be that the some button is flacky, the one that detects that you have inserted the floppy into the drive.

[Tomas]

The screen should not be blue, it should be white and the floppydisk is the only thing that should be partially blue. Here you can see how it should look like. If your screen doesnt look like that you should check whatever cabling you use to connect the A500 to a monitor/tv with.

He could have a a500+ or a a500 with a 2.x rom or newer.

[Sirion]

Ok, i hear some slight activity from the floppy drive when i put in the workbench floppy, the diode lights up a bit, and the floppy drive seems to tick more intensively, but it doesn't actually start or anything, the screen just goes back to the insert floppy thing and i don't know if it's supposed to be blue, but my brother says it's been like that since 1989, and the games have worked fine, no weird colours or anthing, though, i opened up the amiga, and i found that one of the pins in the wire that connects the floppy drive to the hard drive thing seems to be missing, maybe it's supposed to be like that, i don't know, also, all the cables and everything i've got is 100% original, the screen too, so i'm wondering if it'll be worth anything if i manage to fix it up a bit? Also, i remember that one time i actually managed to get into the interface thing (looks kinda like windows 3.1), but couldn't do anything from there, so i think workbench is installed, but something's wrong with it

[x56h34]

The floppy connector is supposed to be like that (e.g. the missing pin). My guess is that your floppy drive is busted and needs replacement. Probably the drive motor is kaput.

[Tomas]

i would try getting a floppy disk cleaner, to see if that makes any difference. Could also be the floppy disks, but i guess it would be too big conicidence if all 2000-3000 of them would be dead.
Just make sure you are trying to boot an amiga disk, and not some pc one.

[Argus]

It could be the drive is belt-driven and that the belt is worn or stretched or fallen off altogether.  This is a common problem with some of the drives C= used.  I think the Epson SMD 400 was good for this problem. The Chinon drives are generally more robust, imho.  Take a look at what kind of drive you have and then trouble shoot from there. It is also possible the the case has bent or shifted so the button doesn't clear the hole in the case, causing the disk not to go all the way in.  Take the top cover off the A500 and try booting it again with the button free (this kind of problem I've had happen to A600/A1200s and probably the a500 could do it too).

[Azryl]

If you look at the bottom of a standard 880k floppy disk, you will see a small square hole in the middle of the disk (bottom metal bit) and beside this, at an angle outwards a rectangular hole in the metal, this is the hole the drive inserts a rotational pin into to spin the actual floppy insert inside the 3 1/2 inch plastic.

I'm probably not making much sense, just flip over any floppy disk and you will see what I mean.

On some A500's the spring loaded drive pin gets encrusted in dust/dirt/cat hair/fluff/dandruff/whatever and will not engage into the disk slot, therefore cannot rotate the disk reliably at the correct rotational speed..  and therefore the drive cannot "read" any disk. You do hear a slipping click sound from the drive, and an occassional disk will work, which is the symptom for this fault.

So take a cottom bud, soak in alcohol/spirits and clean the engage pin (rotate the drive so its closest to the slot, for easier access) its visible when you look inside the drive. Clean it as best you can, then try with a Workbench disk.

best of luck

[Sirion]

Allright, thanks, i really appreciate it.