Amiga 1200 internal disk drive

[witchmaste]

Hi!

I bought a used Commodore Amiga 1200 from ebay, but the internal disk drive isn't working! The internal disk drive won't boot disks at all, it has the normal sound when waiting for a disk, but when I insert a disk it spins up and the kickstart screen dissapears for a few seconds and then comes back. I also got an external drive from which I can boot workbench. In workbench when I insert a disk in the internal drive I get an icon with "df0:". Is the internal drive defect, or is this a problem with the motherboard? Can I install an internal disk drive from an amiga 500 to test?

[amigakit]

To test yes, however be advised that the A500 drive is taller than the A1200 mechanisms and therefore wont fit into the case

[Gringueiro]

A few suggestions - if you're lucky the internal drive may just have dirty heads - try a disk cleaning kit (disk with absorbant material instead of a magnetic disk in it and some cleaning alcohol or methylated spirits). Failing that you may have a damaged head - usually happens when a bent or otherwise damaged floppy is inserted and gets stuck. If you try to yank it out you can catch the drive head on the metal shutter and pull it off! If that happens - bye bye drive. If you are very lucky your external drive may be the same drive mechanism type that your internal drive was - usually Chinon or Teac. If so you can swop the drive casings so that the eject button from the internal drive fits. How to do that needs a longer explanation. If you need it reply to this post. Good luck.

[Karlos]

Completely off topic:

@Gringueiro,

Any relation to Peter Kay?

No offence but you sure look like you could have been seperated at birth :-)

[Argus]

I think I have a potential simple fix for you. I have an a1200 that I just can't seem to get the drive to line up with the case so the disk doesn't go in quite all the way and behaves just as you complain.  Take the top cover off the case and see if it boots in df0: I suspect the drive shifted during shipment and must be fiddled (re-aligned) with to get disks to go in properly.  There are two external screws and one internally which hold the drive in place.

[witchmaste]

I will test these things later today. Thanks for all the help so far, this must be the most effective forum I have ever seen  :-)

[witchmaste]

I opened the amiga 1200 today, but the disk drive didn't boot disks with the cover off either, I'm afraid. I also took the disk drive out of my amiga 500 but I realized the red wire of the drive data cable was on the other side than on the amiga 1200. On the amiga 1200 the red wire was on the left of the drive and on the 500 to the right. All amiga disk drives should have the same pinouts, right?

[witchmaste]

Never mind the post before, I tested an a500 drive in the a1200 and it worked so the original drive is broken. I alos tried cleaning the heads but it didn't work, it just won't read disks. I saw they sell floppy drives for the a1200 on vesalia.de (both for commodore mainboard and escom). Are these 100% compatible with all amiga software?

[PaSha]

witchmaste wrote:
Never mind the post before, I tested an a500 drive in the a1200 and it worked so the original drive is broken. I alos tried cleaning the heads but it didn't work, it just won't read disks. I saw they sell floppy drives for the a1200 on vesalia.de (both for commodore mainboard and escom). Are these 100% compatible with all amiga software?

Commodore=Yes, these are indeed original DD-drives for the A1200.
Escom=No, these are hacked HD PC-drives.

As for the orientation of pin1/the red stripe: The most common is to have the red stripe facing towards the power connector, but Chinon have done it the other way around.... (more specifically the two connectors have switched places, so the red stripe still faces the same way, but since the power connector is on the other side, it faces away from it).

-Paul

[bubba]

I saw they sell floppy drives for the a1200 on vesalia.de (both for commodore mainboard and escom). Are these 100% compatible with all amiga software?

I contacted Vesalia a few months ago about a floppy for a Commodore A1200.  Regrettably, they no longer have ones that are compatible with the commodore main board.  They do, however, stock floppies that work with the ESCOM A1200 mainboard.  I believe there is a way to modify the ESCOM floppy to work with the the commodore board.  You might search the forums to find it.

Anyway, I ended up buying a High Density Chinon FZ357-A floppy off e-bay and was able to fit it into my 1200 case pretty easily.  It works great with PC formatted 1.44MB floppies.  You might want to shop for this drive or a Chinon FZ-354 DD drive as a replacement.  Just be sure to keep the mounting hardware and eject button from your floppy.

-Bubba

[witchmaste]

I fitted an Epson drive from one of my external drives to the a1200 and custom made an eject button. So it's fine for now. I also modified a Panasonic JU-257A606P I found in an old computer at work and put it in the external drive instead. I didn't think I would get it to work but it did, and wasn't very hard to do either. I also found a same model panasomic at home so they seem pretty common, just telling this so you would know a good working pc floppy you can easily find and modify. Well thanks a lot for the help all of you!