Restoring Amiga 500 after years of neglect

[Dingo_aus]

Firstly, Hi, first post here and all.

Anyway, I've just pulled my old Amiga 500 (ah the memories) out of storage and fired her up.

Firstly the Commodore Screen went wonky, no sweat I'll run it through the A520 on my TV.

So now I have the 1.3 Kickstart image on screen, all good.

Next problem, I placed a disk in the drive, no noises, no floppy drive activity. Nothing. It is like it hasn't detected the floppy went it or anything.

What do the gurus here say I should do next? Should I pull apart my Amiga 500 and clean everything in sight? How do I go about cleaning the disk drive? Is it safe to just wipe everything down with alcohol cleaning solution? What should I be careful about?

Sorry about all these questions, I searched the forum but nothing resulted from my searches (didn't really know what to search for)

Thanks,

Nigel (aka Dingo_aus)
Brisbane, Australia

[_ThEcRoW]

Your problem seem to be from a dirty disk drive. Take the drive apart and clean the heads with alcohol carefully. Then the drive should load any disk you put trhough it. The a500 drives were quite common in getting dirty quickly, so a regular cleaning make them run perfectly.
Hope this helps.

[NJ_72]

Hi Dingo,

Welcome at Amiga.org :-)

Open your a500 case and have a look inside, usually you will find piles of dust in there Once inside you can check for any loose contacts, cables, etc. Are all IC's still properly fitted ?  Like ThEcRoW said, have a go with some alcohol on the floppydrive.

Good luck!

[Azryl]

first up... turn the A500 over, pop the trapdoor cover off and remove the expansion ram if its installed. If its there, the battery backed clock is probably dead by now and acid has probably leaked

remove and clean up.. then check again to see if machine will boot properly before messing around with the floppy drive

[Dingo_aus]

Thanks for the info.

Good point about the battery back up, I'll have to attend to that.

Any tricks with the "Torx" screws on the underside of my amiga? Or anything that is going to fall apart into a million pieces if opened?

BTW, I nearly didn't recognise my Amiga, it has turned a bright shade of yellow, I'll have to post photos to compete with the "Golden 2 year aniversary edition A500"

[Dingo_aus]

Wow, super lucky. The RTC clock battery hasn't leaked! After over 10 years storage, it looks (from the outside at least) like the day the PCB was assembled.

.....Unlike all the bulging Caps on my modern motherboards

Now to find a torx screwdriver that'll fit...........

[bludger]

Dingo_aus wrote:

Now to find a torx screwdriver that'll fit...........

A 2 millmetre allen key will do the job nicely.
 :idea:

[Dingo_aus]

Ok, having problems with the Floppy drive.

I've stripped off the cover and had a look at it in operation.

I think the stepper motor that drives the heads forwards and backwards on the screw is not working properly.

So my questions for all the gurus (meditating or not ) are:

1) Can I use a floppy drive from a PC with a custom cable?

2) Can I test the stepper motor? It only has 4 leads. I'm used to unipolar motors from Printers, but don't know how to handle just 4 leads (used to 5 or 6).

[Dingo_aus]

Seems like I've got some success.

Cleaned the floppy's mechanicals, no luck.

Then lightly did the heads. Still refused to play.

Then really got a lot of Alcohol onto the heads and let them dry thoroughly.

Whacked in Wonderboy in Monsterland and is got to the intro screen!

Haven't tested it further but so far so good!

Thanks everyone, my Miggy is back!

[Argus]

A tip about the battery: I'd replace it anyway even if it hasn't leaked yet.  Since it has sat so long, now that you are energizing it it may start to leak.  It really depends upon the type of battery of course, but imho if it's one of the barrel-shaped NiCds don't trust it.

As for upgrades/fun, I recommend you get a sidecar-type harddrive/memory controller.  Next, you could get an internal rom switcher and a later rom (2.04 or 3.1).  You could upgrade the Agnus to a 1MB variety (8372?) and have 1MB chipram with the appropriate m/b hack (see Aminet).  If you're real lucky, you'll find a 68020 or 68030 accelerator that plugs into the original 68000 socket inside the case.  There is also an Amiga.org user here (hppacito) who is working on making a new 68020 accelerator for the A500/600. For faster serial, Jens Schoenfeld (www.amiga.ga) sells an A500 clockport adapter (a la the A1200) so you could plug in a fast serial silversurfer or other clockport card (USB?) in the old 500.  afaik, the only thing really difficult to add to an a500 is an rtg graphics card (there is even an internal flickerfixer vga adaptor made by ICD .....FlickerFreeVideo or suchlike).

[mgerics]

BTW, what kind of alcohol did you use?

I suggest a nice Guinness, or a Stout.

For you, of course!!
Use rubbing alcohol for the disk drive