Newbie needs help...

[Spectrum75]

Hi all,

I am new to the world of Amiga, and need some help:

1) I have a standard A500 (no expansions) that won't boot.

It shows the screen with the hand holding the blue disk, where you can read "Kickstart 1.3".

If I insert a disk, the A500 will make some very soft noise (not like when the A1200 is reading a disk, read on...) and nothing else.

It resets if you press CTRL-Amiga-Amiga.

What do you think ? Dead disk drive ? Defective ROMs ? Floppy cable -- badly installed ?


2) I have also an PAL A1200 with 800 MB HD, 3.0 Kickstart and WB.

- Wich is the max size (Gigabytes) of a IDE HD for the A1200 ? (with or without using new drivers?)

- Can I expand the RAM by installing Fast RAM without an accelerator board (only with the RAM simms) ?

- Where can I find info on classic Amiga hardware ?
(Amiga hardware books ? Linux docs ? AROS docs ?)

Thanks !

Regards.

[glitch]

Hmmm,
     Sounds like the floppy is either dirty or mis-aligned on the A500.

     I thought the maximum size hard drive the Kickstart 3.0 would support is 4GB - but I'm sure the others will correct me!

Welcome, and enjoy!

[Lando]

It sure sounds like your floppy drive is broken.  Maybe it just needs cleaning out.

It is correct that 4GB is the maximum hard drive size under 3.0 (actually you can plug in a bigger one as long as you only format the first 4GB as past that it wraps round and starts overwriting stuff).  This is because of the 32-bit addressing.

You can't just install Simms on the A1200 motherboard but you can put a memory expansion card with up to 8MB in the trap door - if you want more then you'll have to get a turbocard.

There is info on hardware at www.amiga-hardware.com, and AROS at www.aros.org.  I don't know about Linux as I never used it.

[motrucker]

Spectrum75 wrote:
Hi all,

I am new to the world of Amiga, and need some help:

1) I have a standard A500 (no expansions) that won't boot.

It shows the screen with the hand holding the blue disk, where you can read "Kickstart 1.3".

If I insert a disk, the A500 will make some very soft noise (not like when the A1200 is reading a disk, read on...) and nothing else.

Since you state "If I insert a disk", I have to ask - what disk? Is it really a good workbench 1.3 disk? the broblem may not be the drive, but the disk.....

[ajlwalker]

@motrucker

Indeed.  If it's the Workbench 3 disk from the A1200 this will not boot on the A500 as yours clearly has the 1.3 kickstart.

Try and find a non AGA game that doesn't require 1Mb of RAM and boot that up.

Good luck!

[Spectrum75]

Thanks for the help.

I tried several original amiga disks (games). I think in the boxes said they were compatible with both A1200 and A500.

I will try again with other disks.


[EDIT]
Just one thing...

I think the hand holding the disk moved to ask you to insert the disk ? Or it was only a specific version which did so ? In my A500 it is completely still.

[ajlwalker]

That's perfectly normal for the hand not to move.  It doesn't.

The A1200 will have an animated disk going into a floppy drive.

Others will shoot me down if I'm wrong here, but as your A1200 drive works, it may be possible to open the cases and connect the A1200 drive to the A500.  The fittings are different, so it won't all fit together nicely, but if you leave the tops off it should be okay.

Can anyone see a problem with this?

[X-ray]

No there is no problem with that, I swapped floppy drives between my A500 and somebody else's A1200 to rule out a floppy drive problem on his A1200. His drive worked fine on my A500. Just be careful how you rest the drives because they don't match the mountings. It is a temporary/test situation, not a permanent fix.

[amigadave]

Is the screen pic asking for Kickstart or Workbench?  If Kickstart, try re-seating the ROM chip, replace if it is bad.  If it is asking for the Workbench disk, then it might be a bad floppy drive or CIA chip.

A1200 HD depends on which OS is installed.  3.0 and 3.1 without any patches, you should stay under 4gig with max. 2gig partition size.  3.5 and 3.9 can use larger.

Also, welcome to A.org

[orange]

there might be a small incompatibility between floppy drives if its Escom A1200.

[Spectrum75]

It asks for WB disks.

And now I'm sure the disks I have tried are A500 compatible ones, and in good status.

OK, I will try to use another disk drive.

It has the drive spinning all the time, and the two leds (power and disk) are ON all the time.

Anybody here has the Amiga hardware books ? If I get to kwnow the proper title of the books, or their ISBN's, I will search on Ebay to try to get them.

[Now returning to read on in the "minimig" thread... there are quite a few posts there!! :-D]

[countzero]

Spectrum75 wrote:

It has the drive spinning all the time, and the two leds (power and disk) are ON all the time.

this sounds like a reverse connected floppy cable.

[Spectrum75]

Uhm...
I tried to conect the floppy cable in both ways.

I also used a working external amiga disk drive, that I had used (and can still use) with the A1200, and nothing happened.

The A500 should boot with a external disk drive ?
How could I do it ?

If one of the CIA's is toasted, if I swap both of them, what will happen ?

@All: Thanks for the advice !  ;-)

[CLS2086]

Hi,
Any AMiga with kick lower than 2.04 can't boot on external drive.
Seems that I do something for your floppy drive. Don't throw it in a bin, keep it ! It's not so hard to repair them  :rtfm:

[Merc]

Did you turn the cable around or just rotate one end of the cable?

By reversing the cable, we mean rotate the connector on one end of the cable around 180 degrees so what was at pin 1 is now at pin 34 (or whatever).

If one of your CIAs is bad, then swapping the two chips will cause another problem in another part of the Amiga, maybe your mouse will stop working for example.

Hope that helps!