Oh dear :( A1200 internal HD problem...

[dandelion]

Hi all,

Well, I recently bought myself an A1200 off the Bay, complete with 250meg 2.5" drive and ram expansion. All fine, no problems. Then...attempted to load Project X from a "blank" disk which came with the machine which failed to load and from then HD death! Specifically...

1) After reset from Project X instead of getting WB from the hard drive back it returned to the purple insert floppy screen.
2) Weird I thought. Shut everything down. Waited a minute, restarted, still purple screen.
3) Booted from WB floppy, early startup, no HD recognised.
4) Found disc with HDToolBox...couldn't make any "changes to the drive" but on reset it booted properly.
5) Then after that minor success it failed again. Tonight I dismantled, checked pins etc. cleaned contacts. Still nothing and drive not spinning at all. Tried it on a spare motherboard, didn't work first time but on playing with the cable got it to boot again.
6) Transferred back to EBay machine. Wouldn't boot. Swapped cable around again (I know this is back, with regards to power lines etc. but was getting desperate!)
7) Tried again on spare motherboard, couldn't get it to boot at all.

I'm thinking i've either killed the HD, or that basically it was dying and is now properly dead. Or perhaps it's a dodgy cable (i don't have a spare one unfortunately).

Any ideas?

[actung_bab]

l had this prroblem with one my second hand 1200s
l brought few years ago with the standred 40 meg drive.

all can say check the cable its not standed pc ide cable
as far as l know on of the pins is blanked of from memory.
so check its right.
all l did was press on the end going to the mother board.
and u should here it spin the actually hard drive.

also l found with amigas to boot from workbench floppy
helps when hard drives are getting funny ideas he he.

good luck mate
not easy when u got no suport from amiga

[Plaz]

What OS are you running? 3.1 and below have a 4gig partition limit that can really mess you up. 3.5 and above can do larger partitions, but I still had some trouble when using 3.9.

Plaz

[actung_bab]

of topic l know what bbs software do u run.
and do still run bbs. here in new zealand far as l know
there arent any bbs around, l usded to run cnet 4 bbs software, l was going run it again as miss those days
l even remember running my bbs of a zip drive at one stage

 :roll:

[Homer]

dandelion,
From what you have said, it could well be the cable, since it sounds like you are using the same cable on both motherboards, and moving the cable makes it work intermitantly. You either need a new cable, or you could try gently taking the plugs off of the present cable and refitting them slightly closer together.
These plugs are usually "insulation displacement connectors" (IDC) which connect to the ribbon cable on installation by pressing the cable into sharp jaws on the back of the plug which cut through the insulation to make their connection, and yes I have done this myself without the proper tools  :lol:
If the cable would become too short by doing this, then its time to rip apart an old pc cable to get the required ribbon length. See, even pc's can be useful sometimes  :idea:

[dandelion]

Hmmm...thanks for the advice guys! I'll probably try and buy a short 2.5" cable from Amigakit and give that a go to start with. Failing that a new drive too (250meg's a bit small anyway). Will let you know how it goes

[dandelion]

actung_bab wrote:
of topic l know what bbs software do u run.
and do still run bbs. here in new zealand far as l know
there arent any bbs around, l usded to run cnet 4 bbs software, l was going run it again as miss those days
l even remember running my bbs of a zip drive at one stage

 :roll:

The bbs hasn't been online for a couple of years now unfortunately, i moved away from the Amiga scene and haven't been posting here and forgot about my sig! I used to run Max's BBS 1.54 and Max's Pro 2 (commercial, but now released to Aminet). Max's BBS was a lot of fun, had it running on top of AmiTCP and Telser (unfortunately you can't use Miami) and it worked well. It was a bit slow however because i'd run it on an 020 1200 with dialup! Seems funny now in these very broadband days! I stopped it simply because I didn't have the time to devote to playing at that stage (still don't, just trying to ignore the guilt), also the Amiga scene gets to you after a while. It can be a bit cloying and immature if you know what I mean. Found solace in the RISC OS world for a couple of years (still no Windows PC here!)

[actung_bab]

yes l have to agree on all your points
though umm yeah can say that word xp isint to bad.
yeah l never did get my bbs on the net wanted to.
l really enjoyed the bbs thing . my mate ran pc one
l once had somone online and played quake at the same time
this was on ppc amiga . lucky it didnt crash ;-(
what whould u recomend as altertive os to windows

 :-D