Swap HDD Amiga to Amiga

[sweetface]

I am having joystick trouble with one of my a1200s and I have another a1200 that is fine with the joystick. So to get at least one up and running good for my son for the moment, I want to take the hard drive from one and put it in the good one. Is there anything I need to know? Do I need drivers (I don't think I have them), can I just plug it in and it will still have the data on it? I have no cluse and I need to get it right. :-?

[Jope]

Just plug it in.. I take it your a1200s are both base machines.

[motorollin]

The data will still be there. The question of whether there are any drivers required depends on the hardware you have installed on the machines. As Jope says, if they are base machines then you can just plug the hard drive in and it will work. If, however, you have added extra hardware to the other machine which requires software to be installed, then you will need to reinstall this on the other hard drive too. Also, be careful if you are moving a drive from a more powerful machine to a less powerful one, otherwise you might have trouble getting the software on the drive to run if the lower-powered machine is too slow or doesn't have enough memory.

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moto

[sweetface]

If you mean unexpanded then yes they both are. They are both similar spec so the power thing shouldn't be a problem.

[motorollin]

Just try swapping the drives then. Worst that can happen is it won't work and you will have to swap them back :-)

--
moto

[Homer]

Hi Sweetface, I agree with the others if the A1200's are similar. The only thing to be aware of is that the standard power brick doesn't like a hard drive and an accelerator, so if it starts crashing strangely, you may need either an A500 power brick (slightly more powerful and a direct plug in replacement) or a pc supply modified to fit.

[sweetface]

Oh No I've hit a problem! After just switching on the good Amiga, it won't run any floppies. The disk drive just makes 3 machine noises and the screen goes back to 'the floppy going in'. I even tried the Workbench disks and they didn't work Either. Do you think I need a new internal drive for it? I cant imagine that it's the floppies at fault.
I am planning to get an accelerator too. I didn't know A500 power supply would be that powerful.

[Andeda]

Hi sweetface

Why dont you swap the floppy from your other A1200 (the one you just took the harddisk from)

[Dr_Righteous]

Make sure of course you didn't plug the floppy drive cable in backwards when you reassembled the machine after the HDD move.

[sweetface]

OK so I've swapped the floppy drive and HDD over to the better machine. The floppy works but the purple screen with the floppy going in appears instead of the Workbench loaded on the HDD. I loaded Workbench with a floppy and the HDD does not show up. Do you think I plugged it in wrong? There were I think two pins on the end of HDD that would not fit the cable. When I took it out maybe I didn't put it back right. I thought there should have been enough pins for the cable. It worked OK in the other machine though. I'm Stumped :-?

[Homer]

Yes, there may be a group of four pins on the hard drive separate to the others. Don't connect the cable to these. After that, its just a matter of getting the cable the right way around ! Good luck  :-)

[Homer]

Assuming the hard drive worked OK in the original A1200 and didn't in the second A1200, you could try it again in the first A1200 to verify it still works, then try it in exactly the same orientation in the second A1200 (with the same cable). Let us know what happens  :-)

[sweetface]

I think I know the problem then. It must have been the four pins. Actually, there was also one pin bent in, it looked like it was done intentionally. Does anyone know why that would be? I'll open up again and reattach the cable and let you know if it works or not. :-D

[Daedalus]

Pin #1 might have been bent to solve a reset issue that occurs with some drives on the Amiga, but it's possible that it got caught and bent by the plug when it was connected further down that it should've been. Also be very careful you connect the cable properly to the motherboard - as there's no surround on the connector, it's very easy to connect it to one row of pins, leaving 22 pins unconnected. This can do all sorts of strange things to the drive, and may damage it if you're unlucky as some pins are for power and can be dangerous if connected to the wrong pins on the drive.

[sweetface]

I checked out the cable for the hard drive, taking care about those four pins and now it works great. I had to fiddle about with the floppy drive though because it wouldn't sit quite right and every time I closed up the case would stop the floppy ffrom coming out! so in the end I had to leave that side of the Amiga a little loose. Problem solved. And the joystick works perfectly at last.

I have a few questions still. I found a disk called relokick1.3 and was wondering how I use that? Also found another disk kickstart2.0 which states it only works with 1.2/1.3. I think it's something to do with games. Will they allow me to play my a500 plus games too? How do I use them.

Also I want to put some of my games on HDD how do I do that? If HDToolbox is used for this, I can't get it to work :cry:  What is WHDload? I don't have it, could I get this with instructions?