A1200 HD Floppy Help

[DonnyEMU]

I purchased an Amiga 1200HD with accelerator off of e-bay about 2 months back. When I got it I thought it was damaged in shipping because the drive wouldn't read any standard Amiga Floppy. When I plugged in my external A1010 drive that all worked fine. So I know there isn't a machine problem.

I got some time finally today to open up the machine. It seemed okay except for some silly attempt to cool the CSA 12 Guage with a fan that isn't even attached to the chip..

Anyway, upon opening the machine and looking at the floppy I noticed 2 things..

1) The floppy drive was a "teac" brand drive. This sounded a little strange to me because I thought commodore only used compatible chinon drives. This would be a good reason the drive couldn't read any of my standard Amiga floppy disks.

2) There is also no sign of any kind of catweasel drive controller add on either that might run the teac drive..

Can someone help me verify the fact that the 1200HD never used a teac brand drive and only came standard with a Chinon brand floppy drive?

I would like to replace the internal floppy in case it was either damaged in shipping, or someone just modded it and stuck a bad floppy drive in it.

Does anyone have a source for the smaller (I am guessing half height) Chinon drives. I thought about swapping it with the A1010 drive floppy I have for the A1000 but it doesn't seem to fit (case clearance). My A3000 also has high density floppies and an Amax 2 Plus in it. But that floppy doesn't fit either.

-Don Burnett

[Acill]

I think the Amiga Int. 1200 came with them, but I am not sure. If you A1200 is badge as a Commorore system then it sounds like someone tried to put a PC drive in it. The best way to check is to pull out the drive and see if it was built after the 1200. If it is a newer Amiga int. version then they were known to have lots of problems in the drives. Best bet is to use one of the drives out of your other machines and see if the internal drive connector works at all. You can get a keywalda too that will let the PC drive work as a Amiga 880k drive. Teac are know to have problems with that too though.

[Damion]

The "Amiga Technologies" 1200 did use "jumpered"
Panasonic and I'm pretty sure Teac drives also.

It's possible the heads got knocked out of
alignment during shipping, check this program
on aminet:

http://www.aminet.net/aminet.cgi?string=trackdisksync

It takes a little time and effort, but worth
a try if you don't want to buy another drive
(and have loooooooots of patience ). Overall
you're probably better off buying a new one, or
even better a high density unit.

[DonnyEMU]

Thanks for the info, I will try it. I remember years ago my A1200 that I bought new came with a floppy card in the drive to avoid problems. I am sure the machine I have is a serial #'ed Commodore product. The next thing I have to do is change out the 3.0 rom. Which looks like a cinch to change (ewwe I just remember the dealership that I worked for would occasionally use a can-open or chips like that instead of a chip puller device. But hey it worked!

If anyone still can tell me what floppy drive is in their old Commodore made Amiga 1200 it would be extremely helpful.

-Don