duff internal A500 drive?

[Cyberus]

Hi,
Just got my original Amiga out of retirement. I stick a floppy in the internal DD, power up, and.....
All I get is the WB requester - now, I'm assuming the drive is %*&$ked...any suggestions?
(other than 'buy a new Amiga', 'buy a new drive', etc.)

Ta

[mikeymike]

How can you be sure it isn't the disk that's screwed?  Does the drive attempt to access the disk, does the insert disk logo disappear for a second?  Does the drive click as if it's empty?

[Framiga]

@Cyberus

I suggest you, to clean your FD drive heads with a cleaning disk or open it and clean the heads directly with isopr. alchool . . . .then buy a new drive :-D

Ciao

[Cyberus]

I tried a few other disks to now avail, then I took the miggy apart.
Sheesh - I suppose that was 13 years of dust....

And now the drive clicks - it didn't before - and the machine boots! But now, all the disks I try give me read/write errors - they are all old disks, but I'm sure they aren't all knackered, so it must be the drive

Boo hoo, was looking forward to playing around with my original Amiga...

[mikeymike]

I doubt that floppy disks can generally last 13 years :-)  Some, but not all :-)

[Cyberus]

the reason I was using them is that I knew that they'd run OK on 1.3 ROM, plus the fact that a real nostalgia trip must have the early software too, now where's the disk with 'The Very First' on....?  :-D

[amigamad]

I used a floppy from an a600 in the a4000 desktop i put together , a600,s are cheap to buy secondhand because not many people like them .Mine was found in the boot of a car in a scrapyard . :-)

[Cyberus]

In the A500, some are Chinon drives, some Panasonic (part nos?). Anyone have any ideas of where to get them from?

[mikeymike]

I used a floppy from an a600 in the a4000 desktop i put together , a600,s are cheap to buy secondhand because not many people like them .Mine was found in the boot of a car in a scrapyard

Almost sounds like the basis of an RSPCA ad... Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Amigas

[mikeymike]

Amiga vendors sell internal miggy floppy drives, though amigamad's suggestion to get one secondhand is a cheaper option.

[Cyberus]

but alas they seem to charge between 10 and 30 GBP..bloody rip-off if you ask me...who ever said that Amiga users were a captive market...

[Damion]

Cyberus if the drive worked when you put the
machine away, it probably just needs a little
(gentle) compressed air and head cleaning,
unless it was dropped or something. The
cleaning kits are cheap compared to a new drive.

[amigamad]

Almost sounds like the basis of an RSPCA ad... Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Amigas

Its the one amiga that is harder to get upgrades for but it is a nice size and whats left of the 600 might get used in some kind of project . :-)

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Searching on ebay about 4:00 in the morning I saw some bloke had come across a whole pallet-load of Amiga internal drives and was selling them off cheap.  Sorry I don't remember the link, but it was nostalgia-something-or-other.  Try checking ebay.

Also I too have a ton of disks that have gone south on me.  10 years in my slightly damp basement was just too much for them.  Sigh, that was some good stuff, too!  Atleast I can look at the labels and remember, and hopefully download them from somewhere...