What is going on with my towered 1200?

[carvedeye]

Hi all i have been having problemsa with my towered 1200 i put a floppy in to the drive and it will read it fine for a minute or so then it will say it cant read block ?? and then not long after it says DF0???. So here is what i did i bought a brand new Floppy from the wonderful ppl at amigakit (i think they are awesome by the way) and a new floppy ribbon hooked them up and i am still getting the same problem also i have noticed that my serial ports are playing up this is when the mouse is plugged in which can be sluggish and need to really press down on mouse buttons for anything to happen and also my joypads are not responding well if any of you have any ideas of what is going on i will be very grateful.

TIA

[amiga1260]

I think there is something loose. The best way is take every cable and expansion out your tower and reinstall it. Years ago I had the done this a lot of times with a friend's Amiga 1200 T.

[carvedeye]

Ive tryed that, i have stripped the full system and re-built it back up and the problem is still there?

[carvedeye]

Well i stripped my miggy (again) and pressed down on all my chips etc built it back up and was able to format and install workbench 3.1 from floppy so goes to install IDEFix 97 and it is now saying DF0:? on all of my floppys including the workbench disks i installed with?

[fitzsteve]

I bet you are putting a Mouldy Floppy Disk in there and its leaving dirt/mould on the heads.

Use a FDD cleaning kit and don't use the offending disk again

Steve.

[carvedeye]

i dont have any mouldy disks lol. could it be that the chip that controlls the floppy is generating some heat which is making it act the way it is?

[Merc]

Maybe weak power supply?  Or loose/worn connection for floppy power?  Try running without HDs powered up, etc.  Or maybe a bad CIA chip?  It's been a while, I don't remember if the CIAs are that involved in floppy operation  or not.

Just a couple of things that came to mind, good luck!

[carvedeye]

could it be that the CIA chip is generating heat which is why the floppy works for so long then the CIA chip is heating up causing the floppy to act the way it is?

[jj]

The fact you are having problems with the serial ports and the mouse ports all points to one of the CIA chips has gone or going. Will need replacing. Think they surface mounted on A1200.
 
CIA Chips control serial, joystick and floppy

[carvedeye]

well it turns out its my CIA chip which is causing the problem as it is heating up so i bought a can of compressed air and turned on my miggy and as soon as it started its usual problem i sprayed the can of air onto the CIA chip and it was able to read the disk until it heated back up so i have came up with a solution (if it will even work?). mount a 80mm fan onto the side of the psu and allow it to blow directly onto the cia chip so it does not cause any problems in the future or am i wasting my time?

[Vairn]

Add a Tiny heatsink to the chip too.
will make the fan actually do something, at least be a lot more effective.

[carvedeye]

@Vairn
            Yeah thats a great idea thanks.