Amiga 500+ disk drive not readin disks. Can I use external?

[pardeepdhanda]

Hi,

I have an Amiga 500+ which I had not played on for about 2 years. Last week I set it up and tried running some of my games but I found that the internal floppy drive attempts to read from the disk but then stops.

I have read on the net that alot of people suggest you clean the drive if it is not reading from a disk. How should you clean it?

Also, if my internal disk drive has become faulty is it possible to connect an external drive and load up software that way ?? Would I have to change any settings to inform the operating system that my external drive is my primary drive?

Many Thanks,

Pardeep

[Skippy]

Hello and welcome to Amiga.org.

If you open up the external disk drive, remove the controller on the back of the drive, you can actually use this as a replacement of your internal drive.

You can autoboot from DF1: [external] if I remember correctly. But unless the software you are loading supports this [ie: coded hardwire to df0:] then it won't work.

Skippy

[orange]

Try removing dust with can of compressed air. See if drive heads can move freely on that metal "rail". Maybe you should put some oil on rail. If that doesn't work, the heads are probably misaligned. There is program/instruction on aminet about aligning drive heads, look in hard/hack. A500+ can boot from df1: , but probably all the games are designed to run from df0: . You could do something with alias command so that system sees df1: as df0: . IIRC its alias df0: df1:  Search internet (comp.sys.amiga.hardware) , that question has been asked a lot of times...

[Mike_Amiga]

if u hav an action replay, u can use it to make disks boot from df1:

[melott]

On my A1000 the internal drive was bad , I never
fixed it. I had 2 external drives hooked up and
never had a problem. I would guess that on some
old copy protected software it could require an
actual 'DF0' (internal drive) but I seem to remember
being able to remap an  external drive to be 'DF0'
Its been awhile for me .. hope this helps.

[weirdami]

Cleaning can be as easy as putting in one of those head cleaner disks. Do they sell those anymore? My A1200 disk drive wasn't reading good after being in storage a few years, so I put in the head cleaner disk I found also in storage and it started reading good. I didn't have any of the alcohol solution liquid stuff it came with anymore, so I put it in dry and it didn't seem to matter.

[pardeepdhanda]

Guys,

I opened up the casing and cleaned the head with alcohol, however, it still did not work.

I am now going to replace the internal disk drive. Has anyone got any spare or for sale? I have looked on eBay but can't find any.

Many Thanks,

Pardeep :-o

[HopperJF]

i have a dead A500 here, the disk drive is probably fine
its yours for £5 plus P&P

[HopperJF]

just send me a pm or add me to your MSN if your interested