Amiga 500 is acting strangley

[SilverZguru]

Hi!
Got another A500 rev 5 for 5 euro from recycling center. The case of this amiga is in terrible condition. I plugged it in to my another (tidy and working one's) power supply, and put the RGB video to scart cable in. Turned Amiga on and what I got was Kickstart 1.3 screen. So, I tried to put WB1.3 disk in, but AmigaDOS kept telling me something like "Not a DOS disk in unit DF0:" or "You MUST replace volume "Workbench 1.3" in DF0:!!!!" Or something like that. Drive reads "non DOS" disks that doesn't use OFS/FSS file system.

Tried to replace that drive from rev 5 to my rev 6 newer amiga, but same results. Also tried to clean heads, but no dice.

-Eemil

[barney]

It could be a defective/broken or dirty floppy drive.  Give it a good cleaning and maybe it will work fine.

Barney

[motrucker]

Don't ya love it when people don't read the posts.

Do you have an external drive you can try? If that works, then it's a problem with cable, connection or corrosion. If no, then a bad chip somewhere. I'll have to refresh my memory, and get back to you.

[paul1981]

Tried to replace that drive from rev 5 to my rev 6 newer amiga, but same results. Also tried to clean heads, but no dice.

-Eemil

It's the drive that's faulty right?
Or did you mean you've tried the working rev 6 drive in the rev 5 and it didn't work on the rev 5?

[SilverZguru]

Sorry guys! I wrote that post too quickly, but I meant that I tried REV 5's (old Amiga 500's what I got from recycle center) "Chinon" brand floppy drive in my primary Amiga 500 (rev 6, what I bought from internet). And same results. As I mentioned in my first post, loading errors shows up only in OFS/FFS filesystem applications. Other works well ex. Lotus 2, Zool etc. what uses custom loaders. Floppy drive makes strange sound, when loading and seems like that the "disk swap" is not working correctly...

My never Amiga 500 (rev 6) what has green power light and yellow floppy light, has Panasonic's FD, what is much worse than the Chinon (in rev 5 what has red power light and green floppy light.) Chinon can handle HD floppies as DDs perfectly, when Panasonic can't read them at all.

I hope that this post was now more understandable than the first one .

And I have external FD what works fine in Rev6 and I believe that it works too in  Rev 5 as the Rev 5's fd won't work the proper way in rev 6, so I believe that Rev5's chinon is faulty.

-Eemil

[paul1981]

Sorry guys! I wrote that post too quickly, but I meant that I tried REV 5's (old Amiga 500's what I got from recycle center) "Chinon" brand floppy drive in my primary Amiga 500 (rev 6, what I bought from internet). And same results. As I mentioned in my first post, loading errors shows up only in OFS/FFS filesystem applications. Other works well ex. Lotus 2, Zool etc. what uses custom loaders. Floppy drive makes strange sound, when loading and seems like that the "disk swap" is not working correctly...

My never Amiga 500 (rev 6) what has green power light and yellow floppy light, has Panasonic's FD, what is much worse than the Chinon (in rev 5 what has red power light and green floppy light.) Chinon can handle HD floppies as DDs perfectly, when Panasonic can't read them at all.

I hope that this post was now more understandable than the first one .

And I have external FD what works fine in Rev6 and I believe that it works too in  Rev 5 as the Rev 5's fd won't work the proper way in rev 6, so I believe that Rev5's chinon is faulty.

-Eemil

Okay, sounds like the disk drive is dusty...do you have an air duster or something you can spray it with?  Also sounds like the "disk inserted" sensor is acting up...WD-40 does wonders on switches and such things, or just try air dusting that part. There's been a few recent threads on faulty disk drives, so you might want to do a bit of searching as you may find the info you need in there.

A friend of mine had a slow motor on his floppy drive and he replaced it and that fixed it. There's also allignment of heads, but I wouldn't know how to go about altering that.

[560SL]

Also sounds like the "disk inserted" sensor is acting up...WD-40 does wonders on switches and such things, or just try air dusting that part.

Agree!

I'd say 9/10 times its the "disk-inserted" switch that cause FD's to fail. Small black pin in the floppy slot. Give it a good WD- 40 shower, then push it downwards 50 times or so. Chinon drives are very robust, so you would have to be in a real bad luck if its beyond rescue.

If you have the HD floppy, FZ-357A, you will have black pins on each side of the floppy gap. On one side, theres a pair of them. They will detect HD- floppys, and you might as well give them a go to while youre at it.

[SilverZguru]

Hi guys!
Thanks for those answers. I think that my english skills aren't good enough to get you understandable answer, so I made this little vid: http://youtu.be/az9GSJgonjY

If you can see, FD is really just bugging, glitching, giving errors etc.

Sorry it is little bit too long, but I hope that helps to diagnose the problem.

-Eemil