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penarthur

Posted Sun Oct 17, 2021 12:04 pm

Help! My Amiga 500 has been sat on a spare desk for a few months and now will not boot from any floppy drive.

I've got two external drives available, using the double mouse button trick I've tried to boot (or just load any bootable disk) 4from df0/1/2 but the keyboard disk activity just flicks on, the selected drives clicks and whirrs for a second but nothing else happens.

Everything else seems normal mouse, ctrl amiga amiga, kickstart animation etc.

It's exactly the same with df0: on its own, with externals removed.

I've swapped the two cia chips and reseated Gary, but nothing has changed. Any thoughts appreciated.

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nullsleep

Posted Wed Nov 03, 2021 2:58 pm

Check voltages.

Near floppy power header would be about ideal.

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Crispy
Sunhillow

Posted Wed Nov 03, 2021 10:54 pm

Take a look at this video from Jan Beta, and skip to the 12:00 mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOkZk0RgaPA

Your A500 most likely has a Chinon drive, and these are notorious for problems with the sensor switches. You can usually fix them them with a good cleaning.

Usually you'll just see the disk throw a read error every once in awhile, but I discovered that if the switch breaks and makes contact repeatedly while the head is seeking, then it locks up not only that one drive, but the whole floppy interface, and the only way out is to reboot the machine.

It sounds like something similar may be going on with your machine.





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