Amiga 500

[simon_m74]

Hi guys..

As I am working on my VR machine, I am now awaiting the delivery of a new cable and a new connector.

During the wait, I have decided to try to revive my old Amiga 500!

It has sat in the attic in this house for the 4 years I lived here, and for about 10 years in my parents attic before!

VERY dusty and yellow..... but seems to be in full working order!

well - almost... I have tried a few of my discs - that were also kept in the attic.. but they dont load.

Can anyone say if its the discs that have `expired`, or could the drive be faulty after all this time?

If the discs have expired...please help me in sourcing some games, as well as Amos- remember that ?

Thanks

Simon

 

[Setch]

Its hard to say until you can test it with a known working disk.

I know 3.5" disks do not like cold and possibly damp storage so I would suspect those first as I've always found the drives to be quite resilient and none of mine have failed yet.

 

[simon_m74]

Thanks Setch,

All my discs have been stored along with the Amiga in the attic, so I suspect the discs too :/

Pity as there are lots of them...

Oh well, I`ll try to get some again - but getting them onto amiga discs....

Is there a program for the PC that I can use to copy amiga games onto a disc in the correct format ?

 

[gridrunner]

Hi Simon,

the drives are very tough cookies but the disks on the other hand..

I've dealt with piles of disk boxes full of amiga floppies over the years and I've had about a 30% failure rate reading disks. It tends to be the 'blank' disks rather than original software because of wayward disk alignment.

I would suggest taking the drive apart and giving the heads a clean. The last amiga drive I dealt with wouldn't read disks and the drive head was covered in fluff.

If you take the top plate off the drive, access to the head is straight forward. Just clean up with a cotton bud and some rubbing alcohol after you've taken out the fur balls, dead spiders etc.

That restored my drive to health.

In terms of disks, the best approach is to get a cheap A600 or 1200 and use this to write new disks from ADF files. You can buy cheaply a PCMCIA to CF adapter to use in either machine. This means you can have a clean new disk to play from. Amigakit.com sell an 'easyadf' kit.

Please PM me if you need any ADFs.

gridrunner2013-02-08 09:29:39

 

[dannyboy]

Don't forget the Amiga used double density 720kb floppies too (as opposed to PC high density 1.44mb). Apparently you can sometimes get away with using HD disks if you cover the hole opposite the write-protect switch, then format them in your Amiga. But even then they won't work with every Amiga disk drive.

 

[Setch]

There are some mods for turning an old PC floppy drive into an Amiga format one over parallel but I never had much success getting it to work 100% of the time.

I would +1 for the A600 route as thats what I did until I recently picked up a 1200.

My 600 may well be up for sale soon but i've got alot of stuff to sort out before I get to that pile

 

[simon_m74]

Thanks guys,

I`ll dismantle the drive tonight and clean it all up.

I check the original disks I have too.

As for an A600 - my wife has one - I have to check it its in our attic, or in her parents. If so, I`ll get her to pick it up when she is there next weekend.

I remember that the Amiga floppys are 720, as opposed to 1.44

I want to get back into using the amiga, so I can get used to what the OS is like on my VR machine, but also to play some old retro games too that I loved...

Simon

 

[trm]

Don't forget to look for any battery backup devices in there too. Most A500 RAM cards had an RTC with a leaky battery

I found some hits on reading Amiga 880k floppies in a PC when I was researching Amiga/Virtuality stuff - google 'winuae Amiga floppy PC' although I didn't try anything as I used scsi hard disks and Linux.

I've got a ton of Amos source on old (probably dead) floppies in the loft. Including the source to my version of Photoshop that made it onto some mag cover disk BITD! I still remember writing the magnify code and running around in deep joy when I came up with a good method of allowing you to draw in the zoomed area And the multi-stage Undo feature that required a massively expanded Amiga to work

. And don't get me started on the Lasso area selection tool: I learnt a lot about bit masking that week

 

[gridrunner]

I loved my amiga. It was love at first sight when I first laid eyes on Defender of the Crown and Marble Madness, at the house of a friend of a friend who'd bought (and presumably at great expense imported) an Amiga 1000. Going from a C64 to an Amiga was a quantum leap that I've not experienced since and at the time, it knocked the PC and the original Mac into a cocked hat.

If only Apple had got hold of Amiga tech and not Commodore!

I did have a Catweasel PCI card for a while but sold it due to lack of use. It could write amiga disks and effectively replaced the onboard PC disk controller, but it was a bit hit and miss.

I don't mind making and posting disks if anyone needs something specific - just like the old school PD libraries

 

[simon_m74]

Hi Guys,

Amiga seems to work fine-ish with about half the discs I have tried so far!

No battery leakage - due to no battery on board

It does occasionally boot to a Software Error Guru thing, but after a few reboots its clears.

Any idea what could be causing this?

Simon

 

[gridrunner]

hi Simon,

my first Amiga guru'd even after the power was off!

Early Amiga's (1.2 workbench) were known for chip creep problems. One easy thing to try is to reseat all the socketed ICs. You might want to check the health of the power brick as well and check there is no ac ripple.

Stu
gridrunner2013-02-09 18:37:18

 

[simon_m74]

Will do thanks!

Simon.!

( VR update in the week - headset rebuild with new mirrors & screens! )