Advice re Commodore Amiga - faulty floppy

BengaLover

I hope someone can give me some ideas:
I sold a Commodore Amiga via adverts, the console along with an Atari were tested and played with for a bit, tested again,and then stored for over 3 years.
The buyer has had some problems with them so I am trying to help resolve the problem, which is that the floppy wont read any discs, and it keeps saying that the disk in the drive is not a dos disc.
I know that lots of problems with these older consoles can be very easily fixed for someone who knows more about them than I do - any suggestions would be appreciated!

BengaLover

Adding, yes I have googled...Too much info though...:D:D

o1s1n

For a start, fair play for trying to help a customer out three years after a sale! I wish manufacturers would offer that kind of support :pac:

Do you know what kind of Amiga it is? A600/A1200 etc?

Might be an obvious one, but are you sure the person is using Amiga disks and not just standard floppies?

BengaLover

It was an Amiga A1200 I think.
It was sold as a bundle with about 150 games!
Just thinking maybe it needed a startup disc or something before its able to play the discs?

BengaLover

I received this response from an answers type website.

Providing that the discs you're trying to read aren't game discs (which typically aren't bootable into Workbench), you may need a new floppy disk drive. I would suggest trying either Software Hut (www.softhut.com), AmigaKit (www.amigakit.com), or eBay.com--one of them should have an extra floppy drive in stock.

Are floppy drives expensive or should we try something else instead.

o1s1n

Is he able to get the Amiga to boot up to workbench? I know with my Amiga I can't have a game disk in the drive when it boots up or nothing happens. I have to boot it without a disk.

If it is just the floppy drive they're pretty inexpensive -

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=106

Also something you won't be happy to hear, the A1200 is prone to capacitor failure. My one is off at the moment having the caps replaced.

I don't know how tech savvy this guy is, but the thing to do now with an Amiga is to fit a compact flash harddrive. Means you don't need to use disks at all, the games just boot from a harddrive. Really worth looking into.

Lab_Mouse

April Uninterested Officer wrote: »

Do people not have brains here?

Maybe.maybe not, but they do have manners:rolleyes:

Dan_Solo

Tell him to try a brand new disk in it. How many old disks did you give him with the Amiga? Always worth seeing if a computer will at least read disks that it has formatted and written to itself.

Myrddin

Lab_Mouse wrote: »

Maybe.maybe not, but they do have manners:rolleyes:

Nice work on the quote :cool: Pity the post is gone now, would have been a nice one to report for trolling.

Andrew76

April Uninterested Officer wrote: »

Do people not have brains here?,heres what could be wrong No dos type disk can happen for many reasons,lets go through it- 1-He could be trying to copy or read a game copy protected disk in workbench os,this can give the message 2-First of all,lets see if the actual drive works,turn on amiga without floppy,hear for clicking noise,insert disk,and wait for it to spin,as far as we know it should be working if it gives no dos message,it could be a simple matter of cleaning the drive with floppy disk cleaning kit which can be got from ebay. 3-The disks could have be formatted over on a pc. 4-Disks can be faulty or covered in gunk,depending on their storage. caps leak,mmm wonder who told you about that in first place?.

Here's the quote in full.

Imo it's insulting to the decent folk here who give honest advice with the best of intentions. He's better off keeping his knowledge to himself if the above is the only way he can post it.

o1s1n

April Uninterested Officer wrote:

Do people not have brains here?

I can't report this post. Ban for abuse please. Trolly mc troll face is going too far.

Myrddin

o1s1n wrote: »

I can't report this post. Ban for abuse please. Trolly mc troll face is going too far.

Speaking purely as a poster here on A&R, (and not as a moderator on a different forum), I fully agree. Boards.ie rule number 1 is be civil to each other. Hope I'm not stepping on your toes here Ciderman by saying that It's purely an observation on my part, not a recommended course of action.

Joe Musashi

o1s1n wrote: »

I can't report this post. Ban for abuse please. Trolly mc troll face is going too far.

I agree.

He'll probably come back with another account though. The guy doesn't have the self-control to stop posting or visiting here. I don't get why he's started to troll here and still act "normal" on another retro site.

Another thing I find odd is writing a detailed post on the topic and then just deleting it for no reason. It seems like a waste of time to me.

Lab_Mouse

afaik you cant delete a post only forum mods can(you can edit so that its blank).Open to correction on it though

Dan_Solo

Lab_Mouse wrote: »

afaik you cant delete a post only forum mods can(you can edit so that its blank).Open to correction on it though

You can delete your post now and you'll have proof.;)

Myrddin

Lab_Mouse wrote: »

afaik you cant delete a post only forum mods can(you can edit so that its blank).Open to correction on it though

You can delete your own posts. Admins, CMods & forum mods would still be able to see it though - incase your reading this Stone roses

alpahaeagle

Hi. I am the person who bought the Amiga 1200 and the Atari 1040STE. The Issue is the Amiga boots up to the purple screen asking for a disk. I have tried @ 6 workbench floppy ranging from 2.3 to 3.5 and I get the same error all the time. SO as you can see I am unable to boot up to the workbench.
I have been in contact with BengaLover and explained the issue and I have enclosed screen shot as well. I have to say a big THANK YOU to BengaLover for trying to reslove the issue. Now before I contacted them I had tested the floppy, after I replaced the Power supply as that died on me as well.
I will be using a SD floppy emulator as the Atari ST flopy has failed as well , and I can use the same SD floppy emulator for both machines....Does anyone know where I can get one over here. I have found one on ebay for @ £65.00, just wondering.

BengaLover

I did have a website link for parts, think it was on a sticky somewhere here on this category? They were priced quite reasonable too.