A500 replacement FDD

[Daniele]

Hello guys,

I'd like to know if what happened to me happened to anybody of us or may I have an explication for this.
This is 2nd time I buy replacement for A500 internal
Floppy Disc Drivers to a well known Amiga Dealer in
Europe but when I replace the broken original FDD with
this brand new ones I can only run 5% of my floppies.
May anybody give me an explication about that since the
dealer do not answers to my email?

Thank U Very Much!

http://i16.tinypic.com/2cxj66e.jpg

[orange]

Probably FDD 'heads' are misaligned, there is software on aminet to 'fine tune' them; but its pretty difficult since it needs to be done with high precision. Its doable, just needs patience/time. Have you tried repairing/cleaning the FDD that wrote floppies?

[Homer]

Hi Daniele,
Can you tell us if the floppies that don't work are ones that you have written with the old drive ? Is there something logical that is different with the disks that don't work ? Do games work but not disks you write on ??

[orange]

BTW, are you the Daniele Gratteri from comp.sys.amiga.hardware?

[Daniele]

Hi homer,


I'll tell u, the floppy are brand new bcoz I have just adf2disk it from my A1200 with cd rom to floppy and put the games in the A500. So what can I do?

Thanks

[orange]

then replace A1200 FDD

[Daniele]

Hello guys,

I'd like to know if what happened to me happened to anybody of us or may I have an explication for this.
This is 2nd time I buy replacement for A500 internal
Floppy Disc Drivers to a well known Amiga Dealer in
Europe but when I replace the broken original FDD with
this brand new ones I can only run 5% of my floppies.
The floppy disc I used are brand news bcoz I have just
adf2disk it from my A1200 with cd rom to floppy and
put the games in the A500. So what can I do?

May anybody give me an explication about that since the
dealer do not answers to my email?

Thank U Very Much!

[melange]

If the floppy disks you are using are High Density (You said they were new) then, it's possible that the new drive in the A500 is a High Density drive and can't read the disks because they are written in Double Density.
Put tape over the little window, to force the drive to read it as Double Density.

In short have a good look at the floppy disks that work and compare them with the disks that don't. If the disks that work, do not have the little window, then that's the problem.
Tape up the window on the disks that don't work.

[Tomas]

What exactly happens when you try to boot these non working floppies?

[Daniele]

the discs are brand new and 2D DD from AmigaKit

and preformatted for AmigA

any help?

[Daniele]

replaced the A1200 with a A500 vesalia floppy disc drivers, and I use this to write adf. with adf2disc, then when I put this floppy in my A500 with another vesalia disc drive it would be a miracle if 1/10 of the floppy would really works!!!!

:(

Any Help PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!

[orange]

sorry it didn't work;
do you have X-Copy or D-Copy? you can use them to check if diskettes contain readable tracks. (try making copies with them)
maybe A500 has damaged CIA or something.. :-?

[Daniele]

Sure I got X-Copy and everything is OK with it, No red 0 only green ones!

thx!

[TjLaZer]

Try an original disk (a couple prefereably) and see if it boots, if it does not your drive is messed up.

[orange]

AFAIK, if you get all green 0 with x-copy then everything is fine.
It can only be compatibility then, what kickstart do you have in A500? How much memory, is it slowfast, what games are you trying?

[Daniele]

Orange

everything is fine if I use original Chinon but if I use Vesalia FDD it's going to be a mess!!!!
that's it!!!!!!!!!!!!

But I wanna solve this problem you know!!!!

[CLS2086]

Hi, sorry but you can't !
Why ?
Because old 720/880ko got 'larger' head, given them reliability, and it was also due to bad discs heavily spread on the market at that time....
Actuel HD FDD got thiner head to put twice the amount of datas.

My personnal solution :
Look at the thread about the A3000 FDD (i give my nice trick to relive lots of drives).
On my A1200GREX, I use a modern Panasonic HD FDD for DF0: but i have a good Citizen 42C (it cames from an external fdd box) for DF1:

Why that ?
Because the Panasonic is highly sensitive to 'dying' or 'bad quality disc', so when i got when of theses disc, i put it on my Citizen who read it easily :idea:
So I can make a backup on a new fresh disc who will work everywere and for a longtime (I hope).
And if it's worth than that, I have my A1k and it's wonderfull drive ;-)

[elpiloto]

hi,
Here is a small company that sells new fdd for use with amiga, the floppys works great, i have 3 of this ones, one on my 500, 1200 and on one of my external floppys. The only bad thing is that for use them on amiga 500 600 or 1200 u have to cut a peace of the buton, or cut a small pice of the chasis or use it out of the amiga, but come on, everybody can make a small and simple modification, the very good thing is this floppys works great and you will be able to load all your amiga stuff from floppys, works 100%

cheers
elpiloto

[Daniele]

elpiloto

can u give me any info about this company selling these floppy disc drivers?

thank u

[elpiloto]

i sent u a pm with contact information

cheers

[orange]

that small company is probably selling modified PC floppys and you can easily do that by yourself, just swap few wires and add diode (instructions are on aminet)

[elpiloto]

i dont know, but the fdd works perfectly, you dont need to swap any wire on this fdd, you use the original amiga fdd flat cable, only disconnect the old and conect the new on

cheers