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[motrucker]

Originally Posted by pooboy_92

Well I guess since all I have is HD disks I get to make lots of backups of my Workbench Disk. And just to keep you guys informed its still in the mail it should be here by the end of the week hope my drive still works. I have read that if I want to use a standard pc floppy drive I just have to switch 2 of the wires. Is this true and would you recomend doing it on the drive or the cable.

This still will not allow you use the drive as high density. The "real" Amiga HD disk drives run at half speed to allow them to work. After market drives (such as the Power XL drives) use a software patch that allows them to work.
The best thing you can add to your A500 is a hard drive! Hard drives that sit on the side also allow memory upgrades.

Sorry for the crossed wires today. The offer is still open though...

[pooboy_92]

Originally Posted by motrucker

This still will not allow you use the drive as high density. The "real" Amiga HD disk drives run at half speed to allow them to work. After market drives (such as the Power XL drives) use a software patch that allows them to work.
The best thing you can add to your A500 is a hard drive! Hard drives that sit on the side also allow memory upgrades.

Sorry for the crossed wires today. The offer is still open though...

Thats about what I figured, atleast it still gives me an option if my drive is dead, its been sitting for a long time.

and no problem man

[Cammy]

It's very unlikely that your drive is dead, but it could be dirty, which will also cause read errors. A lot of my old Amigas had trouble reading disks until I cleaned the drives out using one of those floppy drive cleaning kits. Everyone with a classic Amiga should get one of these before they're not available anymore:

http://cgi.ebay.com/3-5-Floppy-disk-...item43a27ca88a

[Bigbronc]

What part of Maryland do you live, I would love to have a get together with some Amiga people in the tristate area. I live in frederick and could/would like to meet some fellow Amiga people in a Denny's maybe. Sent me a e mail if any one wants to start a local group? Bigbronc@aol.com

[ognix]

I doubt your floppy drive is broken, maybe just some "little" problems.
One common is this one:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=55020
it's explained why and how to solve (the long way - mine - and the fast easy way!)

By!

[pooboy_92]

Thank you for all of the great tips my disk still hasn't arrived yet but its on its way. Do you have any more good tips for someone starting out with amigas.

[motrucker]

Cammy hit it - to many people forget about cleaning the drives. Use a cleaning disk with alcohol every week to every month, depending how much you use the drives. Cleaning disks can still be found on eBay, usually.

[AmiDude]

Maybe the cleaning kit will work for a while, but it's better
to open the diskdrive and remove all the dust inside.
You'll be suprised how much dust gets in there after time!

[motrucker]

Originally Posted by AmiDude

Maybe the cleaning kit will work for a while, but it's better
to open the diskdrive and remove all the dust inside.
You'll be suprised how much dust gets in there after time!

True, this should be done every now and then too. BUT, the bigger problem is oxides that transfer from the disks to the heads over time. This is why a solvent is needed. The same problem existed on tape machines (reel to reel and cassette).

[smerf]

Originally Posted by pooboy_92

Well I guess since all I have is HD disks I get to make lots of backups of my Workbench Disk. And just to keep you guys informed its still in the mail it should be here by the end of the week hope my drive still works. I have read that if I want to use a standard pc floppy drive I just have to switch 2 of the wires. Is this true and would you recomend doing it on the drive or the cable.

Hi,

On those HD disks, I have been using masking tape over the left hole on the HD disks to get better copies, and yes I know that the ferrous material on the HD disks is denser than the DD disks, this causes what is called magnetic cross talk because of the denser magnetic material on the HD disks, this is counter acted by the heads being stronger and creating a higher magnetic flux signal to write to the HD disks, but I find that a piece of tape works just as well and I don't have to cross any wires or jump through hoops to record on a HD disk. Now you can switch the two wires, but now you also have to compensate for the speed of the drive, and also have to move a jumper, I believe if you go to aminet, you can find the total instruction pak on how to add a HD floppy drive to your Amiga 1200. Now for all you wimpy people that are complaining about OS 1.3 as compared to OS 3.1, how many of you Amiga experts ever used (or heard of) Amiga OS 1.0, better yet how many of ya have a copy? talk about sparse, but it was really great to use compared to msDOS 1.0.

CPM 1.0 anyone?

Oh I know what is that?

Have fun enjoy your Amiga's, and don't forget Piru is good but Karlos is better. (I think).

smerf