A1200 Floppy Problems
Meet Sue. Named Sue cus the girl that gave
me this 1200 was named Sue. She also gave
me an A500... so generous. Also the A1200 box.
The computer has a very nice feel to it.
Except for the blasted floppy drive.
It just sticks when you try to eject.
Nothing like a sticky floppy and
seriously Sue knows all about that.
And even more so given that the hard
is not up any more.
Enter the new 2.5" which has 40GB which
could be a problem given that Wb3.0 is
only ever likely to see 4 GB of that. You
really also have a 2 GB limit on partition
sizes... So I am expecting problems.
I like a challenge.
Meet Sue. High maintenance and still is.
Nothing in the trap door.
OK Unscrew the two screws holding the
floppy at the rear as I am going to be
removing the drive to check all.
There were no case screws ( normally 6 )
as I was having to leave the computer
open to get the floppy to work.
I have to be very careful with the drive
light wires as I have ripped those off
the small interface more than once as the
weight of the keyboard falls over.
I have several of the drive light indicators
with the wires busted off and I don't want
that happening here.
I gently ease the keyboard out of it's
slot at the base of the A1200 case.
And carefully release the keyboard connector
which sits next to the floppy connector.
I keep a watchful eye on the keyboard
ribbon as that can be also easily damaged.
You really can't put the keyboard connector
in the wrong way as it has one of the pin holes
blanked off.
This corresponds with a missing pin in
the motherboard below.
I carefully undo and ease out the ribbon
but leave the plastic clip below.
The white plastic clip will only go
one way as it will either hold the
ribbon in place or blank the ribbon
off rendering the keyboard dumb. You
do not want to be fitting that the
wrong way around. Easy to do.
I am intrigued why I needed to label the ROMs
They look original as they are Kick 3.0.
Next up I focus on the floppy and that
one remaining bracket holding it in place.
I carefully disconnect the ribbon.
And decide to adjust the position of the
floppy drive bracket.
There are two holes for the connector.
So I just moved it along one.
Worth a shot.
Sadly didn't work as the floppy disk still
refused to eject from the case.
Maybe it's the bracket itself at fault.
Rifled the drawers and found another.
I decided to go in deeper. I removed the
ribbon and lay it on the bench in the
exact way I took it out.
I then set too removing the shielding.
There should be two screws holding the
metal cover with the floppy drive removed.
Plus I needed to lift up all the annoying
finger cutting metal tangs.
This motherboard had a separate daughter
for the mouse-port and it was raised slightly.
So I adjusted the main board and lay it
in a more flat status. See if that works.
Sorry for the snide comment but I gave up
years ago asking questions on forums about
the 1200 as the response was and always still
is... ' It's a capacitor issue '.
Trust me it is never about capacitors.
I have over 25 Amiga 1200s, all working
and over 18 of them fitted with traditional
hard drives. That is 2.5" for the most part.
If you want to keep your Amiga alive just keep
using it and stop hacking the cases around with
all this new nonsense that just degrades the
computer. You gotta stay commando and true to 1992,
the year of our creator.
Anyway that didn't work. The floppy is
still stuck... Man I need a cuppa tea.
Time to look under that motherboard
which actually can be just lifted out.
I checked the board and the case and
found nothing wrong with either.
I carefully rebuilt the Amiga 1200
seating all the parts level.. and
Didn't make a blind bit of difference.
Nothing for it sadly
I used an old Amiga case and swapped
over the motherboard.
That worked. And why ?
See next post
