ScuzzBlog: Diaries June 2019 Entry 5th June 2019: Post 02: Amiga 1200 - Or simply Helena Amiga 1200 - Or simply Helena I have been running through the A1200s that I upgraded last year with new 2.5" hard drives and I was conscious that poor Helena had been upgraded and never actually recorded on the blog. This computer was listed at faulty at the time of my general review of all my A1200s and yet she is working without fault now. Twice I have worked on the computer, and not least to repair the floppy drive. I have included the previous blogs for reference below. She also was a bit mucky so I spent the afternoon cleaning the case and keys. All sparkly faded brown now, just the way I like them. Beauty is really in the beholder, is that what they say, and age in a computer simply is a mark of time. And so it isn't something that troubles me. The computer is without any expansion card though I did show a couple just for reference. Quite useful having an unexpanded machine for the odd game. And so why is she called Helena. Well at the time of the grand repair job that I was undertaking last year I was in the thick of writing a new book featuring the very lovely Clara Veiga. As you know I always use real people as the avatars for the characters and Clara's arch-enemy in the story was a creature called Jermaine. The woman was an immortal demon capable of shape shifting and wielding a very polished katana.. like in Kill Bill. I happened on Helena on YouTube doing a photo-shoot with the katana so it was an easy decision to use her avatar for the character. She kinda meets her demise by plummeting off a large cliff into a bottomless pit... but truth be told she still didn't die. That's Russians for you. She has her picture included which is from the Maxim photo-shoot which I would advise from visiting unless you are on your own and the wife isn't peering over your shoulder. Anyhoo... Jermaine or Helena was given a clean bill of health and returned to her quarters. That is the last of the A1200s, though tomorrow I am off to the city of Flibble where I am mayor. I will say no more. Bring a cardigan. I did play Aladdin on the 1200. There is this magic moment in the game where you jump on a camel and he spits out a projectile which takes down a baddy. I often just kept jumping up and down cus it made me laugh so much. Couple of points to note on any 1200... Always ask to see the rear ports. The mouse and joystick ports are the ones that will have a possible broken pin. Useful to have the warranty sticker intact. And check the rubber feet cus they can melt into a sticky goo. The one card shown is an 060 Apollo though it needs the libraries on the computer to work. The other card has a problem and tends to cause the hard drive to go AWOL. Each of the machines I upgraded carries a little symbol above the drive light. Saves me having to turn the computer over to identify which machine it is. There are no screws in the HD and I don't like it flopping around inside Helena. Whoo err !! Amiga 1200 - Or simply Helena The very lovely Helena Rosenkova. Place of Birth: Siberia, Russia. All my computers have to have girls names. After all that's why they are called Amiga. Everybody's Girlfriend. [ buy the album ] Previously on scuzzblog Amiga 1200 21 Odd label that says she was broken so I set about resetting the connectors and chips and gave the computer a good talking to. And she sprang back into life albeit that the floppy drive DF0 is an old busted. Needs some more work. Gave her a new name Helena and good to go.. Amiga 1200 Floppy inner workings Enter three more candidates to fix Helena. Number one just whirred and no activity. Number two was totally dead. Number three responded to pressing those front switches so decided to take a closer look. I cleaned and placed the disk in the drive. Seemed to be trying very hard to activate the read/write head. Maybe the bottom plate was stuck. The bottom plate needs to be hooked over that rotating arm that slides the outer disk shield across. It was at this point that the motor began to smoke.. badly. The drive then shot out fully and the power light on the Amiga went out. The drive sadly was totally burnt out. Back to drive number one and a rinse and repeat in metaphoric terms. Amazingly the drive head sprang into action... The monitor was showing a disk requester which is always a good sign. Needed a bit more work on cleaning the heads. And bending the bottom plate. Er !! I was using an old A600 Workbench disk to test the drive. Hence WB2.0. And she was alive. Turns out the bracket to the front of the unit was a little bent above the eject button and snagging on the bottom runner. I simply bent it level and the bottom plate released itself. Sadly my battery in the camera went pop so I couldn't record the event. Never mind. All fine now. And so the lovely Helena is now a fully functioning working A1200 again. To celebrate I just procured a 2.5" internal hard drive and now await its arrival. Good stuff Time for a cuppa. I am unable to screw the drive down into the cradle. Seems to be pretty stable. I may take a look later at a fixing method. It matters not that it's loose. I put a bit of paper under the HD to isolate the metal from the cradle. Remember pin 1 to pin 1 or bottom red ribbon edge to bottom pin. Difficult to get that wrong.

If you can only see this CONTENT window
then click the image above for the full site

Last updated 5th June 2019

Chandraise Kingdom

Keep the Faith
scuzzscink 2019