ScuzzBlog: Diaries March 2020 Entry 4th March 2020: Post 03: A-500 - My failing floppy Pt III A-500 - My failing floppy Pt III Third time the charm.. or not. Probably not. Nothing for it but to change the floppy drive and to do this I used a spare form a busted A2000 that hasn't been used in over 15 years. Wish me luck. Previously: It is common place to have a clunky noisy floppy drive on an A-500. You have to remember that these drives are like thirty years old. So I can forgive a drive for being a little noisy, but what I can't tolerate is not reading disks. I had pulled this Amiga 500 to add to my feature on the numbers of A-500s I own and discovered that whilst it loaded the disk from the getgo it didn't load the disk again when I withdrew it. So I tried another disk and got the same result. The problem seemed to get worse the more I used the drive until it was refusing to boot also from a cold start. Nothing for it but to have a look inside the computer and see what was going on. Man was that a bad idea. I had four long sessions with this Amiga 500 in what was a marathon effort to get this A-500 computer working with the floppy drive. Here is what happened. A-500 - My failing floppy Pt III OK a bit extreme but time to test with another floppy drive. This time one suited for the A500 and one from a 2000. Sadly the 5.25" drive doesn't fit. The centres of the base screws are standard. The connectors are the other way round but that shouldn't be a problem. Everything is exposed to the base so care mounting in the A500. And the motor is on the rear to this model. And no capacitors to the front door. Like an idiot I fit the original feet and bottom raising plate. That was a mistake. DUH ! She worked just fine. But I couldn't shut the case so I split the feet, removed the support plate and then she fit in the case. Much better. Next problem was with the length of the floppy causing the ribbon to conflict with the shielding. So I bent it out the way. Working. And with the keyboard mounted. NOT WORKING !! Bugga. The symptoms were exactly the same. If I booted with the disk in she worked fine and then once I removed the disk the drive became inactive. So what was wrong. Can you guess ? Like me I guess you think it is an electrical issue. For me I was ready to throw in the towel and mark the machine for salvage..... or not !! READ NEXT BLOG

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Last updated 4th March 2020

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