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.
