ScuzzBlog: Diaries June 2026
Entry 11th June 2026: Post 1: Amiga Disks - Repair, recover, salvage, replicate.
Amiga Disks - Repair, recover, salvage, replicate.
Before I start today I thought I would repeat a couple of things.
First up what you are reading here is my blog. A kinda diary of
what I do with my life. Some of it is mundane and boring and I
make no apologies for that. It really is just a record of what I
do. Second I am a collector. I am not a computer specialist. I
have no repair or electronic skills. I do not program computers.
I have no training in electronics, computers, languages etc. I
am simply a collector. I am the custodian of my own museum of
computer memorabilia. What I simply do is look after it whilst
I am alive. What this means is checking to see if all is OK and
where I can put things right ... If I can.
Plate spinning. If you have seen the variety stage act that involves
the maintaining of plates spinning on sticks avoiding dropping any
then that is what I try to do. It is all I try to do.
Last but not least I am quite mad. My collection dominates my life
and it has taken over my home. In simple terms the collection is
the driving force here. I just assist in keeping it alive. I do
love my hobby and am very grateful for my computers in letting
me live out my passion each and every day.
That said some of what I do may appear to make no sense. That is
not important to me. I simply do what I do to enjoy my life and
maintain my treasured computers.
So what was I doing since the last blog ....
First up I was very interested in the AmigaGuide software that I
discovered on the Amiga Format subscribers disk and I spent a
bit of time copying over the disk to the emulator to use with
my Workbench.
Next I found a sad little box of disks in the disk room which
had inside a number of my favourite disks that sadly had fallen
over. So sad was it that I marched the box into here and decided
to recover them all from the dead. I can do that. So I fired up
the A1200 and my disk salvage kit and set too.
Amongst the busted disks were Textcraft and Logo from the A1000
era and I wanted to recover those in particular. Also in the
batch was some of my favourite PD games from the Checkmate.
The noises these failed disks made was horrendous. The screeching
and whooshing. I have explained the procedure before but what
I do is first tap and bend the disk. I then place it in the A1200.
Often the disk is not recognised. I simply get the old NDOS?.
Next up I clean the disk drive and have another go. That sometimes
shows a disk name.
With that done I place the disk in my high density drive. This
can be a painfully slow and noisy process. Hopefully I get a file
structure or tree on DOpus. As the disk passes over the files I
am greeted with endless disk read errors and simply cancel. Some
files will make it over in the copy process but most will be
recorded as a zero. I may also have to abort the process.
I attempt to copy what I can to RAM.
I remove the disk and clean the drive. I tap the disk and bend it
and now insert into my second external drive. Very often this
drive will read a lot more of the files. I copy as many as I can
to the files I have in RAM. Then rinse repeat placing the disk in
the A1200 and then round the houses again. Eventually in doing
this enough the whole of the disks contents will have been copied
to RAM. At that point I copy the contents and make an LHA archive
of the disk. If the disk is now acting as it should with all
contents running and copying freely I will attempt an ADF. Failing
that I copy the contents to a fresh disk and ADF that.
It took me till this morning to fix all the disks. The TextCraft
disk took the longest. At first it just screeched and showed
nothing on the screen. After a few hours I eventually got the disk
working.
My philosophy is to never give up. And contrary to all those skeptics
out there I somehow am able to mend a broken disk sufficient for
me to copy and safely archive with the emulator. I also duplicate
disks onto fresh disks.
But these are already copied disks? That maybe so but they also
have files on them from the original user and have been modified
to suit the way others worked. Having records of what other Amiga
users were doing with their kit and software is probably the most
important thing regarding the collection that interests me. With a
working disk I can use ARestaure and even check for deleted files.
Anyhoo all disks have been recovered and I write this blog and prep
for my next challenge. As to what that is, I have no idea. That is
the fun of being able to spend every waking hour playing with my
computers. I also don't sleep much. That is a waste of time.
Happy days !! Especially as its raining. Whoo Hoo !!!!!
Amiga Disks - Repair, recover, salvage, replicate.
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