ScuzzBlog: Diaries October 2017 Entry 20th October 2017: Post: 5 It's a 2.5 inch struggle I struggle like mad to keep Amiga 1200s running on traditional hard drives. That means 2.5" and at a push 3.5" drives. I have been working hard to get a whole bag of old 2.5" drives working with limited success and tonight I felt I was going up and down and up and down in terms of success with a couple of machines. I have 26 Amiga 1200's of one form or another and currently have 16 of them running with conventional drives. I do not have a CF card for an Amiga 1200... nor am I likely to ever get one. I have a plastic tub that sits behind me here and I regularly have two Amiga 1200s running with flaky or busted drives that I tinker with. I have managed to get two working this week and tonight it was time to test another. And man was I so close with the first round. I have this A1200 that has a particularly annoying case insomuch that I cannot for the life of me eject a floppy disk from the side. I have tried everything but there is just something wrong with the case. Anyway, it has a busted IBM drive inside and in a fit of desperation I powered up and down with a brick to see if I could kickstart the thing. Nothing was showing on the screen with a floppy boot but I did have drive light activity and the drive was powering up. I moved to the other room where I test these things and what I found when using HDToolbox was the drive being recognised. I could even see the partitions but nothing on the Workbench. So I basically changed the Work from booting to no boot and saved and like magic the drives appeared on the Workbench. How excited was I. I rebooted and they vanished. The drives had all the hallmarks of a 3.5 install so I thought I should try the drive in a 3.1 ROM machine. Sadly this rendered the drive dead or unreadable. So sad. I could no longer see the drive with the HDToolbox. So I bagged the drive and have put it in the freezer. Some times works. I then pulled another 1200 that I was having issues with and that too had a busted hard drive. The machine kinda powered up but no drive activity and the floppy was not working. I opened up and all I was getting was the power light. My notes on the machine suggested a problem and I had intended having a look when I got a moment. I decided to pull the hard drive and switch to the machine I had just been working on. AMAZING !!! the drive powered up. It runs with a very odd Workbench but fires up no problem. Only an 85MB drive but a drive all the same. I now have the machine sitting behind me and she will stay on test here for a few days. Thing about the 2.5" drives is you just have to keep them running. So when I get one working I just make sure the computer is used once or twice a week. Better to fire up once a day. I did learn from a Viper and a HD card on a 2000 that if you leave the drives running they can just burst back into life. Either that or hit them or freeze them. There is very little else you can really do. The best though is just keep them oiled by running on a regular basis. Like I say I have 16 A1200s with the regular hard drive and just this week I have managed to get three more working by basically hitting them with a blunt rubber end to a screwdriver. Works for me. I have had three more on power all week and they have been slowly improving. I have had them in the freezer for a day or two. See if that helps. I won't give up... not until they expire completely. First A1200 for the evening with a broken IBM drive that showed some signs of life Swapped out for a machine with the 3.1 but sadly died during the process. Bagged and now in the freezer. So sad. Second machine with broken drive and swapped the dead drive out into the earlier 1200 and like magic fired into action All singing dancing ARQ and magic menus A touch elaborate for my tastes... but hey Quite a busy Workbench that definitely was not of my making Magic Menu in the WBStartup... Hmmm that may have to go. Like ARQ though A lot to take in . Just need to test the drive And so another 1200 has an internel drive This computer was the third that I acquired It was given to me by a good friend, probably around 1997 if I recall. Sadly it always had this problem with the floppy drive and the case alignment. Odd one that. Time to extract the other 1200 from test and put the freshly rejuvenated machine in its place Poor old Pmello... from Bristol. So funny with just the 85MB hard drive. At least the heart has moved to a better place. I will get round to fixing her.. promise

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Last updated 20/10/2017

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