Expert: Gregory Donner - 11/6/2008

Question
HI, i just got an Amiga 500 from ebay and im having some problems with it. I noticed a disk was stuck in the main drive (Kindwords) but i tried starting it anyway as it has an external drive, when i first started it up it took me to the amiga dos screen and i could load up the stuck disk from there but i was trying a lot of old games in the external drive and only 1 of about 30 worked. SO i though (like an idiot) that i would try and get the stuck disk out with plastic tweezers! After some shunting around the disk popped out and i restarted the comp and now it has a hand holding a disk saying amiga work bench and underneath it says 1.3

When i try to put a disk back in the main drive its very akward and i have to manouvere it and it makes some strange noises :( MY external drive is not responding when i put any disk in it either! I have an old workbench 1.3 disk and ive tried it in the main drive and it goes white for a second then back to the workbench hand and as i said the external drive is not responding to any disks!

Have i messed the comp up forcing the disk out? i really want to play my amiga so any help would be much appreciated! Thanks!

Answer
Hi Gary,

It sounds like your boot disk is bad (seeing as it apparently tries to load Workbench, but fails, and returns you to the boot screen). It could also possibly be a bad disk drive itself, but I would try getting a replacement disk first, and trying that before pursuing a replacement floppy disk drive. The Amiga 500's internal disk drive is normally a bit noisy, but if it seems to be persistent/stuck when making the noise and not getting anywhere, I would (again) suspect either the diskette or the drive itself.

Note that with the extreme age of Amiga diskettes (even if they're brand new), it's not uncommon for them to fail or develop read/write errors...20+ years is a very long time in computing terms.

For replacement Workbench disks, the best places to look are probably AmigaKit (www.amigakit.com), eBay.com or Software Hut (www.softhut.com).

I hope this helps!

Greg