Expert: Gregory Donner - 5/1/2006

Question
Hi I have an old Amiga A1200 which I haven't used for a few years and recently decided to use again I connected it up to a monitor as I always used to and turned it on, the purple screen with the disk being inserted into a drive came on as usual however when I put a floppy disk into the drive it attempted to boot up and then stopped - the screen did turn to solid purple for a few seconds, the orange light on the machine lit up and I could hear it attempting to start however it then stopped and the original screen with the floppy disk came back on and the orange light went out. I tried different floppy disks ( including the workbench disks) and removed any dust from the disk drive however none of this changed anything. Is there any way of fixing this or am I going to have to buy a new disk drive? please help me with this problem!!!

Answer
Hi Emma,

From what you described, it's a bit difficult to know whether the floppy drive is bad, or the diskette itself. I would, however, suspect the drive, as if there was an error with just the diskette, the AmigaOS would have displayed an error requester (usually a CRC error). The Amiga is an old computer, and its hardware is beginning to show the tell-tale signs of aging (including floppy drives and diskettes that no longer work). I would suggest buying new diskettes first from Software Hut (www.softhut.com) or ebay (www.ebay.com) before buying and trying a new floppy drive. Bear in mind though that even these 'new' diskettes aren't new in terms of time--aging takes its toll even when they've been sitting on a shelf, so your results may vary.

I hope this helps; don't hesitate to ask if I can help with additional questions.

Greg