Expert: Gregory Donner - 10/30/2007

Question
My internal drive just burned out I believe. It squeeks and every disk that used to work now says after loading for about 10 seconds that it has a read write error and that i should use to disk doctor to fix it. nothing will load not even work bench. i am aware that i am playing with 20 year old equiptment but i still would like to buy a new internal drive. A500 Internal Disk Drive 880k has come up in my search..is this the drive i need to replace my old Amiga 500 internal drive. or are there others.. I just want to play the old games again and wondered if i could repair it myself with out sending it off to the shop? Thanks for your advice. Aaron

Answer
Hi Aaron,

I don't have step-by-step repair instructions for replacing an old internal floppy drive, but if you consider yourself more 'techie' and aren't afraid of taking some things apart, it shouldn't be bad. However, failing that, it's also possible to buy and connect an external floppy drive and boot with it, as well as playing all your games. The Amiga just checks/polls for the first usable/bootable drive, including external ones. If neither of these are good options for you, you could look into sending it off for repair (Software Hut being one of them)--www.softhut.com.

I hope this helps!

Greg