Amiga floppy disk blues

imitation

So I recently moved out, I brought my trove of amigas, a ps1 and dreamcast with me. I chucked them into my attic up until last week until I had a guilt pang and realised I had enough room to set them up outside of the cold damp attic. Both the a500 and a1200 work, after there expansion cards were removed (seems both clapped out ). Even the 1084s monitor worked. Sathough I cant either to read disks, it seems either the drives are dead or the disks are, its not really surprising considering disks died during its hey day, never mind 20 years on. Anybody else have this problem, i have to say im finally jelous of those snes and megadrive owners

Steve X2

Not the most cost effective way to enjoy an Amiga but this is what I did on my A600 a little while back.

http://www.retrovia.ie/showthread.php/15916-Amiga-600-Floppy-Emulator-Mod-%28with-LCD%29



It's a floppy drive emulator that loads real Amiga disk images via an SD card.

Dr Bob

I've a load of amiga disks knocking about here , if you want a lend of one or two tested working ones to try out on the drives let us know.

imitation

Thanks for the offer, I actually got one working ( got a drawer of about 100), so I think it might a combo of dodgy drive + dodgy disks preventing the majority from working.

I was looking at those neat SD floppy emulator. They have one big problem though, they don't make that awesome clunking noise the real deal does, your nearly into emulator territory. Might still nab one though.

Steve X2

imitation wrote: »

Thanks for the offer, I actually got one working ( got a drawer of about 100), so I think it might a combo of dodgy drive + dodgy disks preventing the majority from working.

I was looking at those neat SD floppy emulator. They have one big problem though, they don't make that awesome clunking noise the real deal does, your nearly into emulator territory. Might still nab one though.

They do make that sound by the way
And all you're emulating is the drive itself.

imitation

Not to be out done I played around a bit more, I actually managed to get my old 120 meg hdd working and with a 44 pin to 40 pin IDE adapter from Maplin I was able to pull all my data off with no errors and get the old girl running inside UAE. Hurray for Gunship 2000 and Frontier elite saves from '94.

I did a bit of research online and I found that you can get CF card to IDE adapters fairly cheap, a bit more research and I found SD card adapters with are even cheaper and actually work out a bit more compatible. Its nice to have 4gb instead of 100 meg, and a 8 second boot time

Finally I was able use a bit of software called WHDload to run my old games from the harddrive, bypassing the dos. As my own workbench was a mess and was missing every library needed for the software I used a nice workbench called ClassicWB which is all setup to run WHDload.

Heres a few pictures, include the game of UN squad I enjoyed after spending the whole weekend copying files in and out of WinUAE and trying to figure out the whole setup. I don't get every game running, but the adapater + sd card is 20 euros instead of 45-70 euro for the ADF to physical converter. Who knows though, I kind of have a taste for it after this, and the A500 seems to be in near perfect nick apart from a broken 512kb expansion card.

Gotta say, the 1084s is a fantastic monitor too, pin sharp after 20 years, an A500, A1200, PS1,Dreamcast and Xbox. It seems smoother in some respects to a LCD, even a new 120hz LCD. And the speakers are pretty solid too !

SirLemonhead

Open those expansion cards (if they're the ones sealed in a metal box) and check for a battery on the circuit - it might have leaked.

o1s1n

If you want to save yourself some time, this guy sells CF cards preloaded with workbench and loads of software/games. Just pop it into your A1200 and away you ho.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/200852671803?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

As a matter of interest, what kind of cable do you use to connect your A1200 up to that 1084s?

I bought a 1084s last week and realized it doesn't have a standard scart socket (only DIN 6) - so had to get an adapter. Hopefully it works!

imitation

I'm using one of these. I used the composite for PS1/Dreamcast as well, but naturally the quality isn't as good.

The Preloaded CF is probably the way to go, but I would have deprived myself of a weekend of cursing at winUAE while hunting around for SD cards it would pick up (aka not a janky lidl one I brought 5 years ago). Plus I wanted to combine my old whdload collection with its saves from way back when.