Recent Amiga 1200 Perils

My recent success with finding a computer (an old Compaq S6100NX) on which to run Amithlon provided some motivation in connecting and powering up my old A1200 to do some file transfers.

I haven't used the A1200 much as it is aging and the hard disk isn't doing well. A hard disk replacement has been on my "To Do" list for quite some time whenever I got around to it. Well, I've now got around to it. My old Commodore 1084 monitor has been MIA until this past Saturday. After finding my 1084 and after finding a dedicated computer that can run my copy of Amithlon, I brought my A1200 and 1084 out of storage.

I wasn't sure any of it would still work because it has been several years since it was all powered on and used. I cleared a spot in my office where my MacBook laptops typically sit. While I was reconnecting the A1200 and 1084 I remembered that the small computer desk that it was on was the same desk that I had used the A1200 and 1084 on previously back in 1994! It's been a good desk for sure.

I let the A1200 and 1084 adjust to the temperature of the room for an hour before powering any of it on. I did this hoping to prevent rapid changes in temperatures in the electronics as both monitor and computer were stored in a cooler location.

After waiting an hour I turned the monitor on and then the A1200. And lights appeared on both! That was a good sign. Then I heard the hard drive start it's typical loading process and within ten seconds the AmigaOS 3.0 desktop was on screen. Shocked and happily surprised I adjusted monitor settings and started exploring the old "Work" volume to start remembering what was there. It was mostly old documents that I wrote back in College and some old BlitzBasic projects.

I read through some of the school documents and journal entries, and I saw how  some of my views had changed since the mid-90s. Some changes were good while other changes may not have been so good.

When I was done reading and exploring, I decided to try and transfer some of the documents and software. This is when my perils began. I put a 3.5 disk into the disk drive, but AmigaOS wouldn't fully load its contents. An icon of the disk did appear on the desktop, but the system never displayed the volume name and the light on the floppy drive never went off. I tried a few other disks but had the same result. I found a 3.5" disk cleaning kit that I had stashed away in a box of miscellaneous computer parts that I'll use to attempt to clean the drive. The cleaning will be a future endeavor in the next few days.

I had an old 2.5" IDE hard drive that I wanted to connect to the 1200 to see what was remaining on it. So after turning the A1200 off and removing the connected hard disk, I connecting the old 80MB drive. I reassembled the A1200 and turned it on. Nothing. Then I saw the AmigaOS ROM screen to insert media. Well, that wasn't good. So I figured the drive finally gave up the ghost.

So my old drive gave up the ghost it seems. The old 80MB drive was disconnected and the newer 120MB drive reconnected. I turned the A1200 back on to discover the computer wouldn't boot from the newer drive either. Definitely not good. I turned the computer off and unplugged it for about five minutes. After a short wait, I plugged it back in, turned it on, and it still wouldn't boot. Out of the frying pan and into the fire it seems.

At this point I decided to order a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adapter in order to connect the 2.5" drives to my up and coming Amithlon system to see if I have enough luck to spin the 120MB drive up one more time in order to copy the data off from it.

Of particular interest on my A1200 are legal copies of Final Writer '97, Final Calc, and Pro-Write. I was hoping to copy them over to the Amithlon and then to AmiKit for word processing and spreadsheet calculations. I do have the original 3.5" floppies of these Apps, but with my floppy drive also being in peril, I may have to check for another solution in raising these good-old Amiga Apps back to the land of the living.