Atari STf cannot launch programs from floppies

[zenasprime]

Hi folks,

 

I just pulled my old Atari 1040 STf out of the garage after 15 years of neglect to work on some chiptunes. Unfortunately, whenever I try to launch a program from a disk I get an error which reads "Data on the disk in drive A: may be damaged. You must use the right kind of floppy disk; you must connect your hard disk properly." It does this with any disk I put into the drive. If I boot with a disk, the U.S.A. Language Disk for example, the computer will get stuck in a reboot cycle that never ends and does not present any error message. Oddly enough, however, I can view the files and directories on these disks as well as read any text document.

 

Does anyone know what could be going wrong? Are all my disks "damaged" after 20+ years?

[AllanHiggins]

20+ years is definitely a long time for magnetic media, so I would expect a good amount of corruption, but I would also expect to be able to run at least some small binary if I had a bunch of disks to choose from. You need a buddy to format a DD disk and store something on it for you to run. After 15 years your drive may be dirty or out of alignment.

 

One thing you might want to try after leaving a drive sit for many years is give it a workout to loosen up the moving parts. If you have a disk you don't need anymore just format it a few times. Do a long format, not a quick format. You should also be able to still find drive clearer disks available for sale, online at least.

 

Also, if you have contact cleaner you might want to spray the various internal and external cable connections.

 

On this subject, has anyone encountered a program that would "strengthen" the image on magnetic media? i.e. run through the entire disk reading each sector and then writing it back to the disk in the same spot. Just to freshen up the magnetic image on the disk.

 

-Allan

Edited January 25, 2010 by AllanHiggins

[nathanallan]

Try cleaning the drive, too, all but one of my drives have conked out on me, won't read a thing.

[zenasprime]

i'll give a blank a few formats and see if that does the trick. I'm a little bummed out that i may have lost my all my software. Is there a repository somewhere where i might be able to get fresh copies. Come to think of it, if i were able to download software how do i get it onto a properly formatted 3.5" floppy?

[zenasprime]

Okay so today I went to format a disk and I receive the following Error...

 

"Your output device is not receiving data. Before you retry, make sure it has power, is online, and is loaded with paper or film."

 

This is despite the fact that I can browse the directory hierarchy and view text documents.

 

Now I've also noticed that the keyboard wasn't responding to my attempt to give the disk a label name. I'm starting to have the terrible feeling that perhaps there might have been some hardware damage due to possibly getting bumped around while in storage.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what my next step in salvaging this machine would be?

Edited January 25, 2010 by zenasprime

[AllanHiggins]

An old keyboard not used in a while is likely to have dead or intermittent keys. Generally, though, using the keyboard will restore the keys. You may have to run through the entire keyboard, hitting each key firmly 20 or so times. I have had plenty of old keyboards like that and only one of them was not able to be resurrected after a good workout.

 

If your garage was damp, you can expect every piece of metal in your computer to have been oxidized to some extent, lesser or greater. Imagine every metal contact having its ability to conduct electricity degraded. You may find that your machine perks up after you re-seat every socketed chip and cable connection (unplug and re-plug-in everything that can be unplugged). Get comfortable with a screw driver and open the machine. Drive too. Seriously consider a liberal spraying of contact cleaner, available from your local auto supply store, just make sure that it has all evaporated before you power on the machine.

 

In cases of more serious contact decay, I have successfully used WD40 to restore electrical conductivity - just don't spray it on your parts directly... put a little bit on a cotton swab and then brush the pins. WD40 conducts electricity, so a little is a big help to an old connection, but too much is a bad thing since it could create shorts if you get a drip of it between contacts. DO NOT attempt to use WD40 to restore the keys on your keyboard - just exercise them like I said above.

 

Once you have everything back together, find a cleaner diskette and clean the drive as Nathan mentioned.

[zenasprime]

An old keyboard not used in a while is likely to have dead or intermittent keys. Generally, though, using the keyboard will restore the keys. You may have to run through the entire keyboard, hitting each key firmly 20 or so times. I have had plenty of old keyboards like that and only one of them was not able to be resurrected after a good workout.

 

I will definitely give this a go. I've moved the machine down to my basement workspace where I have more room for tinkering. I'll let you know if they come back to life.

 

If your garage was damp, you can expect every piece of metal in your computer to have been oxidized to some extent, lesser or greater. Imagine every metal contact having its ability to conduct electricity degraded. You may find that your machine perks up after you re-seat every socketed chip and cable connection (unplug and re-plug-in everything that can be unplugged). Get comfortable with a screw driver and open the machine. Drive too. Seriously consider a liberal spraying of contact cleaner, available from your local auto supply store, just make sure that it has all evaporated before you power on the machine.

 

While it's relatively "dry" in the garage (not accounting for possible humidity variations) I'm going to open er up some time this week and follow your advice. I'm not at all squimish about such things, just terribly under educated in the ways of electronics and their physical workings.

 

Thanks for your help!

Edited January 27, 2010 by zenasprime

[tjlazer]

Perform the infamous Atari Universal 4" drop. Report back.

Edited February 4, 2010 by tjlazer

[AllanHiggins]

Perform the infamous Atari Universal 4" drop. Report back.

 

I imagine that this technique was discovered in someone's fit of rage: they got so annoyed by their machine's unpredictable behavior that they grabbed the machine and smacked it around and were surprised to discover that it no longer gave them any grief.

 

...and were divorced shortly thereafter upon discovering that this approach did not work on women...

 

And speaking of inexplicable repairs, I had one yesterday: the night before I left my iMac G3 on all night and it seriously overheated because I had something on top of the machine which covered the ventilation holes. By morning the machine was totally dead. I let the machine cool for a couple hours, downloaded a repair manual on another computer and started running tests with a multimeter. After taking some components out and putting them back in I noticed that there was a spark of life: the firmware started talking. Still, the machine was seriously bugged, no disk or CD would boot, and the Apple hardware test program would crash and dump me out to the firmware's built-in monitor. But I kept running the prescribed tests, thinking that I would at least determine what parts I needed. But after another 2 or 3 hours of running tests, the machine gradually started passing more and more of them for no reason. I hadn't done anything that would have fixed it, other than let the machine warm up again. It's still working again today. -- this is the Macintosh version of trying to cure a hangover by having another drink the next morning.

[Atari_Owl]

Perform the infamous Atari Universal 4" drop. Report back.

 

Was this not patented by Apple for the III or Lisa?

Edited February 4, 2010 by Atari_Owl

[Christos]

It is in the atari st user manual AFAIK.