chessplayerjames Posted June 19, 2018 Share Posted June 19, 2018 Hello all retro Atari users, I haven't used my Atari for around a year now. I hooked everything up yesterday, and the Atari 800XL still works fine. However I am having severe issues with the disk drive. I was able to load one of my homemade Basic programs and some songs that I had composed. However, any further attempts to load any games, Dos, or reload the Basic program have failed. I get g4 and g5 errors on the drive on ANY disc that I am trying to load. I do not know much about drive maintenance (my young age relative to 8-bit computers may be involved). I do not know if I should try cleaning the head or if I need to put some kind of grease in the rails where the head moves. I know that the information on the disks is still intact (for the most part anyway), because I was able to load several things on my floppy disk, and later it would try to load and after a few beeps would give the error "blurp". After repeated attempts, it won't correctly load anything anymore, so that's why I think it's a drive maintenance issue. All help is greatly appreciated. Thanks, James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xrbrevin Posted June 19, 2018 Share Posted June 19, 2018 hi, in general, it is worth cleaning the heads with isopropyl alcohol and also check the head rails are nice and free - light oil if required. my indus used to do intermittent G5 errors and it turned out to be the socket for the ROM chip. i pulled the chip and the socket pins were 'aged' a dark dull grey so i fitted a new socket and all is well. its good practice to reseat all the chips tho hope this helps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted June 19, 2018 Share Posted June 19, 2018 To me it seems like the first disk that loaded has flaked off some of its oxide and clogged the head. It would be a good idea to get a supply of alcohol & cotton swabs and some fresh disks. Procedure: 1: Clean head. 2: Read source disk into Copymate. 3: Clean head. 4: Write new disk. 5: Repeat for next disk (starting at step 2) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chessplayerjames Posted June 19, 2018 Author Share Posted June 19, 2018 Thanks to both of you for your suggestions. I cleaned the head with some alcohol and it seems it is now able to read some disks. About the CopyMate, is that a program for copying disks? I have around 30 or so disks, so it would take me quite a while to copy all of them. Thanks, James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted June 19, 2018 Share Posted June 19, 2018 Try this: http://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/holmes%20cd/Holmes%201/ATR%20Programs/Applications%20A-Z/Copymate%204.4.atr or http://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/holmes%20cd/Holmes%201/ATR%20Programs/Applications%20A-Z/Copymate%20XE%203.7.atr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chessplayerjames Posted June 19, 2018 Author Share Posted June 19, 2018 Thank you for the reply, unfortunately I am limited to typing in the Basic code since I have no way to communicate with any modern hardware. I am looking into getting an SIO2PC converter soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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