Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    I can't answer any questions on floppy maintenance, since I feel I'm
    running on borrowed time having never cleaned my drive; single floppy
    on an A1000 bought used from a guy who lights his next cig before the
    current one is finished (sorry Ken ;^)), and from the look of the
    yellow crud I scraped off of everthing, the ashtray was parked inches
    from the machine. Now it's in a much cleaner environment; ya right.
    Even though my wife faithfully dusts it every day, she's a smoker (not
    near *my* machine, right dear?) and with a sticky-fingered six year old
    and three dogs, well, your average household I guess.
    
�        Why am I asking???  I'm having a problem with my Space Ace
�      floppies.  We've only used it for about an hour or so, and now
�      it won't load. It starts to load and run the intro, but then it
�      just hangs and "spins it's wheels" trying to continue. None of
�      my other floppies do this so I assumed it's the Space Ace floppy.

    I've had similar problems on occasion with Space Ace; they definetely
    use some strange but wonderful boot code. I've never seen a floppy-
    based game or application come up so fast. Anyways, I think that this
    might be part of the problem, either minimum tolerance to errors or its
    copy protection scheme.
    Also, I don't know what your hardware set-up is, but Space Ace doesn't
    like a C-Ltd. TimeSaver when running on an A1000. I had all kinds of
    problems; from the one you described to hanging when any keyboard
    commands were entered (especially "P" for pause). I disconnect the
    TimeSaver when playing Space Ace and it's been very reliable.

    Pete

    P.s. For me this game is worth the aggravation. My daughter does a mean
         impression of Commander Borf's "You cannot win!"

    re .1:
    your A1000 Timesaver comment really hit home.  This is the first
    software product I've heard of that objected to it being plugged in.
    Sounds like you really enjoy Space Ace to put up with the hassle.
    
    thanks for the warning,
    dennis

    I've had to clean cat hair out of my internal A1000 drive and an
    external Flexi-Data drive (that had a dust cover door).
    
    It helped with the internal drive, but not with the external one.
    Which seems to no longer reliably format disks.  Reading and writing
    works ok.
    
    dennis
    

    I only have 10 month Amiga-experiences, but from my Apple II-live
    (more than 7 years) i have to say that most of the floppy-trouble
    begins AFTER THE  F I R S T  cleaning.
    Exactly: I never cleaned my boot-drive, but after five years i opened
    the second drive (plug-problems) and after the repair i thought now
    when the cover is open i can clean this thing, and i had the first
    read/write errors after that action. The result was that i had to clean
    the drive on a regular base from this time on.....
    
    RALF
    ====

    re .4:
    The real reason why I cleaned my internal drive was because Populous
    was refusing to boot anymore.  Turned out that Populous' copy
    protection technique had walked the connector on the back of the drive
    enough so that no copy protected disks would boot, but I could still
    read/write ok.  Reseating the connector fix that problem.  While I
    was hunting around in there that's when I saw and removed the cat
    hairs, but there weren't enough to have caused a problem.
    
    dennis
    

    I've always been led to believe that you DON'T, under ANY
    circumstances, clean floppy drives, and that the only people who
    will disagree are those who sell cleaning kits...
    
    If you need to make backups I recommend the "Synchro Express" hardware
    copier - haven't seen anything yet that it won't copy.
    
    -Rog
    

    re:.6 Who would tell you never to clean floppy heads and why do
    these people not like you ?  You are aware that the heads on a floppy
    drive ride on the disk surface itself, yes? You are aware that this
    sort of contact can cause residue buildup on the head and that this
    residue is quite abrasive and likely to damage any surface it is
    applied to, yes? If occasional cleaning can limit the damage to
    your disks - especially those which would be difficult or imposible
    to replace - then you ought to clean them. They certainly ought
    not be cleaned often as this is likely to abrade the heads or lead
    to other damage (especially for those who disassemble to clean)
    but it must be recommended as an occasional practice. Many users
    with hard disk drives will never use their floppy drive enough to
    warrent cleaning but those with no other drives need to monitor
    this quite closely.