newbie: disk offline....is it broken?

http://www.faq.msxnet.org/miscfaq.html

floppy format? hmm... 80 tracks, a bit more than a second/track, so one and a half minute? Try another floppy. Can you actually hear the floppy rotating? The diskdrive itself will rotate, but ofcourse the disk should too. If not, your floppy drive belt is most probably broken/worn out. Easy to replace, a bit harder to come by these days. Repair-Bas might have a few kilometers of these though

Look at this site:

http://bas-ditta.info/verkoopenlinks/doehetzelf/reparatie%20ss%20drive.htm

@tiziano: I assume you have a modded 8235 to read 720k disks. Have you tried with another floppy? I had same problem with Grey Wolf, the disk drive sounded bad and didn't work. First I thought that disk drive was dead. But tested with other disks and the drive worked fine. So the problem may be on the game disk. I'm waiting answer from Oniric to change it for a good one, maybe some of the floppies used were no ok. I hope is your case.

Question remains, is your VG8235 modded, does it have a doublesided diskdrive? If it's still original, you can't read doublesided disks.
Easy test. Get a floppydisk which can be emptied and format it. If you don't get the question if it should be double sided or single sided, you have an unmodded singlesided diskdrive. If it does format the disk, your diskdrive is not broken.
With most VG8235s it's easily visible if the diskdrive is still the original singlesided unit since it's a very high drive. If there's a drive that doesn't fill the gap vertically it's modded and might be double sided. If it fits seamlessly you most probably have the original singlesided drive. This drive is belt driven and belts dry out which leads to the disk not spinning anymore, leading to read/write errors.