would this floppy drive do?

[eLowar]

Greetings,

My current floppy drive is according to test dumps not suitable for making CAPS dumps. Now I've found an offer for a drive of the following type:

1541 replacement internal floppy Chinon FZ502

Would anybody happen to know if this drive would be suitable for this purpose? Thanks.

[Overdoc]

No, this is a drive mechanics for a Commodoe 1541 drive. It is a 5 1/4" drive and is suited for the Commodore 64 !

What you need is an Amiga drive where the drive's rotating speed can be altered. I am not sure, but I assume it has to be one where this can be done by software !
Drives where you can at least alter it by hardware ( screw ) would be e.g. the Chinon FB-354.

Other Amiga drive models are Teac FD235-F, Epson SMD 380, and some Panasonic JU-257.... ones. However, I have no idea which of these are suited for CAPS imaging ?

[jmmijo]

The CAPS dumping tool is not manufacturer specific only drive specific so you'll find some from one manufacturer that will work and other that won't :(

Also note that you may find an external Amiga Floppy Drive that will work just fine with CAPS :)

[eLowar]

Yeah mine was an external one. Works perfectly for everything except CAPS. I found another other for an internal A600/A1200 drive and I'm currently trying to find out what model exactly it is. I know that the tool is not manufacturer specific, however some people might have experience with one drive or another and could tell me something. I know that's a vague hope, but I thought I'd give it a shot before I spend more money on drives that are no good.

[jmmijo]

Well I've seen it work on some Chinon drives, internal and some external Chinon and Teac drives ;)

[fiath]

Originally posted by Overdoc
What you need is an Amiga drive where the drive's rotating speed can be altered. I am not sure, but I assume it has to be one where this can be done by software !
Drives where you can at least alter it by hardware ( screw ) would be e.g. the Chinon FB-354.

Err sorry? :shocked :)

You don't need any kind of special drive for dumping with the CAPS tool. Certainly not one that you need to be able to change the drive speed.

Here is a entry in the up and coming knowledge base:

Q. Do I need a special disk drive or hardware?

A.
No. Other than the appropriate Amiga, nothing special is needed.

The initial thought that the founder of CAPS started with was, "If the games themselves can read the data needed to pass their protection checks, it must be possible for us to read it too."

Unfortunately for him, it turned out to be very complicated, but this was expected. It is all very well for a game to get data that is knows how to read, but doing this in a generic way for data where you do not know how has been written is a very different thing. Fortunately the technical solution for this aspect of the project was finished near the start of the project in 2001, so we have been able to get on with the actual dumping and analysing of those dumps since.

Basically, part of the trick is this... The Amiga is able to *read* data written at different densities (sometimes thought of as "speed", but it is not really - at least in commercial mastering), if you know what you are doing and it is written within certain limits (this goes for the games that want to read it just the same). But the Amiga cannot *write* at anything other than the normal density. Hence taking advantage of this for copy protection was an obvious technique.

Density protection is just one kind of protection though, there are numerous (and inventive!) ways that the developers / publishers / duplicators / security firms used to protect the games.

In summary, your built-in Amiga drive will work fine. As will any Amiga drive, just as long as they stand up to our "quality assurance" tests. But most drives are usually in good working order.

[fiath]

In relation to to the actual question though, the guys more experienced on this is a bit busy right now, but as soon as I hear back from them, I/they will post it here.

I will say though that much of the time is not just the actual drive that is the problem, but how it is connected. The CAPS dumping tool essentially controls the floppy lines directly, and if a line is missing, funny things start happening, and partly why the tests are important.

The fact that your drive was external eLower, may be the cause of the problem - in that for some reason, all the lines are not connected. Or it may not, at the moment we just don't know, and why we need to try another drive.

This problem has been most seen on "Amiga Magic packs" where Escom decided they would break a ton of stuff by sticking a HD drive in there, but not connecting it properly.

What Overdoc says about that particular drive doesn't sound very good however. ;)

What jmmijo says about drives is very true too, it is the condition of the drive which is more of a problem than the drive itself. In fact, as far as I know - there are no specific drives that the CAPS tool has a problem with.

[eLowar]

Alright, I meanwhile asked at that other place and they say they have various models and they're all brand new. The price is a little high but in the long run it might be very well worth it seeing how many broken used drives I already got.

From fiath's statement I assume any of them would probably be good then, however they asked me what model I would prefer so suggestions are welcome.

A little later I'll try it one more time with the external NEC drive with 1 or 2 different floppy cables. For all that I know the cable is ok, but you never know. I hope nothing's wrong with the controller itself cause a new Amiga is out of the question with my current financial situation.

[fiath]

It is a shame stuff like this happens. :(

Anyway, I got some info from one of the tech guys...

"I can recommend the Chinon Models FB354, FZ354 and FZ354A. These have been used by Commodore and work very well with [the dumping tool]."

"The Panasonic JU-257 (which has been used by Amiga Technologies for their A1200s) also works quite well, but you have to do some changes on both the motherboard and the JU 257 for making it 100% compatible."

We do have details of these changes if that is the only one you can get hold of, but obiously less hassle = better.

Hope this helps!

[eLowar]

Just sent an e-mail to that shop asking if they got any of those drives. Now let's wait for the reply. Since the shop is in Germany too I wouldn't expect any reply tonight anymore though. :D

[fiath]

Great, fingers crossed!

[eLowar]

Allllright, got my reply. I can get the following drives used (with warranty): Chinon FZ354
Panasonic JU-257Which would be the ones mentioned earlier as especially suitable (for the Panasonic after modiciations), so I'll probably look into the Chinon drive and if it doesn't work I can just send it back.

From their new drives they suggested the following: Panasonic JU-253
Mitsumi (no details there)I assume it would be better to go with the ideal ones even if they're used. And they do say their used drives are in excellent condition and they do give me a warranty. What do you think?

[jmmijo]

Go with the used ones and thrash them with as many CAPS dumps as possible and see if it holds up ;) It should but if not and you have that warranty period with the vendor, then take them up on it. Of course don't say you're using the CAPS tool to dump your originals, they may say this will voide the warrant but it really is normal use, is it not :D

[eLowar]

My concern is not so much how long it'll work but rather if it'll work at all. :cool

[fiath]

Hey!

I'll have you know jmmijo that the CAPS dumping tool is very friendly to floppy drives! :p

We went out of our way to make sure it was nice to the drive - which is more that can be said for a huge number of game loaders! :)

[Akira]

All this reminds me, that I gotta try the dumping tool....

[jmmijo]

Originally posted by fiath
Hey!

I'll have you know jmmijo that the CAPS dumping tool is very friendly to floppy drives! :p

We went out of our way to make sure it was nice to the drive - which is more that can be said for a huge number of game loaders! :)

I figured that would get your attention :lol

@eLowar, you can't know it will work ahead of time without trying it out yourself, since it should work, the best thing would be to get both a CHinon and a Teac drive unit, one or both of these should work but hey, there are no guarentee's in life ;)

[eLowar]

I think you misunderstood my plan. I'll get the Chinon drive, try if it works properly at all for dumping and if not I'll send it back. That about the warranty wasn't about how long the drive will live but only about whether it'll work properly in the first place.

And you don't spell my nickname with an e before the r. :shocked

[Overdoc]

The FB-354 is a good drive, although it looks a bit cheap with the plastic parts.
But the advantage ( compared to at least some Panasonic models ) is that this drive accepts HD disks ! Ofcourse it cannot write or read them s HD formatted ( only the FZ-357A can ), but it doesn't make problems reading and writing them as DD ! ( Amiga 880k )
I herd also the Teac drive ( FD235-F ) doesn't have problems with HD disks.

Also, from my experience the panasonic drives are often malfunctioning in a way that they sometime work and sometimes not.
The Teacs often get misaligned ( almost always upper head only, which can be adjusted easily by eye ).
Chinon FB-354 sometimes get misaligned, get flaky sensors or one coil of the motor breaks :(

That's all I can say what I have made experiences from. However, could be seriously wrong....