Replacing an A500 Floppy Drive

As far as I can tell there are only two options if the floppy drive dies on a good old A500

i) find one second hand or buy an A500 off eBay and do a transplant.

ii) buy one off Power Computing which includes the Kylwalda interface. But I don't like the sound of "You may need to modify the chassis to allow for the different eject button" Does this mean carving up the case or is it just internal.

My DF0: works fine (touch wood!) but it's worrying that there are limited options for replacing it. This could be the thing that kills off the A500 and maybe other older Amigas for good if it cannot be replaced in future.

Am I worrying unnecessarily?!?

Once, I had a modified high density PC floppy drive with my 1200. As long as these are around, there's nothing to fear about. But even HD floppies are becoming obsolete.

[jmmijo]

Originally posted by Burseg
Once, I had a modified high density PC floppy drive with my 1200. As long as these are around, there's nothing to fear about. But even HD floppies are becoming obsolete.

Well yes and no Burseg, perhaps they are getting this way in Turkey and/or Europe, but if you just do a look on pricewatch.com for HD floppy drives you will find a boat load of vendors to order from. This isn't even counting the local mom and pop shops as well as the major retailers.

Also I think that with the advent of the Kylwalda boot board and the Catweasel interface, this always gives you an out. But I agree that eventually getting a standard 720DD floppy drive will become nye impossible

jimmijo, see this mainboard a-bit is manufacturing right now.

http://www.abit.com.tw/abitweb/webjs...en_0203131.htm

It has no com, ps/2 or printer ports. It does have a floppy controller because they say installation of -some- hardware requires a floppy disk. macs abandoned floppies long ago and it's the future of PCs as well.

[jmmijo]

Sure I can see this happening, but remember that there has been talk like this in the PC world for the past few years and the concept of bootable CD-ROM's has just now started to catch on, MAC's not withstanding!

As for the Legacy free PC, sure this will mean that floppy drives will eventually go the way of the Dodo, but hey everything does change and move on. Also remember that there are so many floppy drives out there that these things will remain with us for quite some time. Even well after the legacy free PC's have been on the market for quite some time.

I'll continue to use floppys as they serve a purpose for me, perhaps most PC users out there would like to not have to deal with a floppy anymore, well so be it, that will be one more drive I can get my grubby little hands on

[Overdoc]

Well, if you take a PC drive with Kylwalda controller or with an interface card ( like the Amiga-1200 made by ESCOM have ) then you will most probably have to cut the hole in your A-500's case a bit to the inside, to make it fit the eject button.
Most PC drives have their eject button a little bit more to the middle of the drive, while Amiga drives have it on the outside.
But with some luck you can find an old PC drive that has the button exactly where Amiga drives have it, and with even more luck you can find an old PC drive that has jumpers for ready-signal (RD) and diskchange-signal (DC) which you can use in the Amiga just by setting these jumpers correctly

Also, most of the time an Amiga drive dies because of one or both of the heads getting out of alignment.
I have realigned several drives and also once wrote instructions here in the board on how to realign a misaligned Amiga drive. Do a search for 'floppy' or 'drive' and you should find that thread

[Amiga1992]

Well, didn't someone here say that the Klywalda interface is poop with a lot of NDOS software?

If I was you, I wouldn't use that option. However, properly modified HD drives do work. I know because I have one on my A600. And it seems my A1200used to have one of those before, because its got this little carving on the side of the eject button

Also, most of the time an Amiga drive dies because of one or both of the heads getting out of alignment.
I have realigned several drives and also once wrote instructions here in the board on how to realign a misaligned Amiga drive. Do a search for 'floppy' or 'drive' and you should find that thread

It's good to know important resources such as this exist on eab but 122 threads come when you make a search for "floppy" and "drive" .

Actually, it's time to say what I was thinking for a while. There can be a hardware tutorial section on eab. A good number of board's regulars are not only into Amiga emulation but Amiga hardware as well. Personally I wonder how an ATX power supply, or a HD drive can be modified to work with Amiga. Sure I can do a search on google but this is "the" Amiga board and hardware tutorials seem to be a necessity. I'm sure someone can write such things. No?

If you think it's not relevant to eab, well it much more relevant than a GBA section (though that one might be cool as well.)

[jmmijo]

@Burseg, if you read this thread you'll see my mini-how-to on modifying an ATX power supply to work with an Amiga

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...t=power+supply

It's included in the Towering the A4000 Desktop thread.

Hmm thanks but I didn't understand a word of it

[jmmijo]

Let's simplify things for you a bit:

Place thingamajig into doohicky 'A' then place into whatchamacallit 'B' and you have thingamabob 'C'

Hey it worked! :laugh

[Overdoc]

Ooops, yes, you'r right, searching for floppy & drive doesn't make sense
But I found my thread by searching for 'align'.
It is here:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...ighlight=align

Hope that helps

It does, thanks

So the conclusion seems to be buying a standard PC HD floppy drive and modify it to work with the Amiga?

Can they be bought modified or it is a DIY job. Any good links on what's involved?



Thanks guys

[Overdoc]

Well, I don't think you can modify just any PC drive to work with the Amiga, but you can modify some. I know it is possible to modify Panasonic JU257 drives rather easily. But I don't think it is possible to modify newer PC drives which are sold right now, because the newer ones most times don't even have the DS0/DS1 jumper or switch, which is important for the Amiga.

I would say there are 3 ways to get a PC drive working on the Amiga:

1) Get a Kylwaldia controller
2) Build yourself an interface like Escom A-1200s have.
3) Modify the drive or modify the cable. There are some hacks like this on Aminet.

But there is some problems:
I once tried a cable hack from Aminet and it did work with Amiga-DOS disks, but didn't work with games and programs that don't use standard loading routines. The problem is the READY signal which is different on PC and Amiga drives. It is not only on a different pin but it is also different in it's signal form so that this isn't that easy to adapt, although there is a rather complicated hack for this on Aminet, too.
And I think also there is some problem with Escom A-1200s and NDOS disks where you have to do some modification to get them working ok.
And listening to Akira it seems the Kylwaldia has similar problems....

I would say the best alternative is to find an old PC drive like the Chinon FZ-357 which can be jumpered to work 100% on an Amiga. ( it also has the eject button in the right place )
Try some garage sale or fleamarket or used hardware store. You might find a Chinon FZ-357 or Panasonic JU-257 there !

[Shadowfire]

And just as an aside on the ATX power thing, if you're towering an A3000 (which usually requires a power supply TICK signal), there are jumpers on the motherboard that you can move so that the computer gets its TICK signal from the vertical blanksing signal instead of the power supply. No need to build a separate tick signal generator.

[jmmijo]

@Overdoc, yes really there is no one single best option here except of course to find original Amiga drives, perhaps some of us could come up with a nice list of drives we've all tried and some quirks/problems each one has had and compile a single database of possible sources ?!?

Seems to me I could start us off with some drives I have both internal and external and their makes and model numbers. I'll go through a few drives and post something here or better yet a new thread altogether

@Shadowfire, good info, yes this jumper has been mentioned on a few hardware guide sites I've seen. Isn't this tick signal basically a sync for the video output or something

[Amiga1992]

Jmmijo, werent you the one who reported the Klylwalda as being poop? After I read that message I desisted of buying that thing.

[ElectroBlaster]

Eh! why dont you just visit Eyetech.co.uk and buy their SonyDF0 adaptor!

Its just a basic interface board that fits onto the amiga's internal drive header and allows a bog standard pc highdensity drive to work as an amiga device! *dont let the Sony bit make you think you have to use sony drives as it will work with any pc drive!
I have one working with a generic pc floppy drive i bought recently and it works perfect! everything works, original games n all

I know this wont solve the problem of the a500's case and the eject button but at least it will still be working when the original drive give's up!