05 December 2012, 00:11 | #1 |
Glastonbridge Software
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Edinburgh/Scotland
Posts: 2,243
|
Can I use external floppy drive as internal drive?
I have an A1200 in the loft with a bust floppy drive, I tried replacing it with the drive out of a bust A500 which worked except it physically won't fit in the case :/
Found an old slimline external drive a while back, wondered if these were pin compatible on the inside. I took it apart just now, there are a couple of small chips on an interface board, I looked them up, a couple of flip flops and some Nand gates, presumably this just handles the drive select logic. So if I can get the drive out of the chassis can I connect this directly to the Amiga as DF0? Or do those chips do something else special? I would mod the A1200 case to allow the drive's own bezel to poke out. |
05 December 2012, 00:20 | #2 | |
Global Moderator
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Sidcup, England
Posts: 10,300
|
Quote:
The logic on the interface board is for latching the drive select signal and passing the correct drive select signal to the next drive in the chain, if it has a pass through connector. |
|
06 December 2012, 13:39 | #3 |
Glastonbridge Software
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Edinburgh/Scotland
Posts: 2,243
|
hmm, good news! I'll have to get that A1200 out of the loft again now then, I can use it for more experimental stuff.
I've had an idea since, I wonder if it's possible to use an Arduino to interface directly with a floppy drive's motors and read/write head to get it to read Amiga disks. I have found people's projects where they are controlling the stepper motor and/or spin motor, and others where they are using the head to store and play back audio data, so it must be possible. "New" Amiga floppy drives? Worth a shot. |
06 December 2012, 20:25 | #4 | |
Global Moderator
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Sidcup, England
Posts: 10,300
|
Quote:
|
|
11 December 2012, 22:42 | #5 | ||
-
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Helsinki / Finland
Age: 43
Posts: 9,882
|
Quote:
Kryoflux already exists, and it was not a trivial effort, but I'm sure the project would be very educational if you intend to recreate that functionality in your own design / code. Quote:
Or were you going to make another floppy emulator akin to the HxC or MegaDrive256? I'd recommend looking at something more powerful than an Arduino in that case, mainly so that your device would be faster and more convenient to use. I'm thinking minimum delay in mounting the images/converting adfs to raw data.. |
||
12 December 2012, 17:49 | #6 |
Glastonbridge Software
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Edinburgh/Scotland
Posts: 2,243
|
I gathered only some models of PC disk drives could be modified in this way, and that they were getting increasingly hard to find. Especially difficult is finding one that can read HD disks on Amiga.
|
12 December 2012, 19:15 | #7 |
-
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Helsinki / Finland
Age: 43
Posts: 9,882
|
Yeh, the HD part is the holy grail really. Hard to do without extensive drive modifications.
|
Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests) | |
Thread Tools | |
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Internal floppy drive on external port | VoltureX | support.Hardware | 13 | 05 August 2013 17:49 |
Internal Floppy Disk Drive problems | Riempie | support.Hardware | 10 | 20 September 2011 11:56 |
possible damage to internal floppy drive??? | NfernalNfluence | support.Hardware | 7 | 07 July 2007 00:14 |
Wanted: Internal A1200 Floppy Drive | Peanutuk | MarketPlace | 0 | 31 January 2005 16:38 |
Req: Internal Floppy Drive | oldpx | MarketPlace | 5 | 08 March 2003 01:44 |
|
|