External Floppy to IDE

[JDunlap]

Hello all,

I think that I have just come up with an idea for my first mod. I just purchased a Panasonic JU-257A606P and a Panasonic JU-257A607P from EBay. I know that the 606P can be modded to an Amiga drive. Has anyone tried the 607?

Anyway, what I want to try is to make my own external floppy drive for my A500 out of one of these drives by creating a 23 pin D-Sub Amiga External Drive port to 34 pin IDE + power for drive converter. I am thinking to enclose the system in a case so the only cable required would be a 23 pin cable at both ends. (Or I may do a 25 pin connector to the case, because I have some 25 pin D-Sub connectors laying around.)

I have found the pinouts for both ends, and it seems to be possible. I think that this will probably be possible from examining the pinouts and may be cheaper than buying an external floppy for the Amiga.

My biggest question here would be if there are any changes to the modifications made to the drive to use it externally. For instance, would I still have to change the drive from DS0 to DS1. Also, what if I wanted to add daisy chaining? Does the Amiga use the drive select lines to choose the other drives and how does it do it?

Thanks for any help.

[Jope]

The 607 is probably possible to modify, crack it open and see if there's a DC/RY jumper and a DS0/DS1 jumper.

The 23 pin connector contains all the signals you need to make an external drive. The mechanism needs to be DS0. There are many documents in aminet's doc/hard, you need two TTL chips for the circuit in the external drive end.

[JDunlap]

@Jope:

Thanks for the info. Now, I just need to wait for them to arrive.