Floppy Drive - PC Drive Non-Mod Method (maybe?)

[Ray T. Racer]

Hello World :

Initial forum post concerned reviving an A4000 040/30Mhz . This thread is an off-shoot of that , in the sense that several things discovered
along the way of "Reviving Dead Amiga Model 040/30" , may be helpful to others .

Cut to the chase (15 years later) - Dead hard drives - Moldy Floppies - Every Workbench install floppy with bad sectors , but maybe it's not
just the Floppy Disk but may be the floppy drive also (it was indeed) .

So Google 4 help & find advice suggesting that one may be able to use 2 PC floppy drives & certain elaborate floppy cable hacks will cure my problems .

Tried them all . No Luck At All .

Accidentally do a 'Hard Boot/Soft Re-boot' (PC floppy /PC cable) & Fred Fish is there patiently waiting & appears on the Workbench !!!!

Kill Me Now ...

Solder this poor old dilapidated Amiga cable back together once again just to check & it ALSO boots the PC floppy drive into Workbench .

Sony Z/161 MPF 920
Panasonic JU-257A606PC

Hard Boot & then a 3 finger soft boot on this A4000 040/30 Mhz does the trick , somehow , but no idea how . (R U kidding me???)
Cheers,
Ray T. Racer
K.M.N(ow)!!

[solarmon]

When you perform the power on and soft reboot, do you already have the floppy disk in the drive?

[Ray T. Racer]

Originally Posted by solarmon

When you perform the power on and soft reboot, do you already have the floppy disk in the drive?

Hi :

Thanks for your reply & sorry 4 not including the exact boot sequence . Was way-way past my bedtime when I finally logged out .

Boot steps below . Make sure you have located PIN1 correctly on the PC floppy drive . One of mine had PIN1 beside the power cord, and the other was opposite . A constant floppy drive light suggests the cable is inserted backwards .

BTW - Have only tested this method as a single Internal Floppy Drive !

1) Pull the power cord for a few seconds just to make sure it is a true "Cold" boot. (probably not required except for testing purposes)
2) Ejectl any floppy disk out of drive & turn power on & boot up normally .
3) Look for your DFO??? & DF1??? Icons on the Workbench .
4) Insert your favorite Fred Fish & make sure floppy drive light is out .
5) Soft boot (CTRL/Left Amiga/Right Amiga)
6) Fred Fish should be mounted on Workbench in place of the DF1??? icon . DFO??? should still be there .

The above worked every single-solitary time in this A4000/30 , with both the floppy drives mentioned in the initial thread post . Cross Dos floppy disk formatting also worked , as well as regular formatting . Boot Disks also booted fine , but no game disks to test .

I used a PC floppy cable that didn't have a covered hole on PIN4 , and I used the connector without the 'twist' in it . Later I gently pulled the other connector apart ,un-twisted the cable, squeezed it back together & used it instead .

I really have my doubts that the above will work with a modern PC floppy . No reason why, just a gut feeling . Well , I know there are well know PC floppy drives that are hack-able, but they are all 15 years old & longer (circa 2020) . The two mentioned above are around 18 & 20 years old, never-ever used except for Windows NT installs (but seem to work very well) .

I just happened to have 2 of the most popular ones mentioned in the many/many posts I've read all over the net, including Aminet , which was the frustrating part, considering all the cable hacks/ work/time/million boots/ disappointment/etc . All with those 2 PC drives sitting there, staring me in the face .

It would be awesome to have a web page or Sticky somewhere with a list of any PC Floppy drives that actually do work , even if it is a small list .

Cheers & Good Luck !

Ray T. Racer

BTW , love that shiny Raytraced checkered globe in the Forum's top-left corner . Looks Real3D-ish

[Jope]

We have a long thread about floppy drives.

Your Sony is very easy to modify so that the diskchange and ready signals work so you don't have to use the diskchange command or hit reset every time you want to swap a disk.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=30944