High density floppies

[Hiddenevil]

Back in the day, I had a 1.44mb external drive. Is it still possible to get an amiga reading high density disks?

[amiman99]

If you have high density disk drive that was made for Amiga then you can.

Also, on big box Amigas you can install LS120 drive on IDE port (IDE card on A2000/A3000) and then you can read 1.44MB disks.

[Docent]

Amigas 4000 were sold with high density (1.76MB) floppy drives - if you have one that works you can easily read such disks. I believe it is also possible to connect and use such floppy drive to other Amigas.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Yes I had Floppy drives HD on A4000 and external Floppy drives HD that I used on A1200, if I remember correctly it also worked on A600 and A500Plus.

With diskspare.device I formatted to 1968 kB

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by Docent

Amigas 4000 were sold with high density (1.76MB) floppy drives - if you have one that works you can easily read such disks. I believe it is also possible to connect and use such floppy drive to other Amigas.

Many A3000s also shipped with a high density drive.

[Matt_H]

Several vendors, including DKB and Power Computing, sold external high-density drives as well.

[ancalimon]

Amiga4000T only includes a DD drive but I replaced mine.

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

Amiga4000T only includes a DD drive but I replaced mine.

Only the C= A4000Ts shipped with a HD drive. Escom/Quickpak ones shipped with DD drives (well, HD drives used only as DD drives) as they couldn't easily source the half-speed HD ones.

[Hiddenevil]

So right now in 2020, if I wanted to use 1.44 floppy disk drive externally on a 500+. What would be my best options? Find an old Power XL drive? Or is there a modern alternative?

I tried using a 1.44mb ADF I created in WinUAE with my Gotek, but it read it as 880kb.

As the Amiga sees the Gotek as a real floppy drive, do I need to install a library file or device file for the Amiga to recognise high density disks?

[McTrinsic]

On the Amiga side there is nothing you need to do or even can do.

AFAIK the HxC can emulate HD-drives.


https://lotharek.pl

Don’t know if the gotek can be convinced to do the same.

[Misclegend]

the only high density floppy drive which exist was the chinon FZ-357A
was shipped with some A4000 and some A3000 before commodore went bankrupt

however there were some commercial modified drives which worked as high density drive on the Amiga, external and internal
but those were not authentic Amiga floppy drives, were modified hacks which never worked 100%

you need kick 2.0+ to connect natively a high density drive on any Amiga

anyways I wonder why today someone in 2020 want to install a high density drive? is a waste of time because there not programs or games which comes in such format

[McTrinsic]

The Dell floppies are one example of external HD floppies. With adapter, you can also put them internally. Or re-solder that small pcb that is inside the cable of the to the internal floppy cable.

I have one for years and haven’t had any issue whatsoever. And I used it under Kick 1.3. Especially there as it was my minimum bootable environment.

Other drives were external ones by e.g. Micronic. Also, these drives have a good reputation for their robust design. No issues that I am aware of.

Could you cite some examples for the issues younger referring to?

[Hiddenevil]

I can't speak for anyone else, but as an amiga user, I still use floppy disks on a regular basis. I find it's the easiest method of transferring data from one Amiga to another.

I'm currently setting up an A500 and unlike using a 600 or 1200, I don't have the luxury of a PCMCIA port with a CF adapter for copying data over. So zipping things up across a few high density disks seems to easiest method.

[Misclegend]

Originally Posted by McTrinsic

The Dell floppies are one example of external HD floppies. With adapter, you can also put them internally. Or re-solder that small pcb that is inside the cable of the to the internal floppy cable.

I have one for years and haven’t had any issue whatsoever. And I used it under Kick 1.3. Especially there as it was my minimum bootable environment.

Other drives were external ones by e.g. Micronic. Also, these drives have a good reputation for their robust design. No issues that I am aware of.

Could you cite some examples for the issues younger referring to?

if you say you used a high density floppy on kick 1.3 surely you installed some unknown drivers because kick 1.3 and older kicks do not have native support for HD floppy drives

basically the issues of the non authentic HD flopppy drivers were not reading disks reliably in DD format, specially games which have copy protection, the ready signal was not correctly implemented in these modified drives

[Misclegend]

btw,

if anyone want to transform some PC floppy drive to a real Amiga High Density floppy drive " : here is the correct documentation

but please note is is not an easy task

[McTrinsic]

In any case I used the Dell drive with a Kick 1.3 system and did not find any issues with games or whatsoever. I don’t have the system set up currently so i cant say if i have a modded kick. Could actually be . Anyways - with DDs disks I have not encountered any issues.

[Firthy2002]

I have a high density drive in my A1200. Ejecting disks is a bit fiddly though due to the eject button being standard and the A1200 case being moulded for the included floppy drive which has a unique button. When I can set my A1200 up again I might switch back to using the standard floppy drive internally and modding the high density drive to be external.

Working high density Amiga floppy drives are quite hard to find, and more expensive than regular Amiga floppy drives. Took me a while to find the 2 that I have (both Chinon FZ-357A), and unfortunately one of them does not work correctly.

Even if you can get a working one, they are slow and cumbersome. I'd seriously consider a more modern alternative for data transfer between PC and Amiga.

[ma693541]

Originally Posted by Hiddenevil

So zipping things up across a few high density disks seems to easiest method.

Have you tried ParNet and a modified Parallel cable between your Amiga's?