Booting from an external floppy drive?

[Dreedo]

Hi, I've gotten a bit confused as to what's correct on this subject.

I was told in a previous topic of mine, that external floppy drives won't boot most programs unless you swap from lines or something.

But on another site, I read that if you have KS2.0+ you can use the bootmenu on the KS screen and tell it to use the external floppy.

Which is right? Or are both right?

Thanks.

[Arnie]

You can boot from DF1: from the boot menu or by inserting a AmigaDos disk at the boot screen. What you can't always do is boot from games that only work from DF0:

[Photon]

What Arnie said. The reason is those games are either hard-coded to only control the motor etc of the internal drive (many until 1991) or the loader works with any drive but assumes you 'boot from the internal drive like a normal person/like the manual says (said)'

What you can do is mod the Amiga motherboard to make the external drive work as the internal. It's permanent unless you connect a switch, and requires not very easy soldering. (Maybe Amigakit has some adapter, but I don't think so?)

The other way is to modify the loader program on the floppy disk. That is usually much harder, unless you're an experienced cracker.

Selecting to boot from another drive in KS 2.0+ bootscreen doesn't help.

If it's a normal disk that boots to CLI and loads some CLI/Workbench program it works.

[Dreedo]

Ah i see. Thanks for your help.

[Galahad/FLT]

Action Replay II and III had a force boot mode if I remember correctly

[Dreedo]

I'm probably better off saving up for an internal drive I guess.

They're rarer and more expensive than external, but in long-term it'll hopefully work out better.

[cosmicfrog]

rarer and more expensive than external

they should`t be, all amiga floppy drives are electrically compatible with each machine, however some a slightly physically different. so if u take an external drive out of its casing it should work in your A500

[Dreedo]

Mmm cheapest i can see on ebay for an internal is £14 with P&P, there is 1 untested one available for auction.

I have 1 floppy drive in my A600, but i use that as not many games will run off the CF card on it. But i have tried and it does work with it, albeit not very stable (tilting 500+ will make the drive go inside the Amiga, thus requiring me to open it up to move it back).

I don't have any money free at the moment anyway, probably be next year before i can get hold of one with all the new video game releases.

[Quiet_Man]

Depends on how patient you want to be, I picked up an internal A600/1200 drive for just £7:50 inc p&p last week on ebay. They frequently come around, it just depends on how quickly you want one.