List of Amiga compatible PC floppy drives

[Olecranon]

I remember seeing a list on the internet that showed which 1.44MB PC floppy drives could be used as 880K amiga drives. But, I cant seem to locate it now. Anyone have a link to a list? I need a couple replacements for an A2000.

Thanks


Oh.. I'm also looking for the floppy cable hack documents. I think this just shows which lines to swap for a PC drive.

[Jope]

Lots of floppy drive documents on aminet hard/hack - happy browsing.

http://freewebs.com/computolio/amiga...atibility.html
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...t=chinon+drive

[Olecranon]

Thanks Jope, that was the exact list I was looking for. I have a chinon FZ-357 drive that "kinda" works. When I boot WB it shows DF0:???? on the screen. If I issue the DISKCHANGE command, I can use the drive fine. Everytime I change the disk I have to use the DISKCHANGE command so I'm guessing its something simple.

I'm going to try switching pins 2 and 34 on the floppy cable and see what happens.

[Jope]

That will get you somewhere. You probably need a good ready signal to boot some nondos games.

Another option is of course to cut the tracks going to pin2 and pin34 and then solder wires from where the switches should be to the pins.

[TjLaZer]

Try jumping J2 in underside PCB of Chinon drive, it should work fine.

[Overdoc]

Generally, every older PC diskdrive that provides a 'ready' signal can be used on the Amiga and will work 100% like a real Amiga diskdrive.
Another thing which is quite helpful is when a drive can also be jumpered to DS0 instead of DS1. (PC drives are jumpered as DS1)

Some diskdrives have jumpers where the diskchange (DC) and ready (RD) signals can be set. For Amiga use diskchange has to be on pin 2, and ready has to be on pin 34, and the drive has to be jumpered as DS0.

Some drives have only small solder pads on their pcb instead of jumpers. Most of the time you can just select whether ready or diskchange shoud go to pin 34, but nothing can be selected for pin 2!
In these cases you have to solder the pad for ready, and manually solder a small wire from the dc side of the solder pad to pin 2.

That's it

On drives which cannot be jumpered to DS0 instead of DS1, 5 pins from the drive cable have to be swapped.

I recently converted some Mitsumi D359 drives. They have solder pads for rd and dc and need the additional cable to pin 2. Later ones (e.g. the D359T6) needs the cable modification as well.
I think these are quite comon in older PCs, so we shouldn't run out of Amiga drives in the near future

[alewis]

@overdoc - yu go details on the mitsumi mod? I got a D359T5 here that needs modding - though I need to figure out how to remove the case first!

[Overdoc]

I will write detailed instructions soon, since this can be interesting for many people as the Mitsumi drives are quite common

[ElectroBlaster]

That would be excellent as I have just found one of these drives in my pc kit

[Overdoc]

Well, unfortunately I don't have any webspace to upload any pictures, and also my digital camera is only 640x350 pixels, so it cannot do any detailed pics, but I try to describe it in more detail.

The D559T1 and T2 have jumpers on the side if I remember correctly, which let you configure the drive exactly like you need for Amiga use. Simply set RD and DS0, and it should work.

The D359T3 and T5 drives have 4 very small solder pads which are marked with D.C and RDY below them, and ']34' is written next to them.
Now, the 2 left pads are connected to each other and also to pin 34 of the drive connector, while the 2 right pads are seperately connected to 2 pins on the big square chip on the board. One of them is the DC signal and the other one the RD signal.
Now, normally the 2 upper pads are connected to each other with a small SMD bridge, which means pin 34 is connected to the DC signal on the chip.
You now have to open this connection (desolder the small bridge/0-ohm resistor) and solder it to the other 2 pads, so that pin 34 is connected with the RD line of the square chip.
After this mod your drive can accept a Ready signal

All that has to be done now is connect pin 2 of the drive connector to the DC line of the square chip.
For this you have to solder a small wire manually from pin 2 of the drive connector to the 1 of the 4 pads which is connected to the DC line of the chip. This pad is on the upper right when you can read the D.C/RDY letters. It shouldn't have any connection with pin 34 after you have changed the bridge (check with multimeter)

I know this is an awful description but it is not easy without any pictures. I will try to do some pictures, hopefully they wil be ok ? Otherwise maybe someone can take a detailed picture of what I am talking about ?

I wish you all a happy modifying and good luck

[SilentBob]

There are places you can upload pics, like photobucket or Tinypic.

[coze]

there is also this page about modding pc drives. in spanish, but I guess it's quite obvious thanks to pictures

http://www.rabayjr.com/amiga_floppy_drives.htm

hey guys searched the net and my old spares box found 2 drives and no info but worked through a couple of different models and you can add the sony mpf920-f to your list of drives and the samsung sfd-321b /kchh to your list of working drives with mods, instructions are attaced below in PDF format

hope it helps

Andy