External Floppy Drive Project

[maaarcooose]

So I think I may be slightly mad.

I just purchased an old IBM external laptop floppy drive with the plan to modify it and then rewire the connector to the external port on my A1200.
I’m assuming that these older external drives, that do not use USB will have a full compliment of connections so I can rewire it.
I’ve also had it I’m my head that if used some of the later laptop floppy drives and modified them, because they are quite thin, it may be possible to fit 2 drives into the space of 1 in the standard Amiga case and even put one or 2 in the left hand side of the case.

Has anyone seen anyone do this before?

!m!

[attle]

Originally Posted by maaarcooose

So I think I may be slightly mad.

Has anyone seen anyone do this before?

!m!

Yep.


https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2413780

[maaarcooose]

Originally Posted by attle

Yep.


https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2413780

I love that you quoted both the questions.



!m!

[maaarcooose]

So I have a SONY MPF720-2 slimline drive that I want to connect to the external floppy port on my A1200.

The connection on the board looks like this.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bOx...ew?usp=sharing

With a large connector, presumably a specific IBM thing to allow many connections.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nWN...ew?usp=sharing

With this connection to the cable.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XE-...ew?usp=sharing

My goal here is to trace out the cable and then wire it up to a 23 pin connector.

My main questions here are, what specific things will I need to do to the drive before connection.
Also with the drive select 1,2 or 3, is there some logic that is needed at the drive end, so it responds to the select.
I also assume there is a specific way that the Amiga knows that there is another drive connected an what number it is.

Any light anyone can shed on this?


!m!

[amiman99]

With out reinventing things and to make things easier you may need this:
https://www.pcbway.com/project/share...interface.html

[hooverphonique]

Originally Posted by maaarcooose

Also with the drive select 1,2 or 3, is there some logic that is needed at the drive end, so it responds to the select.
I also assume there is a specific way that the Amiga knows that there is another drive connected an what number it is.

Any light anyone can shed on this?


!m!

You need two things:
- The motor signal for the drive needs to be latched using e.g. a d-flipflop, latching the mtr line using the appropriate sel line.
- When the amiga is clocking the sel line with mtr deasserted, you need to clock out a pulse train on the rdy line - this is how the amiga detects if and what type of drive is connected.