New external floppy drives

[strim]

Hello.

I am making a batch of external floppy drives. I should start taking preorders in next two weeks - then I'll post appropriate news in the news section .

Production version will be coloured black (upper part and sides). Price in preorder will be around 50 EUR.

The Amiga-FDD interface we used here is very flexible and allows installation of unmodified PC drives, original Amiga drives and various floppy emulators (version with HxC preinstalled will be offered too).

Stanard version will ship with unmodified PC drives working as 880kB DD drives, but the interface can also work with HD drives (original Amiga and modded PC). Of course full NDOS and trackloading compatibility is assured.

[hese]

Support for 1.76MB would be nice.

[strim]

Originally Posted by hese

Support for 1.76MB would be nice.

The interface fully supports it, we added jumper for HD mode. So it will work if you use Amiga HD floppy drive, or a specially modded PC drive (slowed down for HD mode).

Shipping with modded drives is impractical for me and would raise the price to a level where no one would buy it. It's too time consuming.

[hese]

What I was after is an interface that slows down the drive so it can be used as a HD floppy drive, like Amtrade's A357.

[wmsteele]

The case looks perfect for a number of drive conversions, will it be possible to buy this separately?

[strim]

Originally Posted by wmsteele

The case looks perfect for a number of drive conversions, will it be possible to buy this separately?

We are evaluating this possibility . But even if we offer just cases, the price won't be much lower because floppy drive is one of the cheaper parts here.

[wmsteele]

I'm sure you would sell a good few cases if you offered this option. Also, selling the adapter on its own would also potentially see a fair few sales as well, lots of big box Amiga's would be pleased

[Arnie]

Would you be willing to sell just the interface? I have a HD drive that I want to use with a CDTV and this should fit nicely inside.

[strim]

Originally Posted by Arnie

Would you be willing to sell just the interface? I have a HD drive that I want to use with a CDTV and this should fit nicely inside.

For now I think we'll only sell them bundled with the cases. But if you're good with soldering you might want to build the interface yourself.

Everything needed to do so is already on GitHub (schematics, PCB project, gerber).

[Zippy Zapp]

Great News, Thanks!

[dirkies]

no on/off switch?

[strim]

No, but is it really necessary?

After all drive is connected to Amiga with only one cable, does not have separate power cable and does not consume much power when not used (esp. with noclick).

[Retro1234]

Can I see connecting cable also?

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by strim

No, but is it really necessary?

After all drive is connected to Amiga with only one cable, does not have separate power cable and does not consume much power when not used (esp. with noclick).

hm i wonder if a floppy drive adapter could ignore drive steps when motor is not spinning, but still send the disk inserted signal, so noclick wouldn't even be necessary.

[strim]

Originally Posted by Boo Boo

Can I see connecting cable also?

Sure, it's a prototype though. Production version will be of course much neater. I have secured a batch of new DB23 plugs too.

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

hm i wonder if a floppy drive adapter could ignore drive steps when motor is not spinning, but still send the disk inserted signal, so noclick wouldn't even be necessary.

Yes, it is possible. Though feature list for AmiExtFDD is already closed and PCBs are ordered. So we won't include it .

[Retro1234]

Thank you I think this is good - repairing old drives is very annoying and there getting scarce.

: Can they be daisy chained?

[strim]

Only if this station is last in the chain. It can't be in the middle of the chain as it does not have additional DB23 passthrough (DB23 sockets are too expensive to keep price reasonable).

[Nekoniaow]

Originally Posted by strim

For now I think we'll only sell them bundled with the cases. But if you're good with soldering you might want to build the interface yourself.

Everything needed to do so is already on GitHub (schematics, PCB project, gerber).

I would also gladly buy only the interface plus cable if this were possible.
I have some spare drives which I wanted to mod myself at some point but if I could simply buy and plug in the interface that would save me a lot of time and would be much safer. It's a convenience I am willing to pay for.

But being in Canadia I guess shipping costs might make it quite expensive, so in the end it would all depend on how much not including floppy nor case would reduce the cost (if still profitable for you of course)... Well, we'll see.

[Arnie]

Originally Posted by strim

Only if this station is last in the chain. It can't be in the middle of the chain as it does not have additional DB23 passthrough (DB23 sockets are too expensive to keep price reasonable).

Might be an idea to add the connections on the pcb and let people source their own DB23 sockets for pass through.

[strim]

Originally Posted by Nekoniaow

But being in Canadia I guess shipping costs might make it quite expensive, so in the end it would all depend on how much not including floppy nor case would reduce the cost (if still profitable for you of course)... Well, we'll see.

For now I am not willing to sell the interfaces only. But since the project is open maybe ask kipper2k to build one for you? He's also located in Canada.

Originally Posted by Arnie

Might be an idea to add the connections on the pcb and let people source their own DB23 sockets for pass through.

I evaluated this idea. That would make PCB much larger and if we used the same PCB for complete disk drives, it would make case larger (and that I wanted to avoid). Also, PCBs are already ordered as I said .