Finally ..my external A1200 CD complete

[Vipersan]

So ..
I completed the external CD drive for my A1200 ...
I know a lot of peeps mount one internally ..but the thought of a huge great hole in the A1200 case was a no no for me.
So I decided to fit a CD drive in an external case with its own psu and on off switch.
..a 1 mtre ide ribbon gives a lot of flexibility and the fact that it plugs into a simple IDE socket on the A1200 rear was a compromise I was prepared to make.
..and makes it removeable as this in turn plugs onto the 4XEIDE99 interface...with a short internal lead.
The CD rom is indeed loud when spinning up but acceptable.
attaching a few photos of this project.
I guess what is missing is someone inventing a fully functional CD32 emulator ..but that is most unlikely due to the missing AKIKO chip.
rgds
VS

[Vypr]

Not a bad solution. I toyed with a SquirrelSCSI on mine before giving up due to the SquirrelSCSI having a badly designed connector that mangled the pins in the PCMCIA port on two different Amiga 1200's

[Fastdruid]

Nice. I'm still looking for a neat 5.25" powered bay to do similar.

I've got rid of so much stuff in the past that I'm now thinking "I wish I had that now", one of them being a 5.25" external floppy (not for the Amiga) with a little PSU that would have been ideal.

Although I'm thinking I'm going to try and 3D print a "shim" to sit between the case halves to allow cables to come out yet not cut into the cases. In no small part because I've never managed to cut anything into something like that and have it look acceptable!

[aeberbach]

Nice job!

I have a big old external tape drive unit, was thinking that it would make an ideal external CD but also have room to be an external PSU.

[Hewitson]

Cool. Is that case from an Amiga 5.25" external drive?

[indigolemon]

Originally Posted by Vipersan

I guess what is missing is someone inventing a fully functional CD32 emulator ..but that is most unlikely due to the missing AKIKO chip.

Nah it's done, shipped with the IDEFix package back in the late 90s

[Vipersan]

Originally Posted by indigolemon

Nah it's done, shipped with the IDEFix package back in the late 90s

If thats true ..where do I get my hands on it ?
Can you help ?
rgds
VS

[Vipersan]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Cool. Is that case from an Amiga 5.25" external drive?

No buddy ..
It originally housed an ALPS 5.25" floppy drive which attached to an Apple II
The same drive used in some 1541 C64 floppy drives..
needless to say that is where the actual drive mechanism ended up ..in a previous repair project.
This did leave me with a very usefull case going begging..and I throw nothing away.

[Vipersan]

Originally Posted by Fastdruid

Nice. I'm still looking for a neat 5.25" powered bay to do similar.

I've got rid of so much stuff in the past that I'm now thinking "I wish I had that now", one of them being a 5.25" external floppy (not for the Amiga) with a little PSU that would have been ideal.

Although I'm thinking I'm going to try and 3D print a "shim" to sit between the case halves to allow cables to come out yet not cut into the cases. In no small part because I've never managed to cut anything into something like that and have it look acceptable!

Any case will do Druid ..
For power supply ..those cheap units from the far east are perfik...
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HDD-POWER...sAAOSwHqpbJCh2
and cheap enough..lol
I cracked one open and removed the kettle lead connector so I could use a rear figured 8 mains connector instead.
rgds
VS

[Fastdruid]

I have one of those on order!

It's more that the old school 5.25" 1/2 height drives came with a nice little PSU integrated into a neat case.

Before the slimline USB etc CDROMs were a thing I had an external USB 5.25" adapter which would take a normal PATA CDROM. Threw it away years ago but can't get such a thing these days.

[Nobby_UK]

Originally Posted by Vipersan

If thats true ..where do I get my hands on it ?
Can you help ?
rgds
VS

http://aminet.net/package/driver/media/IDEfix97


Keys listed here:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=74384

[jotd]

I remember using an old case with an integrated power supply and put a CD-drive in it. It was kind of bulky but worked, with an internal IDE ribbon exiting on the side of the miggy. Yours is much slimmer and your solution is certainly cleaner.

Now you pinpointed the problem:

- who uses CD drives in 2020?
- CD32 titles aren't 100% compatible because of missing AKIKO. Some emulations exist though for titles that can work with it.

[Misclegend]

horrible yellowed obsolete mod

[Misclegend]

Originally Posted by jotd

I remember using an old case with an integrated power supply and put a CD-drive in it. It was kind of bulky but worked, with an internal IDE ribbon exiting on the side of the miggy. Yours is much slimmer and your solution is certainly cleaner.

Now you pinpointed the problem:

- who uses CD drives in 2020?
- CD32 titles aren't 100% compatible because of missing AKIKO. Some emulations exist though for titles that can work with it.

99% of the cd32 titles are compatible if you use the CD32 emulator included in idefix package
CDTV titles as well, most of the titles also are compatible/playlable

[Fastdruid]

Originally Posted by Nobby_UK

http://aminet.net/package/driver/media/IDEfix97


Keys listed here:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=74384

Be careful if you have a CF "hard drive" as IDEfix97 doesn't like some of them. I believe because it detects them as removable and hangs (although cannot remember exactly why).

[indigolemon]

Originally Posted by Fastdruid

Be careful if you have a CF "hard drive" as IDEfix97 doesn't like some of them. I believe because it detects them as removable and hangs (although cannot remember exactly why).

This is true, doobrey has a patch for that here: http://www.doobreynet.co.uk/amiga.html

Not sure if you need IDEFix running to use the CD32 emulator, been a long time since I tried it.

[Fastdruid]

Originally Posted by indigolemon

This is true, doobrey has a patch for that here: http://www.doobreynet.co.uk/amiga.html

Not sure if you need IDEFix running to use the CD32 emulator, been a long time since I tried it.

Oooooh, thanks. I had it hashed out of the startup-sequence but I'll give that a go.

[ElectroBlaster]

I did pretty much the same thing back in 2002.





If I were ever to do this again, I would do everything I could to not cut the machines case. But it did work and worked so well that machine still has the port attached to it.

I have a picture of the external CD I made from the case of a dead BBC micro disk drive.

[ElectroBlaster]

Originally Posted by Vipersan

...

I like how the power and audio are internal on the cd drive case!
I only ever had internal power, never got around to sorting the audio side on mine.

[chrisfi]

Nice.

I did something similar taking an old USB CD ROM drive. I fitted a newer IDE DVD-RW drive with a SATA to IDE adaptor and replaced the USB port with an e-SATA port. In my A1200 I used a dual IDE cable (no fancy 4x adapter needed) a IDE to SATA adaptor and then routed a SATA cable to another eSATA connector fitted at the expansion port. A nice durable eSATA cable is used to connect both.

Oh and I cobbled up a passive audio mixer in the CD enclosure so the CDDA audio from CD32 games mixes with the Amiga audio for that true CD32 experiecne.

CD32 games work great with the IDEfix and HiSoft CD32 emulators.