PC Floppy to amiga 1200

[kratam]

As the drive has gone from my amiga 1200 i was wondering if there was a way to put a PC Floppy drive into an amiga 1200. I know that you cannot simply place the PC drive into the amiga and it work fine, you have to do modifications to it. Are there any sites that tell you how to do the convertion?
Also, do you have to use a specific PC Floppy drive for it to work or does the convertion process work with all PC floppy drives?

[a_petri]

Originally Posted by kratam

As the drive has gone from my amiga 1200 i was wondering if there was a way to put a PC Floppy drive into an amiga 1200. I know that you cannot simply place the PC drive into the amiga and it work fine, you have to do modifications to it. Are there any sites that tell you how to do the convertion?
Also, do you have to use a specific PC Floppy drive for it to work or does the convertion process work with all PC floppy drives?

The theoretical modifications necessary for converting a PC floppy drive to an Amiga 880K floppy drive are rather simple:

- make the floppy drive respond to DS0 (Disk Select 0) instead of DS1 (Disk Select 1);
- make it provide a DSKCHANGE signal on pin 2 of the ribbon cable;
- make it provide a READY signal on pin 34 of the ribbon cable (semi-optional - see later).

However, the exact method depends on the specific disk model.

All PC floppy drives still have an option to set the Disk Select signal. Formerly there were jumpers on them for this purpose; nowadays there is only a(n often unmarked) SMD resistor soldered somewhere on the PCB, probably near to the connector.

All PC floppy drives provide DSKCHANGE on pin 34 but most of them have no options to configure the function of pins 2 and 34 (although a few older models did); moreover, most of them does not even provide a proper READY signal at all! In this case, the most you can do is to hack the ribbon cable, and hope that the Amiga will work without the READY signal.

(Actually the trackdisk.device in Kickstart does not use the READY signal, but some older trackloader games do - that's why some ESCOM/Amiga Technologies A1200s had problems with these games: ESCOM put PC floppy units to their A1200s, and either hacked the floppy cable or the A1200 motherboard PCB...)

There are two files on Aminet which may be helpful to you:

http://main.aminet.net/hard/hack/ju257.lha - this one describes the modification of the Panasonic JU-257 model;
http://main.aminet.net/hard/hack/DriveSolution.lha - this one describes a relatively simple HW hack to provide a "fake" READY signal. It claims to work with any PC floppy drive.

I have tried the first one (I've sorted through some PC scrapyards for JU-257s ;-) and it worked for me.


Best wishes & good luck

Andras Petri

[kratam]

I took the drive out of my amiga 1200 and cleaned the motor screw that drives the read head up and down the disk. Before the drive said DF0:????, now the drive is reading the disk but is saying that the disk has a "read error on block 1902," is the drive spazed or is it still salvagable?

thanks

[Amiga1992]

Did you try OTHER disks? Could be faulty disks as well, now that your drive reads...

[Overdoc]

Maybe your disk are old and have been in bad storage ? Do they make strange sounds when rotating in the drive ?
I would say your drive is ok, at least it isn't misaligned, but the R/W heads could be dirty from a dirty or bad disk !
Take a tip and put some alcohol on it and then clean the heads with that.
Hope this helps

[kuesco]

If you try the head cleaning and this don´t cure your problem, then i suggest you an article from aminet (in hard/hack) the file is FPC2AM.lha and it describes the way to put a pc floppy drive in the a 1200 by just tweaking 6 wires in a common pc floppy cable.
Nothing has to be changed in the amiga mother nor the floppy drive. You just need a standar pc floppy (preferably one setted as B: or DS1) and tweak some pins in the cable and thats all.
The drive works like a DD drive, and because i don´t use old trackdisk games i don´t know if the NDOS disks boots or work ok, but surely no.
A serious note: the disks you use in this adapted pc drive MUST be DD or HD WITH THE HD HOLE COVERED with tape or the drive wouldnt recognize any disks at all. Also i suggest you to use the floppy power cable that comes inside your amiga, because if you replace it with one for PC the voltages goes reversed and the drive goes to heaven!!..
Hope i helped.

[kuesco]

SORRY!! This is the full path to the archive:
http://main.aminet.net/hard/hack/PcF2AmF.lha