A500 second disc drive problem

[Chris71]

Hello

I have an A500 with a floppy disc boot selector and two drives (internal and a external drive)
The amiga will boot from either external drive or internal drive when selected. But once workbench is booted from either drive it will not recognize the other dive on the screen.
I.e boot workbench from internal drive "DF0" external drive "DF1" is not seen on the workbench screen.
When I change the boot selector it will boot from the external dive and the internal drive is not seen in workbench?

Any ideas.

[Chris71]

Ok I think I worked it out.
I disconnected the boot selector and you can see both drives plugged the selector back in and now if I boot from the internal drive I can see both drives (must have been not plugged in fully?) But if I boot from the external drive I can't see the internal drive.

I guess that's how its suppose to work by by passing the internal drive?

[PDrill]

I have a bootselector in my A500 and A600 and at least in one of them - pretty sure in both - the internal floppy gets disabled when external is used as DF0: but the when the internal is used as DF0: the external is also usable (as DF1.

[Heywood]

From what I understand the built in floppy doesn’t have the external floppy detection circuitry that external drives have, so when the internal drive is set to act like df1 the Amiga isn’t aware the drive is present. It might be possible to add the drive detect logic to the internal drive?

[r.cade]

Originally Posted by Chris71

Ok I think I worked it out.
I disconnected the boot selector and you can see both drives plugged the selector back in and now if I boot from the internal drive I can see both drives (must have been not plugged in fully?) But if I boot from the external drive I can't see the internal drive.

I guess that's how its suppose to work by by passing the internal drive?

Yes.

You can get around it by booting the machine with the switcher disabled (internal drive enable) to the point where it requests workbench, then flip the switch. Both drives will still be detected, and reversed, at least until the next reset.