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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Cyberus on August 07, 2004, 06:11:37 PM
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The drive in one of my A1200s just seized - it was a hacked PC drive anyway, as with all rebadged C= A1200s.
I assume it can just be replaced with a normal A1200 drive - because the mobo is the same after all...?
The only reason I say this, is because I read somewhere on the net that you couldn't. But I can't see why not...
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Amiga tech A1200's had a minor hack done to the bottom of the board that puts the diskchange line to pin 2 and pin 34 at the same time. Therefore, the RDY line (indicates that the motor has reached full speed) is not available at all, so some demos and trackloading games might not work (for example the ARTE demo by Sanity).
If you have access to a real Amiga diskdrive, you'll have to reverse the dickchange/RDY hack. Just remove the wire on the bottom, and use it to connect RDY to the 34-pin internal floppy connector (RDY is supposed to be on pin 34). You can take RDY from pin 1 (square pad) of the 23-pin external floppy connector. That's all to make your Amiga 1200 fully functional with *all* trackloaders.
If you don't have access to such an Amiga drive, go for a PC diskdrive and change it's select line to 'select 0'. Most PC drives don't have such a jumper any more, and they're hardwired to be 'select 1'. Either look for one that has a jumper or a switch, or swap the two lines. Again, this hack is only possible with the Amiga Technologies A1200. Others don't have the diskchange line in the right place (PC diskdrives have it at line 34), so they won't work at all.
Hope this helps,
Jens Schoenfeld
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Just curious..
As I haven't been involved with Amiga stuff for quite a while, what sort of drive is in my A4000T? It is 'seen' as a DD drive, but what sort is it and how do I:
1) replace it (what sort and where to get)
2) add df1: I thought I could just get the same type of drive and plug it in
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If it's an amiga tech. 4000T it is a DD drive. you can modify the face plate of some amiga drives but I had little success. I just went and got a catweasel MkII and I use a regular PC drive HD DD and PC readable and write able.
And with ambition I use it to take .D64 files to create useable C64 5 1/4" floppies For less then the cost of an Amiga HD drive. BTW it connects to the IDE controller.[
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@Jens
Thank you. That has answered my question perfectly.
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I take it the Catweasel is bootable so I can play NDOS floppy games?
Excuse my ignorance but I don't know much about this Catweasel. I also thought it was a Zorro card.
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Nope, the Catweasel doesn´t allow disks to be booted directly.. For this, you nedd a Kylwalda boot adapter.
The Catweasel exists in both Zorro II format and as a 1200 version, with clockport connector..
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FYI the Amiga 1200 version also can be hooked up to the IDE port an a 4000 and 4000T.
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@vcps
That´s true... Forgot about that one... :-)
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@ vcps: oh, so that's what you mean by 'tried to modify some face plates': you tried to put the A1200 floppy inside?
Okay, so, I ask more specifically now: I want another floppy to act as Df1, and also as a backup in case Df0 fails. What drive can I get that will be bootable? And I want to first try to get a good drive before having to buy "Weasels and Koalas" :-P
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I just got my A1200 setup but I cannot read any disks, I have a LS120 connected to the ide via a 4 way adapter and the standard floppy connected to the motherboard. I can read one LS120 disk that I had backed up 3.1 onto a while ago, but I cannot read any SD floppies. When I put them in the DF0: the drive doesn't even make noise although the light comes on and it says that it is unreadable/unrecognizeable I want a DD setup but looking at softhut.com they are over $100 which is more than I can justify. Is my drive dead and also why can't the LS120 read the SD floppies?