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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: AmigaBruno on February 02, 2013, 12:58:16 PM
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I'm trying once more to get into electronics, meaning building as well as repairing things. During my research I've been surprised by the kind of components and projects that are available, although they seem to be obsolete technology, far older than classic Amigas. These projects include a crystal radio set and a Pong game console. Apart from these, people are able to get hold of components to make Sinclair Spectrum clones. These clones use compatible components, but now there's also an FPGA Spectrum clone. I know that various computers used graphics chips that had the same resolution (256x192?) as the Sinclair Spectrum.
Bearing all of this in mind, I can't understand the problems people are having getting hold of or making projects which are compatible with classic Amigas. I've now more or less given up on trying to get a hard drive which would fit my Amiga A500 Plus. It seems that not even Iomega Zip drives are compatible without a special interface. Surely, with enough electronics knowledge it should be possible to build a new Amiga hard drive controller and interface, as well as monitors which are compatible with classic Amigas without using a scandoubler or flicker fixer. Please will someone tell me what problems there would be doing either or these things?
BTW, later today I'll be going to an event where they do repairs, so I hope I'll find out some of this information there, but it won't be about the classic Amiga.
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The crystal radio you mentioned above is an analogue electronic project.
Digital projects can be more difficult to do.
If the PONG project IS a digital one, instead of analogue, then it requires one of those AY Pong on a chip IC's which really make it a lot easier for you to do the project - as essentially all the work has been done by the IC manufacturer. Try and make a pong console only using individual transistors, etc. from scratch and see how easy that is.
I'm not sure about the Sinclair project, obviously it's digital but I haven't seen the descriptions - if it's simply a "kit" you order and assemble, then a lot of the hard work might already have been done (i.e. EPROM programming).
Usually these kind of home brew kits deal with technology that is several decades old --- it takes a while for the home hobby scene to catch up with technology. I.e. we are only now able to do 1980s / 90s computers in FPGA several decades later. There's nothing wrong with that but that's what it takes for the knowledge and equipment to trickle down to the home level.
Besides, have you looked in Aminet's "hacks" sections? I think I remember seeing do - it - yourself hard-drive controller instructions there.
But I think you overestimate how easy these projects are (i.e. they are harder than you think unless you have training and experience).
I don't know why you are having such trouble getting a hard drive for you Amiga 500+, try searching eBay or Amibay for "amiga sidecar" or "a500 hard drive" or go on amikit or vesalia. There are solutions.
http://www.students.tut.fi/~leinone3/ide/
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=37843
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Bearing all of this in mind, I can't understand the problems people are having getting hold of or making projects which are compatible with classic Amigas.
Bruno,
I've spent years surveying parts that could be used to make a single board computer. I could point you in the direction you want to go. You might want to visit anycpu.org and chat with us.
People who want to make a computer or a complex machine with chips don't always know what is involved. Chips make what is hard simple and what you think is simple is sometimes hard. Sometimes it isn't just about connecting the wires but it is about physics.
The problem is that manufacturers aren't going to make a part unless there is a market because products that don't sell means the manufacturer loses money. Warehouses are afraid to stock a part unless it sells and they lose money when the customer changes his or her mind.
A lot of times you have to be an engineer to read a datasheet for a chip. The datasheet for the processor in the Beaglebone is 2500+ pages long. Some of the smaller chips have datasheets that are at least 300 pages long. It takes some accomplished engineers a day to set up an ide.
Even people in the industry frown at the idea of making a single board computer because they know what it is like to make something and computers take many people to build. If you were to write BASIC in a month, do you think the language would be extremely buggy? Do you know anyone who can write a math package for a computer language? It takes expertise, finess and a lot of love, time, willpower, illumination and inspiration to make a computer.
If I haven't discouraged you, visit anycpu.org and come and talk with us.
Chuck
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Bearing all of this in mind, I can't understand the problems people are having getting hold of or making projects which are compatible with classic Amigas. I've now more or less given up on trying to get a hard drive which would fit my Amiga A500 Plus. It seems that not even Iomega Zip drives are compatible without a special interface.
Kipper2k is making some good stuff for classics, including internal fastram expansions for A500 and A600 machines:
http://kipper2k.com/amigaforsale/
Check out MKL's IDE68K project, which enables internal IDE hard drive inside your A500:
http://www.students.tut.fi/~leinone3/ide/ide68k.html
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Back in the Elder Days, I built a Z80 system from scratch... wire-wrapping all the boards... But I didn't design all of it, most of it came from plans in the hobbyist magazines of the time. (Kilobaud & Byte) But once I got it working, I kinda was scared off by realizing that I'd have to write an OS for it - or figure out how to port CP/M to it. So I went out and bought an Atari 800. ;-)
You should check out places like Sparkfun or Adafruit. They have a lot off cool chips already soldered to breakout boards so you don't have to deal with those teeny packages. I've been wishing for a Zorro board with multiple SPI ports that could drive a bunch of those boards...
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Thanks for this information!
Sinclair Spectrum clones have been produced by various people over the years, a lot of them in the USSR before it was abolished, and since then in Russia, as well as other countries in what was called eastern Europe. They made them because they couldn't afford the real thing.
Here's the Pong console project I talked about http://www.mallinson-electrical.com/shop/build-your-own-retro-classic-pong-tv-video-game-project-kit-velleman-mk121-pal.html . How advanced is that technology?
I managed to get one device out of three I took along to the repairs event brought back to life, although it's not working 100% yet. It was an ebook reader, where the charger turned out to be faulty. A old iPod couldn't be diagnosed, but there were some suggestions about getting a Creative Zen Vision: M player going again. Amazingly enough, there was even an Amiga enthusiast there who owns 3 Amiga A1200s and has offered to make a deal to sell me one at a price more reasonable than recent prices on eBay. He also told me that an Amiga SCSI controller would have to include some software or firmware.
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Surely, with enough electronics knowledge it should be possible to build a new Amiga hard drive controller and interface, as well as monitors which are compatible with classic Amigas without using a scandoubler or flicker fixer. Please will someone tell me what problems there would be doing either or these things?
Yes, with enough knowledge, time and money you can do practically anything. The problem with the sorts of projects you mention, the knowledge required to do the job properly doesn't come overnight. As others have mentioned, to design a drive controller from scratch, you need to have a thorough understanding of the interface to the Amiga and to the drive in order to both design the controller hardware plus the software on the Amiga side. Then you need to look at physical construction, mounting, etc.
I've been electronics engineering for nearly 20 years and find it frequently annoying when people view any complex piece of electronics as something that can be whipped up by anyone holding a qualification to operate a light switch in five minutes by getting a few ICs and making a few random connections between them. Every good design is generally the result of years of experience and hundreds if not thousands of hours of development and testing.
I tend to favour older technology in new designs because it's often easier to work with and requires less design work as you can re-use proven circuit blocks from previous designs. e.g. 'modern' high speed logic can require complex design around signal propagation times, rise/fall times, PCB track lengths and more.
As an example, here's a design report (http://amiga.serveftp.net/temp/dr274801a.pdf) from single board 8-bit embedded computer I designed from scratch a few years ago as an in-house universal production testing solution. Many of the individual blocks were copied from previous projects and designs with the intention of reducing development time and cost as much as possible. As a result the entire thing worked first time and met budget. But it still took weeks of hand made prototype blocks, calculations, writing hardware interface software and a basic operating system. See page 53 for how long it practically took and cost, and this is just a simple 8-bit embedded system reminiscent of what you'd see in the 1980s.
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Here's the Pong console project I talked about http://www.mallinson-electrical.com/shop/build-your-own-retro-classic-pong-tv-video-game-project-kit-velleman-mk121-pal.html . How advanced is that technology?
That pong kit is more of an assembly project rather than an electronics project that would teach you anything about electronics or require you to figure out what components you need.
Hard to tell how "advanced" it is. Again - it looks like all the central logic is on that IC. Essentially a pong computer on a chip. Not really homebrew or anything. Fun though, if you like to learn how to solder components on a board.
I'm just guessing, but it's probably 1970s era technology in terms of how "advanced" it is.
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Here's the Pong console project I talked about http://www.mallinson-electrical.com/shop/build-your-own-retro-classic-pong-tv-video-game-project-kit-velleman-mk121-pal.html . How advanced is that technology?
The Raspberry Pi can play pong and can also be used for different things.
The Pong console will be thrown away when it gets dirty, dusty and when you are bored with it. The pong console probably has a dedicated chip which can't be used for much else.
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I've been electronics engineering for nearly 20 years and find it frequently annoying when people view any complex piece of electronics as something that can be whipped up by anyone holding a qualification to operate a light switch in five minutes by getting a few ICs and making a few random connections between them. Every good design is generally the result of years of experience and hundreds if not thousands of hours of development and testing.
I agree. The reason it looks easy is because someone spent years and hundreds or thousands of hours in development making something work.
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That pong kit is more of an assembly project rather than an electronics project that would teach you anything about electronics or require you to figure out what components you need.
I think the hardest part is making a vga ladder for video if you've never done video before.
HDMI is probably more involved and knowing where to get the licensed chips and components.
Writing an operating system to be in tune with everything operating on the computer would be a challenge as well.
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The problem with building new Amiga accessories is that the core of he system operates really slowly.
In the end, an FPGA re-implimentation is the only way to speed things up.
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Bearing all of this in mind, I can't understand the problems people are having getting hold of or making projects which are compatible with classic Amigas. I've now more or less given up on trying to get a hard drive which would fit my Amiga A500 Plus. It seems that not even Iomega Zip drives are compatible without a special interface. Surely, with enough electronics knowledge it should be possible to build a new Amiga hard drive controller
I had a hard drive + 4MB ram expansion on my A500 in the 1989-1991 timeframe. They were produced by multiple manufacturers and many thousands were sold. Why didn't u buy one?
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Stuff were incredibly expensive back then?
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Stuff were incredibly expensive back then?
No it was super ridiculously cheap.
My A500 had 5 MEGABYTES of directly addressable ram + a hard drive.
My A2000 had 9 MEGABYTES of directly addressable ram + a ridiculous amount of HD storage.
And stereo DMA fed hardware double-buffered interrupt driven music.
And 32-bit multitasking.
Add up how much that cost to do on a Bill Gates compatible PC. Around $8 billion (google translation: IMPOSSIBLE in 1989)
Now any price I paid was fantastically cheap.
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No it was super ridiculously cheap.
My A500 had 5 MEGABYTES of directly addressable ram + a hard drive.
My A2000 had 9 MEGABYTES of directly addressable ram + a ridiculous amount of HD storage.
And stereo DMA fed hardware double-buffered interrupt driven music.
And 32-bit multitasking.
Add up how much that cost to do on a Bill Gates compatible PC. Around $8 billion (google translation: IMPOSSIBLE in 1989)
Now any price I paid was fantastically cheap.
No, my A2000 was fantastically cheap ($45).
Now I have to spend idiotic amounts of money to upgrade it.
Indivision ECS, SCSI controller (not to mention that none of my more recent SCSI drives will work with it, like my SCSI Ultra 2 Wide drives or my U320s) obscenely priced accelerators, way over-priced compact flash adapter, the list just goes on.
For what I'm going to have to pay for all this I could buy a couple cheap X86 computers.
But hen, who says any of us has sensible spending habits?
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I mean back in 1988-1993.. ;)
(or around there)
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I had a hard drive + 4MB ram expansion on my A500 in the 1989-1991 timeframe. They were produced by multiple manufacturers and many thousands were sold. Why didn't u buy one?
I'm not talking about whatever hardware I may or may not have had years ago, I'm talking about the situation NOW!
At this moment, there seems to be hardly any chance of getting a compatible hard drive for my Amiga A500 Plus, so I want to find an alternative. It seems the most likely alternative is an Iomega Zip drive, but I think it needs to be a certain type and that I need to get or make an adapter to get it to work. Can anyone tell me more about this?
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At this moment, there seems to be hardly any chance of getting a compatible hard drive for my Amiga A500 Plus
How come it's that difficult?
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If you get a SCSI controller for your A500 then you can connect any SCSI 1 drive. There is no reason to limit yourself to a ZIP drive. The ZIP drives are not nearly as reliable as regular Quantum SCSI hard drives.
I have seen websites that sell old used SCSI drives for reasonable prices.
The only real trouble is waiting around for someone to sell your their old used SCSI controller. I could sell you mine for cheap but it got stolen. GRRRRRR! A beautiful 4MB RAM + SCSI + Hard drive for Amiga 500 stolen by unappreciative thieves! And they stole the A500 with 1MB chipram too! :evil:
If you just can't wait then you can buy an Amiga 3000 for a reasonable price. They turn up for sale all the time. They are just like an A500 except they have a much faster CPU and they have a free built-in superfast super high quality SCSI hard drive controller and they have a free built-in flickerfixer for connecting to cheap PC monitors and you can still connect it to your regular Amiga monitor at the same time. And it has a detached keyboard. And it has an FPU. And it has expansion slots. And it has a 135W powersupply. And they have sockets right on the motherboard for 16MB fastram + 2MB chipram. :knuddel:
So if you really want an upgraded Amiga 500 all you have to do is buy an Amiga 3000. Tada! :banana:
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In the event that you are dead set on expanding your A500 then you should keep an eye on this project:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=65047 (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=65047)
Its an A500 IDE + other goodies expansion device that they are trying to make sometime. Maybe it will get produced 6 months from now. Maybe 2 years. Maybe never. You never can tell with these things. But if they do get it into production then it seems like it is custom made just for you :knuddel:
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If you get a SCSI controller for your A500 then you can connect any SCSI 1 drive. There is no reason to limit yourself to a ZIP drive. The ZIP drives are not nearly as reliable as regular Quantum SCSI hard drives.
I have seen websites that sell old used SCSI drives for reasonable prices.
The only real trouble is waiting around for someone to sell your their old used SCSI controller. I could sell you mine for cheap but it got stolen. GRRRRRR! A beautiful 4MB RAM + SCSI + Hard drive for Amiga 500 stolen by unappreciative thieves! And they stole the A500 with 1MB chipram too! :evil:
If you just can't wait then you can buy an Amiga 3000 for a reasonable price. They turn up for sale all the time. They are just like an A500 except they have a much faster CPU and they have a free built-in superfast super high quality SCSI hard drive controller and they have a free built-in flickerfixer for connecting to cheap PC monitors and you can still connect it to your regular Amiga monitor at the same time. And it has a detached keyboard. And it has an FPU. And it has expansion slots. And it has a 135W powersupply. And they have sockets right on the motherboard for 16MB fastram + 2MB chipram. :knuddel:
So if you really want an upgraded Amiga 500 all you have to do is buy an Amiga 3000. Tada! :banana:
I'm afraid one problem of mine is not having all that much money. This has prevented me from buying any of the SCSI controllers I've seen recently. I've also been outbid on various Amiga A1200 computers, so I couldn't afford an Amiga A3000. The A500 Plus and the A1200 are fairly different from each other. I've got the A500 Plus already, but I know things would be much more convenient using it if I had some kind of mass storage device connected to it. I've more or less given up trying to buy an A1200 now, but I may buy all the components from a certain eBay shop and assemble an A1200 using them. This has the advantages that I wouldn't have to buy all the parts at once and I'd learn something about the A1200 by assembling one.
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In the event that you are dead set on expanding your A500 then you should keep an eye on this project:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=65047 (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=65047)
Its an A500 IDE + other goodies expansion device that they are trying to make sometime. Maybe it will get produced 6 months from now. Maybe 2 years. Maybe never. You never can tell with these things. But if they do get it into production then it seems like it is custom made just for you :knuddel:
Unfortunately, this device isn't available yet and may never appear. This means I can't buy one. I don't plan that far ahead, either. Yesterday I bought an external floppy drive from eBay. My plan now is to make sure which versions of the Iomega Zip drive are compatible with the Amiga A500 Plus, as well as what kind of interface I need to make it work, then get a suitable Iomega Zip drive instead of having to use floppies the whole time.
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There is a guy who is currently producing a "virtual floppy" device. I can't remember what it is called. We were talking about it here just a few days ago.
It is some sort of digital memory card (4GB I guess?) that stores a giant pile of virtual floppy disks. It would work for you 128x better than trying to use real floppies. As all the "floppies" are right there inside your Amiga ready for instant loading or saving.
For making music on Amigas I would still prefer a real hard drive but the virtual floppy thing is something you should take a look at since it is something that you can supposedly buy right now.
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There is a guy who is currently producing a "virtual floppy" device. I can't remember what it is called. We were talking about it here just a few days ago.
There is the HXC floppy. I'm not sure if that is what you are talking about though. Its kinda expensive... Might be cheaper to get a IDE/RAM expansion and just use whdload.
http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/
i ordered one but have not tried it yet.... looks cool :)
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There is the HXC floppy. I'm not sure if that is what you are talking about though. Its kinda expensive... Might be cheaper to get a IDE/RAM expansion and just use whdload.
http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/
i ordered one but have not tried it yet.... looks cool :)
I guess that is the one...
Or maybe this one:
http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=13 (http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=13)
I am a little unclear on the whole thing. I guess I need to really hardcore study them. I am thinking of buying a couple "just because its a kewl idea".
It would be an easier sell if they supported .hdf files or some kind of unlimited size floppy files.
You can format a RAD: disk with giant number of tracks.
There is no reason why a virtual floppy could not have 100,000 tracks = over 1GB. AmigaOS 3.0+ (or was it 2.04+?) allows formatting floppies with FFS so you could get good speed and use the hxc as a hard drive! Much more useful!
If it supported .hdf files then you could format a .hdf file with PFS3 and really zooom!
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I guess that is the one...
Or maybe this one:
http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=13 (http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=13)
I am a little unclear on the whole thing. I guess I need to really hardcore study them. I am thinking of buying a couple "just because its a kewl idea".
It would be an easier sell if they supported .hdf files or some kind of unlimited size floppy files.
You can format a RAD: disk with giant number of tracks.
There is no reason why a virtual floppy could not have 100,000 tracks = over 1GB. AmigaOS 3.0+ (or was it 2.04+?) allows formatting floppies with FFS so you could get good speed and use the hxc as a hard drive! Much more useful!
If it supported .hdf files then you could format a .hdf file with PFS3 and really zooom!
I already knew about that device. Unfortunately it has to be fitted internally and it replaces the internal floppy drive. I don't think I could fit this device. I wish it plugged into the external floppy port. This device connects directly via a Shugart interface, making it compatible with various computers, but also making it too difficult for me to install!
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How is the shugart interface problematic for you?
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How is the shugart interface problematic for you?
I thought I'd already explained. I know how to plug in an external floppy drive, but I don't know how to fit this device internally. Here's a blog entry about how to do it
http://www.amigalog.com/installing-the-hxc-floppy-emulator/
I don't feel that I could do that or should have to.
I've actually got one of these floppy emulator devices for the Atari 8 bit computer range, which just plugs in externally. The Atari 8 bit is the big or little brother of the Amiga, because Jay Miner worked on both of them and various concepts are similar. The plug is a special Atari SIO plug. If I could buy or make an adapter for the Amiga parallel or serial ports, then I may be able to use the same device with the Amiga, but with a different SD card.
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Oh, I see. I thought you were saying that the Shugart interface wasn't compatible with the Amiga or something.
Internal installation looks rather simple, in my opinion. Rig up a few simple to make power and drive cables and install.
But I guess if you don't like tinkering with wires, etc, even with basic stuff like this, it could be a turn-off.
I'm sure that the drive could be made to work externally. The external disk drive port on the Amiga is probably some simple variation of the Shugart interface over DB25, plus some extra lines for power....and maybe a simple circuit to identify the drive as DF1:
If you could figure that out you could probably make a cable that would allow this device to work externally.
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There is the HXC floppy. I'm not sure if that is what you are talking about though. Its kinda expensive... Might be cheaper to get a IDE/RAM expansion and just use whdload.
http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/
i ordered one but have not tried it yet.... looks cool :)
I am thinking of getting 1 or 2. Do u know if the model F cased version fits into a DF0: Floppy Drive Bay of an A3000?
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I thought I'd already explained. I know how to plug in an external floppy drive, but I don't know how to fit this device internally. Here's a blog entry about how to do it
http://www.amigalog.com/installing-the-hxc-floppy-emulator/
I don't feel that I could do that or should have to.
I read the blog entry and its way to hard for me to do that stuff to an A500. I'm a lamer. I would hafta hire someone to do that stuff for me.
Does anyone know if it is 128x simpler to put one of these Hxc floppy emulators in an A3000 DF0: Drive bay? Or DF1: Drive bay if the A3000 has such a thing?
It seems like it should just plug right in and be super easy.
I have 2 A3000s with broken DF0:'s. This would give me a floppy emulator and fix my broken A3000s at the same time!
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I've actually got one of these floppy emulator devices for the Atari 8 bit computer range, which just plugs in externally. The Atari 8 bit is the big or little brother of the Amiga, because Jay Miner worked on both of them and various concepts are similar. The plug is a special Atari SIO plug. If I could buy or make an adapter for the Amiga parallel or serial ports, then I may be able to use the same device with the Amiga, but with a different SD card.
If you connect it externally then it won't work very well.
The Amiga only boots up DF0: not DF1:
If you connect it externally then it becomes DF1: (or DF2: or DF3:) so it wouldn't autoboot and would lose a lot of its usefullness.
There is a way in software to switch around the DF0: to the external drive. But the HxC makers would have to figure out how to incorporate it into their software. Which come to think of it they should do. Then they could sell a purely external version for all us Amiga Lamers(tm) :)
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Oh well, never mind. I've bought an electronic projects starter kit from eBay, including a breadboard. This means I'll start to build circuits within seconds, then in the near future I can probably build a SCSI connector out of one or two breadboards, then download a ROM file for the controller and burn it onto an EPROM and that will be all I need to do to connect a SCSI hard drive!
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Another "problem" of the HxC is that it perfectly emulates a floppy drive. It emulates it so perfectly that it emulates the speed too, apparently. I read a bunch about it but never saw any mention of a turbo mode. Darn.
I will probably still buy an HxC anway, just in case.
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The floppy controller on Amiga can't handle PC 1.44MB drives that are 2x speed. So no turbo mode..
SCSI = Turbo ;)