Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: tonyvdb on January 18, 2016, 05:35:49 PM
-
Is there a high density floppy drive that will work on an A2000 or was that a feature limited to the 3000 and 4000?
In relation to this question will an older Dell PC floppy drive work? I just want to be able to read the PC formatted 1.4K high density floppies so could it be placed in the second drive bay?
-
Is there a high density floppy drive that will work on an A2000 or was that a feature limited to the 3000 and 4000?
In relation to this question will an older Dell PC floppy drive work? I just want to be able to read the PC formatted 1.4K high density floppies so could it be placed in the second drive bay?
To my very knowledge, the type of Amiga does not matter as far as the floppy is concerned. HD floppies suitable for an A4000 are also suitable for A3000s and A2000s. The problem rather is finding a HD floppy for an Amiga in first place.
Techically, the problem is the available bandwidth for transmitting the data from the floppy to the RAM. The DMA channel in Agnus is only capable for transmitting the DD data rate. This goes for all Amigas.
HD floppies for the Amiga thus half the rotation rate - and by that cut the data rate to one half of that of a HD floppy for a PC - to allow Agnus to catch up with the transmission.
I do not know whether anyone tried, but theoretically PC HD floppies *should* work on the Amiga if the screen mode is a 31kHz mode, e.g. productivity. This doubles also the bandwidth for floppies (one DMA channel per horizontal blank, twice the horizontal frequency -> twice the bandwidth for the floppy).
I do not know whether there are any other technical limitations.
-
@Thomas - I thought they were spun at half the rate because of the Paula, not Agnus?
OP - AFAIK an Amiga high density floppy will be "plug-and-play" on an A2000. Probably needs 3.1, but I think you've got that covered already. Other companies made high density floppy drives for Amiga's back in the day (Applied Engineering comes to mind), but those drives did require a software patch and you couldn't boot off them (that's just from memory).
Edit - just googled up this thread: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=55344 Lot of information here.
-
@Thomas - I thought they were spun at half the rate because of the Paula, not Agnus?
Probably both actually, I'm not sure agnus would be able to give paula more bandwidth.
-
Will the Chinon FZ357 work? or must it have the "a" in the model number?
-
Will the Chinon FZ357 work? or must it have the "a" in the model number?
Any amiga HD floppy will work on any amiga with 2.x roms and above.
Some 4000's came with a full height HD floppy,and that will fit the 2000 exactly,with a white face plate though.
3000 drives are usually missing the front bezel.
i thought i was paula also missing the bandwidth to run at high density.
PC HD floppies can be modded as double density,but will not work as high density without some serious mods,and most don't work reliably.
There were some out there form the aftermarket like "The real HD fix" from AMTRADE i think it was.
-
Ok but the Chinon FZ357A is the model thats in the A4000 I have. The one I found on line is a Chinon FZ357 Missing the "a" in the model number and I found another that was is an FG not FZ
Ok, turns out the FZ357 can be made to work.
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=9365
-
Ok, turns out the FZ357 can be made to work.
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=9365
That thread is about using a HD drive with 880k disks, it doesn't do anything for using 1.76mb disks.
AFAIK the A2000 motherboard can only generate the drive ID for a 880k disk, so you need a special drive that can generate either an 880k or 1.76mb ID depending on what disk is in the drive and jumper the A2000 to say the drive is not present (all this does is stop the motherboard generating a conflicting ID). The drive also needs to slow down when you insert a HD floppy of course. This is essentially what an FB357A/FZ357A is, I assume the A means Amiga and without it you can't get HD disks working.
The only other reliable solution were the external laptop drives that Dell offloaded after commodore went bankrupt.
If someone reverse engineered the FB357 and FB357A then it's possible you could figure out how to modify one into the other. It might involve designing a new board which might be a good project for kickstarter.
-
Ok but the Chinon FZ357A is the model thats in the A4000 I have. The one I found on line is a Chinon FZ357 Missing the "a" in the model number and I found another that was is an FG not FZ
Ok, turns out the FZ357 can be made to work.
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=9365
it must be the "A". i tried converting a fz357 but its hopeless as highdensity.
-
If someone reverse engineered the FB357 and FB357A then it's possible you could figure out how to modify one into the other. It might involve designing a new board which might be a good project for kickstarter.
This would be a great project for Amigakit?
-
That thread is about using a HD drive with 880k disks, it doesn't do anything for using 1.76mb disks.
AFAIK the A2000 motherboard can only generate the drive ID for a 880k disk, so you need a special drive that can generate either an 880k or 1.76mb ID depending on what disk is in the drive and jumper the A2000 to say the drive is not present (all this does is stop the motherboard generating a conflicting ID). The drive also needs to slow down when you insert a HD floppy of course. This is essentially what an FB357A/FZ357A is, I assume the A means Amiga and without it you can't get HD disks working.
The only other reliable solution were the external laptop drives that Dell offloaded after commodore went bankrupt.
If someone reverse engineered the FB357 and FB357A then it's possible you could figure out how to modify one into the other. It might involve designing a new board which might be a good project for kickstarter.
this is not true, any Amiga from a500 to 4000t with at least 2x rom and paula will work for high density drives including the 2000. my 2000 has HD floppies in it from a 4k. Even the a1000 can use a HD floppy if softkicked to 2x rom + or a rom board is installed with real 2x rom.
The dell drives did work as hd if you want externals, and power computing made a hd drive also,but the power computing one needed drivers,and i find it not utterly reliable-but it may just be the drive i got.
-
this is not true, any Amiga from a500 to 4000t with at least 2x rom and paula will work for high density drives including the 2000. my 2000 has HD floppies in it from a 4k. Even the a1000 can use a HD floppy if softkicked to 2x rom + or a rom board is installed with real 2x rom.
What is not true? Because I can't see what this relates to in my post.
and power computing made a hd drive also,but the power computing one needed drivers,and i find it not utterly reliable-but it may just be the drive i got.
None of the power computing drives were reliable.
-
What is not true? Because I can't see what this relates to in my post.
Geeze Louise you guys, I know it's only Monday and all, but:
AFAIK the A2000 motherboard can only generate the drive ID for a 880k disk
this is not true, any Amiga from a500 to 4000t with at least 2x rom and paula will work for high density drives including the 2000.
-
Geeze Louise you guys, I know it's only Monday and all, but:
The A2000 (or A500/A1000) cannot generate the right drive id for a 1.76mb disk, which is why the floppy drive needs to do it.
You need a special drive that does it (like the 357A from an A4000)... Which is the drive mechy used anyway, so I don't get his point.
But yeah it's only Monday.
-
What you quoted of mine was right and mechys response is irrelevant.
All right dude, somebody needs to take a chill-pill.
Also, this has gotten way off course from OP's original question, which was "can an A2000 use a high density drive?" -- I think that's been answered -- "Yes, it can, under certain conditions". LOL. ;)
-
(http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/05/bd/43/05bd434f8cc18201b53da491a94e517b.jpg)
-
All right dude, somebody needs to take a chill-pill.
In my defence I edited the post to make it less aggressive.
Also, this has gotten way off course from OP's original question, which was "can an A2000 use a high density drive?" -- I think that's been answered -- "Yes, it can, under certain conditions". LOL. ;)
You can use pretty much any high density drive as an internal Amiga drive pretty easily, you just need to figure out where all the extra signals come from (disk change/ready etc). The problem is using high density disks, for that you need a 357A (which should have all the signals in the right place).
-
In my defence I edited the post to make it less aggressive.
Much better. It was starting to sound like some of those Facebook Amiga groups, for a minute there. :laughing:
-
I did manage to swap the boards over from an actual 357A amiga high density drive on over to the 357 PC drive. The old disk heads were worn out and was giving me trouble, but after swapping the boards, started to read great again. :) Still retained the ability to do 1.76MB (Or whatever the HD capacity was)
But converting a Panasonic drive on over to be used on the Amiga is pretty straightforward and easier to obtain. As stated earlier, only as a 880K drive.
-
There is another option for reading HD floppies on A2000.
You can use LS120 drive with IDE controller and IDEFIX software.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk
It worked for me on my A2000 with Tandem IDE controller and ROM 3.1 or 2.x.
-
@Thomas - I thought they were spun at half the rate because of the Paula, not Agnus?
OP - AFAIK an Amiga high density floppy will be "plug-and-play" on an A2000. Probably needs 3.1, but I think you've got that covered already. Other companies made high density floppy drives for Amiga's back in the day (Applied Engineering comes to mind), but those drives did require a software patch and you couldn't boot off them (that's just from memory).
Edit - just googled up this thread: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=55344 Lot of information here.
I have an Applied Engineering High Density floppy drive. It is basically a HD mac floppy modified for use with the Amiga. It came out in the OS 1.3 days. Like Oldsmobile_Mike said it needs a softwave driver to use HD mode, and therefore does not autoboot in HD mode.
Unfortunately the driver does not work for OS 2.0 and above.
On the upside the drive is extremely well built and has a really nice auto-eject feature like most mac drives of the generation.
Additionally the HD mode format (only 1.52 meg formatted) is not the same as Amiga HD floppy format (1.76 meg formatted). It is to bad that the amiga cannot be used with Amiga HD floppy Format disk, nor is there a driver for OS 2.0+.
-
I have a 1" Chinon HD drive that looks like it was made for the A2000 as it is the same color and also has a lower "lip" plastic piece to fill in the gap. It works on my A2000 just fine as a HD drive.
It looks like the drive to the LEFT:
-
Well, I guess the next thing for me to look for is a proper Amiga floppy HD drive, amigakit says they have some stock pending but that could be months or years away. They are as rare as a reasonably priced 4000T
-
I prefer - http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=106
Change FZ-357 to 880k amiga drive - I do not know if it fit mechanically in a 2000
http://honi.hucki.net/chinon-e.html -google translate. has good pictures
-
I prefer - http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=106
Change FZ-357 to 880k amiga drive - I do not know if it fit mechanically in a 2000
The guy specifically wants to be able to read PC 1.4mb disks on his A2000, there is no shortage of drives that can be used to read 880k disks.
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/catweasel3 may be good enough if you can find one.
I have a 1" Chinon HD drive that looks like it was made for the A2000 as it is the same color and also has a lower "lip" plastic piece to fill in the gap. It works on my A2000 just fine as a HD drive.
It looks like the drive to the LEFT:
Next time you have the A2000 open, can you check if it is an FB 357A? I know commodore said they had stocks of them at some point, but I never saw them for sale in the UK. However this is not unheard of as the dealers aimed more at the low spec machines.
-
Long time ago I bought a HD drive for my A500 but can't remember the make of it.
-
I use a Chinon FZ357A in my A2000. I can't get it to work as a DF 1 in HD mode though. Not really a problem, but I wonder why?
Has anyone here tried this project?:
http://ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/designs/Floppy_Adaptor_V2/floppy_adaptor_v2.html
-
My a4000 hd drive worked in my 2000, also.
I remember setting a jumper to use both drives.
-
I've been using a high density external floppy for a long time on my Amigas. It's called the XL Drive made by Power Computing Ltd.
It supports Amiga disks (1.76MB) and IBM formatted disk (1.44MB), think it even supports Atari floppies but I've never tried it myself. Requires WB2.1min. A driver is required to be setup in S-S to have the HD capacity else drive just works as normal Amiga FD.
-
I am using an Amiga HD floppy drive in my 2000. Works great.