Then I read a magazine article in which some clever bugger had squeezed a 3.5 inch drive into his A1200 internals (maybe hacked would be more accurate than squeezed XD ). Great idea, thought I..... If only I could do that without voiding my warranty.
I actually did that. I had a 250 MB drive sitting in a drawer because I could not find a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter back then. Tired of waiting I decided to solder the 40 pin cable directly to the motherboard. Then plugged it into the drive and miraculously it worked fine. Then closed the A1200 with the drive inside, including the metal shield. It was a little bit forced, but just a little bit - actually the keyboard pressure helped to keep the drive fixed inside the computer.
It still works 19 years later. Some of this days I have to un-solder all those cables and change that drive with a CF card, it's one of my pending Amiga projects... but yes, it is possible to fit a 3.5" drive without much hassle into a A1200, I wouldn't call that hacking at all
