Suprise: not a standard floppy on the Commodore A1011.

[flaviosr]

Dear All,

I just bought a Commodore A1011 external floppy drive.
The drive was listed as not working... the drive sees the floppy but does not read it.
I bought it hoping to simply replace the internal drive but... SURPRISE!!!
The drive is not a standard one. It is a "longer" FB354 with added circuitry, so that in a single connector there is data and power.
Does anybody know if somewhere can be found an adaptor so that I can use a standard FB354?
Or... very technical... can somebody give me a link on some guides to repair (realign?) the original drive?

Thank you

[flaviosr]

Oh My!

After sending this post I was looking at my opened A1011... and I decided to look over the internet for realigning posts.
I found a sentence in which the writer said that a disaligned drive works well apart that it is able to read and write only its own disks. Now it is obvious... NOW...
So I decided to make a try and I found I was lucky. The drive worked (more or less) this way.
But something was buzzing on my head and I decided to try again with a "working" floppy and... NOT THE DRIVE WORKS!
I think the explanation could be quite simple... unscrewing it all made all the mechanical parts more free to move... before closing it again I had to use oil on moving parts.
Anyway my curiosity about an adaptor still remains: can somebody help?
And also about the realigning... I have other drives with the same original issue ...
Thank you

[flaviosr]

These are Chinon FB-354 rev D drives, they integrate the motor flip-flop and NAND gates IIRC.
If you have a standard external drive (i.e. one where the drive, if removed, will instantly work as an internal amiga drive), you can use the adapter PCB to accomodate a standard FB-354 drive.
You'll have to check if it fits, however, as space can be tight inside the A1011. Also, since nearly all external drives use slim (1") drives, they usually only provide +5V on the internal connector. So you'll have to modify that part too to cater for the +12V the FB-354 also requires.

Thanx. I have looked on ebay but I have not found anything... i tried different combination of words but... nothing.
Do you have a link... somewhere?