Hi Jorkany. Thanks for your reply. The discs are between 22 and 20 years old, but stored in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight. I've always been careful with them. Although, they have been through airport security at one point a few years ago.
Hi Freqmax, no sadly I don't have a pinout diagram for the drive, but I've taken some photos and uploaded them for you to look at and see what you think. I've taken the drive out of it's housing for these photos so you can see the special wiring mods
The URL is: http://mc9.co.uk/amiga/second_upload/Hi Spirantho, thanks again for your comments. I've looked on line for TwinExpress to no avail? Is there a place you could recommend where I could download a copy? Also, thanks for the ongoing support with this.
Firstly, I've had some success… I've now got my old A2500 working (in addition to my old A500 1.3).
The A2500 is running Workbench version 37.67, Kickstart version 37.175. By chance, some of the files I was looking for may actually be on the internal SCSI drive. I still need to look into this, but now I have more questions, and possibly more possibilities to restore my old 5 1/4" floppy discs. I have around 500 discs of music I composed when I was a kid in total!
I now remember this 5 1/4" external drive was used exclusively with the A2500 and it was custom made with a special switch at the back of it which switched between modes? Perhaps HD and DD. I really can't remember though. So every disc I'll be attempting to copy from this external 5 1/4" floppy drive to Amiga Forever will be from the A2500 while using Workbench version 37.67, Kickstart version 37.175.
I must also add that I've now successfully connected the A2500 to my PC, now running Windows XP Professional (rather than Home Edition) but with the same specs as my first posting. I've also managed to copy across to my PC the contents of the A2500 hard drive.
Now, problematically… The external 5 1/4" floppy I used all those years ago with the A2500 may be faulty. Or maybe the drive is okay but the internal floppy housing circuitry of the internal floppy connector / power to external disk drive cable may be faulty. The drive powers up okay, but I have not been successful reading any of the old discs I've looked after for so long. I've tried connecting the drive to the A2500 but when connected, it won't boot. The A2500 comes up with a guru meditation error saying "Software failure". Interestingly, when I connect the same external drive to an A500, Workbench 1.3 boots successfully but displays DF1:BAD, DF2:BAD and DF3:BAD on the workbench, even though I have only the one external connected.
So for the questions… 1. Do you think I'd increase my chances of taking the Amiga 5 1/4" external disc drive out of it's housing and installing it into the now working A2500? Do I need a special floppy lead? Is this safe and can the A2500 power supply handle it? The reason why I ask is there is an A2091? SCSI card inside connected to a 12V 8W hard drive.
2. Is it possible that the A2500 writes discs in a different way to the A500? I've read about the OFS vs FFS filesystems. I'm assuming both the A2500 and the A500 use FFS?
I appreciate all comments and suggestions… it's been such a long time since I've tinkered with these wonderful machines.
Mark
