Amiga 1200 External drives question

[trackah123]

hello, i have a question.

i have 2 external amiga drives. they work on my a500 but they dont work on my a1200. so the external drives are working properly.

on the a500 when i insert a floppydisk in the external drive they just load up as it should be loading up.. but on the a1200 i can hear the external drives clicking (sector 0-1) but when i insert a floppy nothing happens. is this a a1200 hardware fault? or a jumper setting i need to change or something else? :-?

i recently installed a new a1200 internal disk drive and 40gb 2.5'' drive from amigakit.com in it. the internal drive and harddisk works fine.

[jbuonacc]

i have no problem using an external drive with the 1200. same drive that i use with the 500. hopefully someone knows what it might be.

[beller]

Is your A1200 a Commodore 1200 or an Amiga Tech A1200?  

I believe that a number of the Amiga Tech machines have malfunctioning external drive ports.  The internal drive, for example, fails to load protected software on the Amiga Tech. machine that I have and external drives don't work.

[jbuonacc]

hmm... actually, i've got one of each. they both work ok with the external drives. not sure if i have any 'protected' software though, don't think i can test for that.

EDIT: sorry, thought you were original poster. guess i got lucky on the Escom then?

[trackah123]

i got a normal commodore a1200 no escom/tech or anything else.

[amiga1260]

I also have an A1200 with mainboard revision 1D1 the same problem. When I connect a slimeline HD diskdrive. With the other External diskdrive from Power Computing HD diskdrive, I don't have the problem. The slimline drive works with my other two A1200 with mainboard revision 1D4.

I think that has to do with the revision of the mainboard.

Many moons ago read about some external diskdrives from A500 doesn't work, because the A1200 coudn't power them up.

[a1200]

I think amiga1260 hit the nail on the head there. It is probably power consumption. The PSU on a standard A1200 is only 23w, whereas the standard A500 is 60w. Try using your A500 Power Supply on the A1200. If it works, get yourself on ebay and buy a 60w A500 Power Supply.

I run my A1200 on an A500 psu as I only have a RAM card and HDD so I don't need a "Goliath" type PSU, just something more substantial than the standard A1200 one. If you have/are intending to get an accelerator for your A1200, you should consider a "Goliath" PSU (normally found on ebay).

[trackah123]

hmm that would be weird because i got a brand new a1200 psu from amigakit.com

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=39&products_id=199&osCsid=9b6921fa8060f1d68f8f37e301741020

[Flashlab]

Whether it's new or not doesn't matter; it delivers less power than the A500 one by design.

[trackah123]

tried my a500 psu, didnt work either.. while on my a500 it does work.. so its not the psu.. tried 2 psu's

could be motherboard revision tho.. or maybe floppychip/port damaged? dunno  :-?

i have a new harddrive installed.. is it neccesary to set some jumpers in order for external floppydrives to work? or some wiring? something else?  :roll:

[trackah123]

anyone?  :roll:

[rkauer]

You don't need to set ANY jumper in "low end" Amigas (even 'cos there are anyone to set).

[rednova]

dear friend:

I have an external floppy drive, pc1, that reads pc disks on top of amiga disks. For my amiga 1200.
After you connect the external drive (make sure is connected to -disk drive- and not -parallel-) you also need to -mount-the external drive -df1-. to mount it..you need to go to workbench..and from the drawer -i think is expansion, but don't remember-take the -df1- icon and copy paste into the mounted drawer. Basically..move the df1 icon from a drawer to the next, and this will mount the external drive into workbench. Is easy..then it will work.
cheers!!!

rednova

[Daniele]

I got the same problem only use a DF2: ,don't know if something would change in the next days I gonna tower up my A1200 ,in the case it wouldn't be ok it's not a big loss bcoz an external drive and an HD is enought for me.

[reddwarfer]

After you connect the external drive (make sure is connected to -disk drive- and not -parallel-) you also need to -mount-the external drive -df1-. to mount it..you need to go to workbench..and from the drawer -i think is expansion, but don't remember-take the -df1- icon and copy paste into the mounted drawer. Basically..move the df1 icon from a drawer to the next, and this will mount the external drive into workbench. Is easy..then it will work.

External Amiga disk drives are autoconfigured to read OFS and FFS disks, you only need drivers if using any other format (like PC0, PC1, DS1) etc.
There is no danger in connecting the disk drive to the wrong port either because the total number of pins is different (23 for Disks, 25 for Parallel)
I suspect that there must be something wrong with the connector, give the solder joints a look over maybe...