Mirage A1200 tower - the floppy drive faceplate

[blakespot]

I am in the process of ordering a Mirage tower for A1200.  I built a Winner Tower A1200 a while back and the faceplate that came glued in place on it was shaped to fit the A1200's internal floppy drive.  The eject button poked thru at the proper point, etc.

I now have an A1200 motherboard - no floppy drive included - on its way for me to put in the Mirage for A1200 - what kind of floppy drive do I need?  Is the internal floppy drive in the A2000 and A500 the same, physically, as the A1200's as far as it fitting whatever faceplate the Mirage will come with?  If I grab a drive off eBay from A500/A2000, will it fit in the Mirage 1200 case / floppy faceplate?

Thanks.


blakespot

[PaSha]

The A500/2000 drives are taller. Avoid them.

To get a nice floppy, with its own faceplate, simply disassemble an external drive and use the drive from it.

[blakespot]

You mean a non-Commodore, external Amiga drive?  Hmm...maybe I'd have been better off getting a used A1200 so I could have a drive from it.  I have some thing about "new" hardware so went with Vesalia's "new" A1200 mobo...  Hmm...


blakespot

[blakespot]

...so was that right?  A slim-line, non-Commodore external 3.5" drive will work in the A1200 Mirage?  A2000/A500 drives won't?


blakespot

[PaSha]

blakespot wrote:
You mean a non-Commodore, external Amiga drive?  Hmm...maybe I'd have been better off getting a used A1200 so I could have a drive from it.  I have some thing about "new" hardware so went with Vesalia's "new" A1200 mobo...  Hmm...


blakespot

Commodore never made floppy drives themselves. The A500/A2000 drives (as well as A1000,A600,A3000 and A4000 drives) will work too.
A500/2000: Too tall. A2000 drive comes with faceplate, but wrong color
A1000: Don't know, i suspect it is similar to A500/2000 drive
A600: same as A1200, perfect fit.
A3000: Too tall, no faceplate
A4000: Might be too tall, some (most?) A4000's shipped with a Tall floppy drive, some with a normal, slim line one.

Anyway... back to the external drives. Yes, they will work perfectly (providing that they actually work in the first place) in your A1200 tower. The floppy drive in my A1200 was a chinon fz-354, I've had several external drives with chinon fz-354 drives inside. Most external drives (at least all 'normal' size ones) use a standard 34-pin ribbon and power plug on the inside, so if you have a spare external drive lying around, butcher it, take the drive and plug it in your a1200. Tada, instant DF0:

-Paul

[blakespot]

Does the Mirage 1200 tower come with a faceplate for the 3.5" drive, like the WinnerTower did?


bp

[blakespot]

Would this drive:

Pic here

Work fine in the A1200 Mirage tower?  Or is it too thin??  Seems thinner than the faceplate that came with the Winner Tower I used to have.  Thanks.



blakespot

[PaSha]

blakespot wrote:
Does the Mirage 1200 tower come with a faceplate for the 3.5" drive, like the WinnerTower did?


bp

So it seems...
From the elbox webpage:
1 bay for the Amiga floppy disk drive
• (FDD front panel included)

-Paul

[Methuselas]

Hey Blake, why not buy a new PC floppy and mod it to read amiga disks. The docs are on aminet and it isn't that hard to do. Then, you don't have to pay a but load for a Chinon drive. I had two of those in my A2000 and never had a problem with them. It can only read double density, but like any amiga disks are bigger than that.

[jeffimix]

Catweasel is an expensive option, but works well for me... okay actually I have an el-cheapo PC drive on my catweasel that throws off errors on Amiga DD floppies, so my 2000 still has an original DD drive alongside the pc HD drive... Moral: Buy a really nice HD floppy drive and a catweasel, and you'll get a very good product.

[blakespot]

Catweasel does not work properly.  I spent hours - days going back and forth with the developer of the device trying to get it working on a new A1200 I had in '00.  It never worked.  The developer of the device was incorrect in certain assumptions he made with regards to the A1200 motherboard.

I will not touch that device that I wasted $$ on nor waste any of my time with it again.



blakespot