Amiga Technologies A4000T floppy

[orange]

What kind of floppy drive does A4000T use? standard Amiga with RDY signal or PC one?

BTW, what about  RAM on motherboard, can EDO be used for expanding it and whats the max size of single module?

[Jope]

Amiga standard floppy drive (1" height).

EDO probably works, but is not faster than FPM, max size for a module is 8MB.

If you use 8MB modules, you can only install two modules and you must leave one empty slot between the modules. (ie. populate slot 1 and 3)

[Will-i-am]

Amiga standard floppy drive (1" height)
But on the tower I have the floppy is double density, not high density. Something about Amiga oweing the company too much money so they stopped making floppies until they get paid and the only company that would make floppies for them made double density models. Anyway that's what I heard.

[Brian]

Something to do with AmigaTechnologies using PC HD floppies converted to read Amiga DD disks just as one some late A1200's.

[amigadave]

Off Topic from original poster, but matches the topic subject, so forgive my hijacking of the thread.

Do any of you floppy drive gurus know how to add an external floppy port to the A4000T.  I need it for my SoundSwitch device on my Toaster/Flyer system and was suprised to find out that the Amiga Technologies A4000T is the only Amiga I know of that does not have an external floppy port (not considering the CD32 or maybe CDTV too).

[Markus_Bieler]

Yes its possible. The solder point are there. If I remember correctly its CN 260 OR 261. One is for a real portplug, the other for two rows of oins to connect a ribboncable.
Look here on the pic at the left side, there has someone soldered the connector onto the scsi-board.

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=1086

I soldered a cable directly onto the board.

[amigadave]

Thanks for the picture and info Markus.  I might send you a personal message if I can't figure it out once I open my A4000T up to try this.  I am more familiar with desktop Amigas and don't recognize the picture very well yet, but hope it won't be too difficult.

[X-ray]

@ Orange

I have previously used two 8mb EDO SIMMS on the mobo, but there was no speed difference between that and the ordinary FPM SIMMS. EDO can be used though.

As for the floppy drive, there is a big long thread about that somewhere. The A4KT has a small PCB between the disk drive header and the floppy drive. This presumably enables a partially modified PC drive to read Amiga disks in 880k format. I have found the following in my tests:

1) If I take the PCB out and connect a standard A500 floppy to the header, it works just fine.
2) If I connect a standard PC floppy via the little PCB, I get no joy. This could just have happened because of the two drives I tried though.
3) If I try the A4KT floppy in a PC, it doesn't work at all.

I suppose my best advice to you (if you just want a spare drive) is to get a standard Amiga floppy and when your existing one dies, ditch the PCB and connect the spare directly. Adding a second drive seems to be a ball-ache with finding the right drives or finding someone who sells them.

[Markus_Bieler]

look here for more infos:

http://www.g-mb.de/A4000Ttips_e.html

or here:

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=17378

[Markus_Bieler]

@X-ray

Amiga Technologies just used standard PC-HD-Floppydrives. The first batch of A4000T had a (very unprofesionally) altered floppycable to match the different signals. The later used a little PCB to do the same.

If you havd the later then you can indeed just use a standard amiga drive like Chinon FB354/FZ354 (DD) or Chinon FB357/FZ357 (HD) drive. If you have a A4000T from the first batch then you need also a real amigafloppycable (like one from an A2000)

Markus

[X-ray]

@ Markus

Mine has the PCB board, but I have not as yet found a PC drive that I can just plug in. I tried two..my current PC drive and also an older PC drive from about three years back...they don't work. Have you put a standard PC drive in there?

[Markus_Bieler]

@X-ray

No. But the first thing I did when I got my A4000T, was to take out the Panasonic-floppydrive and installed a FZ357A (real Amiga-HD-drive). The Panasonic drive is now in my PC and it works as real PC-HD-drive. and I had exchange this ugly cable patch (with hot glue everywhere on the flat cable).

And the local repair-center (where I can use their equipment to solder on my boards) told me that this little PCB on the back of the drives just does the same as the ugly cablepatch, I took this for real. Sorry I can't prove it.
IIRC the patch has something to do with drivereadysignal. perhaps you have to jumper your drive.

What I know is, that you can't use Mitsumi drives at all. (And I even would not recommend them for PCs as well, they are just lousy unreliable drives)

Best is to look after A2000/A4000 drives and a A2000 floppy cable.

Markus

edited 10-10-2005 21:54

[X-ray]

@ Markus

If you come across another FZ-357 keep me in mind: I'll buy that off you.

[Markus_Bieler]

@X-ray

A little typo. Amiga HD Drive FZ357A
PC HD drive FZ357.

[X-ray]

@ Markus

Okay, one of them then  :-)