HD floppy hw solution?

[NorthWay]

(I was looking for a thread I remember in the later months by someone who was working on new small projects and who I think was looking for ideas)

Has there ever been a gadget that interfaces between an hd floppy drive and a standard Amiga and does MFM en/decoding on the fly?
You would need a completely new driver of course, that doesn't send the data in/out in MFM format, but that is an idea that has already been used by a networking product (which names fails me atm).
If you got really creative you could make a new trackdisk.device that handles both cases.

[Ral-Clan]

(I was looking for a thread I remember in the later months by someone who was working on new small projects and who I think was looking for ideas)

Has there ever been a gadget that interfaces between an hd floppy drive and a standard Amiga and does MFM en/decoding on the fly?
You would need a completely new driver of course, that doesn't send the data in/out in MFM format, but that is an idea that has already been used by a networking product (which names fails me atm).
If you got really creative you could make a new trackdisk.device that handles both cases.

Not sure if it's MFM but try Googling the Power Computing Power XL HD Floppy.  It came with an interface that plugged into the back of HD PC floppy drives and allowed them to be used with Amigas.

[NorthWay]

Not sure I've ever heard of it before, but that sounds exactly like what I had in mind!
Case closed?

[danbeaver]

CatWeasel MK2 is pretty inexpensive, has a bunch of connection options and supports HD FDDs in PC and Amiga formats (with almost any programmable).  To boot from it would require its driver be in firmware though. Booting from a HDD / CF card you could then use it for installing software.

[scuzzb494]

Not sure if it's MFM but try Googling the Power Computing Power XL HD Floppy.  It came with an interface that plugged into the back of HD PC floppy drives and allowed them to be used with Amigas.

I recall the day I went into the computer shop complaining about the lack of space on a DD disk and I was sold the XL drive and never really used anything else. They look exactly the same as a normal floppy and I have managed to get a couple thinking they were just your normal drive. They are a bit slow I have to say.

I think this is what you are talking about.. Just works as a HD drive.

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/a_scuzz_sept20/a_scuzz_sep20_377.jpg

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/car_0410/car_0410_263.jpg

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/a_scuzz_jul2005/a_scuzz_jul30_082.jpg

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/car_0410/car_0410_263_l.jpg

[psxphill]

Has there ever been a gadget that interfaces between an hd floppy drive and a standard Amiga and does MFM en/decoding on the fly?

It would be easier to create something that buffers an entire track. For reading it's relatively easy. You read from the disk and send it to the Amiga at half speed.
 
For writing you have to hold off stepping the head until the data has actually been written. Although you could start writing to the disk after you have received more than half a track, which would reduce the amount of extra delay. You need to avoid a buffer underrun at all costs though.
 
It probably wouldn't be that hard to do, but involves quite a bit of investment which you may not recover due to the small number you'd sell.

[Matt_H]

The (very minor) caveat with the Power Computing drive is that it requires a software patch to be able to write to HD disks. Reading HD disks and reading and writing DD disks works fine without it.

There are some similar add-on boards that plug into the back of PC floppy drives that make them Amiga-compatible (and I don't think they require a patch). Amtrade made one years ago. There were one or two homebrew boards made more recently, but they weren't widely distributed. Amiga Future wrote about one of them.

[psxphill]

The (very minor) caveat with the Power Computing drive is that it requires a software patch to be able to write to HD disks. Reading HD disks and reading and writing DD disks works fine without it.
 
There are some similar add-on boards that plug into the back of PC floppy drives that make them Amiga-compatible (and I don't think they require a patch). Amtrade made one years ago. There were one or two homebrew boards made more recently, but they weren't widely distributed. Amiga Future wrote about one of them.

The amtrade one was based on a dual speed drive, if you can get one of those then yes it's trivial.
 
The Power Computing drive needed a patch because it needed to wait for the write buffer to empty before stepping to the next track or turning off the motor. You could do that in hardware though.

[Ral-Clan]

I recall the day I went into the computer shop complaining about the lack of space on a DD disk and I was sold the XL drive and never really used anything else. They look exactly the same as a normal floppy and I have managed to get a couple thinking they were just your normal drive. They are a bit slow I have to say.

I think this is what you are talking about.. Just works as a HD drive.

There is an internal version as well, which is what I have.  It looks to me like the extra circuit board that attached to the back of the (Sony made) PC HD floppy drive could be attached to any HD floppy drive (I have tested it with other PC drives in DD mode and it did work. I never had the opportunity to test it with other PC drives in HD mode).

[Lurch]

I have a couple of Nathan's (Amigamaniacs) PC to Amiga boards and they work great. Just plug into the back of the floppy drive.

Really good price too, a shame you can't purchase them at this point in time :-(

[mfilos]

AFAIK Nathan's PCB's were based (if not the same) with Ian Stedman's floppy adapter that can be bought from Ian directly (http://ianstedman.co.uk/Sales/sales.html)

[Lurch]

That's good to hear, but does the finished product look like what's on the webpage?

http://ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/designs/Floppy_Adaptor_V2/floppy_adaptor_v2.html

The one's I have from Nathan have a nicer/smaller PCB. I wonder if some can be made using Nathan's PCB?

[danbeaver]

That's good to hear, but does the finished product look like what's on the webpage?

http://ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/designs/Floppy_Adaptor_V2/floppy_adaptor_v2.html

The one's I have from Nathan have a nicer/smaller PCB. I wonder if some can be made using Nathan's PCB?

That solution allows a HD PC FDD to be used as a DD drive just like Ian's (I have several).  The 50 buck Catweasel MK2 uses HD PC floppy drives as Amiga HD drives at full speed. It can use two drives at a time and can drive 5.25" 1.2 Meg floppies too, plus read/write 1541 floppies. It can connect  to several ports in the Amiga. I have one and used it as a second HD FDD in my A4000.

[mfilos]

Yeah but don't forget that the Floppy attached to the Catweasel can't boot. It's awesome solution for 2nd floppy though.

[danbeaver]

Yeah but don't forget that the Floppy attached to the Catweasel can't boot. It's awesome solution for 2nd floppy though.

Yes, I said that earlier.