New external floppy drives

[strim]

New external floppy drive for Amiga now available for preorder at RetroAmi shop! The drives are manufactured by Sakura company, which previously has successfully completed the project of PCMCIA SRAM expansions.

The drives are compatible with all classic Amiga models equipped with external disk drive connector. The only version available in preorder will be shipped with PC drive mechanism, but behave exactly as original Amiga-style 880kB DD disk drives (thanks to flexibility of the interface board).

This picture shows a prototype. Final version will be painted black and have minor case corrections.

The price in preorder is 195 PLN (around $53). Note that after preorder ends, the price will increase. The drives are covered by 24-months warranty and will be shipped to users late April.

[ChuckT]

If you make it so I can hook it up to the PC and read Amiga disks then you have a deal.

[danbeaver]

You need a programmable floppy controller for that.

[Lurch]

Not a bad deal if you want to read real disks, and it looks okay. Although the final product will look different and in black.

Haven't used a real floppy disk in sometime, but may pick one up just in case.

[strim]

If you make it so I can hook it up to the PC and read Amiga disks then you have a deal.

You need a Catweasel or Kyroflux device for that. As danbeaver said, it is not a problem of the floppy drive, but the controller. Typical PC floppy controller is not flexible enough to read Amiga format floppies.

[strim]

The preorder will end on Tuesday, so anyone interested still have a few days to buy the drive at a reduced price of 48 EUR!

There was a small delay in the production, but it's almost done. We hope to start delivery to RetroAmi next week.

[danbeaver]

Would be nice if the web site worked, but C'est la vie!

Post Script: was able to order directly via Paypal with "sklep[at]retroami.com.pl"

[strim]

Would be nice if the web site worked, but C'est la vie!

If you could also be so kind, please write them a mail explaining what is broken on the site.

[smerf]

If you make it so I can hook it up to the PC and read Amiga disks then you have a deal.

I purchased a GoTek drive for my Amiga's, received the drive put it in a old A1010 external drive. So now I can use it for all my Amiga's. I just download the programs on my PC and then use it to put the Programs on a USB thumb drive. Then I plug it into the GoTek and walla a self transferring program utility for all my Amiga's. In some instances I may take several programs especially utility programs and adf them on to the USB stick.

What I found out is that having a gotek in a A1010 case is pretty nice.

[danbeaver]

Funny you should mention that, I have a couple of empty external drive cases on order to do just that.  I did it with a couple of HxC drives, but they were a pain in the tuchus to deal with and I sold them.

[nyteschayde]

Its a good deal. I just wish they'd make HD floppies. Why is it so seemingly impossible to provide high density floppy disk support for the Amigas. After my HD floppy died on my A4000D recently, I've been pretty bummed at how hard it is to come by these units.

[danbeaver]

You, of course, are aware that it is a problem due the the Amiga chip set, and that the speed of the spin of the disk must be cut from 300 RPM to 150 RPM.  There were circuits made to do this, but since nothing was ever distributed on the Amiga 1.76 MB format, it seems counter productive to do it now.

Now when the Catweasel device was available (up until just about 18 months ago), it was highly programmable and also the fastest (transfer speed) floppy controller out there for this.  I have a MK II sitting in my X1000 allowing me access to all the floppy goodies from ancient times, even before the Bandito wrote in his Roomers column!

[nyteschayde]

Still, nonetheless, it seems as though there should be something that can be done.

[Matt_H]

There have been a couple of adapters developed in recent years to use regular PC floppy drives as HD Amiga drives, but I don't think any were sold commercially. As I recall they were either DIY projects or proof of concept by the a1k.org guys. Would love to see Vesalia or AmigaKit or one of the other shops sell something like this. They're essential for Mac 68K and DOS emulation.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

but since nothing was ever distributed on the Amiga 1.76 MB format

The transitions for Toaster 4000 were distributed on HD disks.