Hey Mark. Just wanted to say thank you. Used this video this week to mod an old PC drive and get my Amiga 600 back up and running. Goes to show, the size of the tool doesn't matter, it's how you use it ;)
i had debated for a while to rebuild an old amiga and source some parts.. but also then had heard that there is someone who made some kind of emulation that can be done on a pc and also another variant for an old apple system. the floppy repair replacement is really great. everything has to come from somewhere. pioneering the future from the past. people like it for sure.
Very interesting. I am not an Amiga owner, but enjoyed the video anyway. Always nice to see items being modified to do something different from their intended use.
Awesome video mark! This would of been awesome to know back in the day when I actually owned an Amiga! Maybe if I ever manage to get one again it might have a dodgy floppy drive and I'll need to use your video to modify a PC drive in its stead. Thanks for posting!
Tip: Always solder the wires first, and put som solder on whatever you are soldering the wire to. Flux well and all you have to do is hold the parts together and apply some heat.
Just done this for an Amiga 1200 and all I did rather than lift the chip leg five I just cut the track line far easier and safer so no risk of it breaking away from the chip as it's so small. And with everything else done drive working just perfectly so thanks for this video well done.
Thanks for the simple conversion video. I have a bunch of Alp drives and a 2nd A500 motherboard doing nothing. I think I'll mockup a A1000 style case (Checkered 1500) and remake a A1500 for my collection + Pistorme and HDD. I've subscribed and looking forward to more interesting content
Hi All, very well done, back in the day, a few of us used the IBM floppy as a second external drive on the 500's and 1000. I cant recall exactly, but a few components lived in the external connector, i was told if a do open it be very careful. It was a bit if a trade secret but the people i dealt with were good friends and not strangers worried about who it was done. There was a few catches, if it failed you could not just use any ibm floppy drive, they had a list of what worked and what did not, eg it only works on Sony or Hitachi or Mitsumi and a list of model numbers Regards George
Used to manufacture both 5 1/2" and 3 1/4" external expansion drives for Amiga in 1980's and still have a stack of PCBs for both drives logic and special connector required by Amiga.
Wow! That’s dedication Helmuth! Back in the early nineties I worked in a diskette duplication factory producing Amiga diskettes. I was a drive technician repairing the machinery.
@@bassbacke depends on a number of factors, presently I would need to dig out the circuit diagram and find where I have the PCBs among my stacks of stuff stored. Might even still have some ribbon cables as well to go with the PCB. Have not paid much attention since early 2000s, and packed away much around 2007. PCBs would be rather cheap so mailing cost might be higher than material. One aspect in those days the 23 pin connector was rare and we tended to use modified 25 pin connectors. Drives wise we would have delivered close to 1000 3 1/2" and 200 5 1/4" drives in those times, even lost 50 or so on consignment to one Amiga retailer that got liquidated, the liquidator kept all stock at the premises, though our drives were never the property of the shop.
Remember how bloody expensive those external floppy drives for the Amiga was back in the days... And we could only have used a simple PC floppy drive.. Oh well... Piracy costed.
@@MarkFixesStuff A short follow up. The drive was behaving badly when I had it installed with a GoTek floppy emulator or another disk. Didn't matter if it was DF0: or DF1: or first or last on the floppy cable. I swear it had been working. I did a little more research and saw a video on the channel "Chris Edwards Restoration" where he modified a comparable Alps floppy drive. In the comments, a user, ripxkid, suggested using a diode, cathode connected to Ready, anode to connector pin 34. I also noted Chris did not cut the trace connecting the controller to connector pin 2. I started to trouble shoot the original floppy I converted and in the process broke pin 5 off the controller. So, out came a new drive and I did the modification again only this time I did not cut the trace to connector pin 2 from the controller and I installed a 1N4148 diode between Ready and connector pin 34. I have tested this several different ways and it all seems to work. I am not comfortable with pin 2 connected to two pins on the controller chip, but no smoke and it works. Thought I'd share the information for what it may be worth. Sorry for rambling. Thank you again for the video. It got me started on a much needed project.
Back in the early 90s my Amiga 500 floppy drive malfunctioned. I purchased a Mitsui PC floppy drive from the local "clone" computer shop and I didn't make any electrical modification to get it to work. Although I had to make some physical modifications to get it to fit into the internal bay. I'm surprised your drive didn't work out of the box like mine did.
ldisc66 most PC drives are set to DS1 by default, and lack the ready signal on the appropriate pin. You were lucky I guess? Worth noting that later A1200 machines from Escom were pre modded to use standard drives.
Hi, this is the most thorough and professional guide I found and trust me I've seen them all. Still didn't solve my problem though. I've got Samsung SFD-321B /LEB rev.T4, did all other dedicated guides say and it still doesn't work. I checked continuity and all seems good. There are many revisions of this drive but mine looks just like yours. Would there be anything else to try?
This reminds me when I explained to a friend of mine, who used PCs, that the Amiga did MFM decoding in software. I wondered if you could write RLL format floppy discs. He thought I was mad. He was probably right.
I used to make external drives for the Amiga! Both 5 1/4 and 3 1/2. There is an adapter that you made that would switch the Amiga lines to an IBM lines. Amiga does not use the track identifier and select. I made up to 4 drives. You do not have take the IBM drive apart.
some 5-10yrs ago(sorry for such a broad time span) there was 1-2 webpages with lists of drives that could be adapted and how to....... I toyed with a few handful and found that a lot of older floppy drives had jumpers, or a lot of easier steps that could be trial and error into working:P; some were missing components that would be needed to be used as an amiga drive(detect the floppy is in)..... this is in large part why I keep every floppy drive I get my hands on(easily have some 30+)
If we are thinking about the same lists, they were wrong in some (many?) cases. Ready Signal was identified by try and error instead of an oscilloscope.
Marcian0 honestly wouldn't be able to tell ya; up to that point I was convinced that PC floppy drives were not compatible at all than I seen some information about some adapter that could be used to adapt a floppy drive; from that I eventually found the list of drives..... I dunno about inconsistencies on drives but that was cause from the start I was quite willing to accept the idea especially with smaller companies there was a likelihood of 152 variants of the same model floppy drives; I was expecting there to be inconsistances..... even now a day on a different topic; installing an alarm system on my car, I'm referring to information available for 4 years worth of 3 different model cars to get an idea where everything should be cause apparently the Canadian version of the car doesn't follow the exact same wiring convention as the American and worse yet the car was made by a different company than it's badge(pontiac vibe:P).... the nature of electronics sometimes lol
You know that RD test point that you used isn't a _READY signal? it is a _READ_DATA (PIN 32 of floppy connector). If you mod floppy in this way then when you connect external floppy to amiga, niether of them will work. Ohh and BTW, the quiqest way to mod any pc floppy to use with Amiga, is to solder diode from pin 34(_READY) to pin 10(_SEL0), cut trace on pin2 and solder wire to lifted controller pin, change jumper fron ds1 to ds0, bridge HD floppy sensor.
I know this is a few years old. I actually did this mod on my Alps drive (and did a video last year) and it's worked well. I even added a switch that could undo the mod. One question, for my Amiga 600, I couldn't fit it in the case with the top lid on so I left it off. Only recently did I discover that without the drive's top lid, the caddie mechanism pops out and that can cause the head to snag on the disk as it's being removed, potentially destroying it (had to bend the head spring mechanism back to straighten it out). The solution was to cut a front piece in the front and bent it out of the way. The Amiga 500 may not have that problem but curious if you ever mounted the drive inside your Amiga and how well it fit.
@@MarkFixesStuff Mark, that really surprises me 8-O I thought you'd have known; anyway, just like the Amiga computers, the Spectrum +3, as well as its Amstrad brethren, requires a !Ready signal in order to use a floppy drive, which of course Amstrad's own 3" drives do have. I have seen various "hacks" trying to circumvent the lack of the !Ready signal on many common PC FDDs - such as a switch to turn on when there's a disk in the drive, but this seems more appropriate to me. Also, before i forget, here's a link to the +3's Drive B: connector: tietokone.ntrautanen.fi/hardware/hwb/co_ZXSpectrum-DiskB.html but i think the pin numbers may have been swapped with regards to Upper/Lower side of the PCB
Nice soldering, but I would've liked to have seen any discussion regarding what the actual changes from a PC to an Amiga drive are, instead of just "I'm cutting x and moving y". Still, nice to see Amiga stuff well into the 21st century. :)
well, I know everyone's a critic with soldering, but 3:50 wasn't all that nice. molten solder on top of cold contacts, wouldn't be too surprised if that bridge just pops off with time
Great tip nice work, I assume that all PC drive boards are of the same type and layout ? I assume you have to use a 1.44Mb PC drive to convert to Amiga use otherwise you would be restricted to only using 720KB DD disks ?
@@MarkFixesStuff any amiga with a 2.04 rom and newer can use high density. There are some hacks on A1k german forum to use sony pc floppy drives as HD.
Crikey.. does Velleman still exist? I remember seeing their kits in the now defunct Maplin years ago. Btw, why did the Amiga have different pin outs? Would've made sense simply using off the shelf parts.
Yes! They still sell kits! Amiga drives were slightly more complicated than PC drives, using tricks to pack data that PC drives didn’t care about. Often that functionality was just disconnected for the PC market.
Need to get yourself some 28awg wrapping wire or thin magnet wire for bodging. Nice job of it, regardless. Nifty! This would have saved me some needed coin in 1989 on my A1000. Oh well.
Back in prime time of Amiga 30 years ago, i bought a official 1.76 MB HD Floppy for Amiga and could format 1.38.MB PC Floppies to 1.76.MB on Amiga with FFS. The real size of PC floppy were 1.38.MB and not 1.44.MB. Back in the days you used 1024 and not 1000. In fact Windows 10/11 still use 1024 instead of 1000. My CD32 Expansion, Elsat Promodule from 1996 or so came with a internal PC Floppy.
Mark, this won´t work. Ok, works, until you connect external floppy. Then the system will go crazy. RD pad is not ready signal, it´s READ signal. YOu need to connect pin 34 to the pin 32 of the controller, there is Ready signal (not used in PC). Also, there are some older version of DF354, primarily made for IBM (bears IBM FRU part sticker), whether there is no Ready signal present neither on the chip. It works, except Xcopy. So, stick with 121F and 121G sub-version and you are fine.
@@MarkFixesStuff There is even better mod than I described, that allows READY signal to be present for Xcopy (which is crazy eager for original Chinon floppy). Connect a diode between ready signal (pin 34) and SEL0 (pin 10). Then floppy is always ready when selected, despite it has no real READY signal at all.
Neat fix! I guess it's possibile also with some other different disk drive. How could you make another video in order to fit that in the amiga 500's case as well?
You have not adressed the small plastic eject button issue (it is way different on Amiga's). And you might want to bridge the DD/HD switch inside the drive, to kick it into permanent DD-Mode. This way you can use 3M branded or other high quality HD disks, without the need for a piece of tape. This however is mostly usefull for people like me, still using disks, and have like 450/500 and more disks on hand.
Of course. I leave the case modding to others. I think there is a printable button for these drives out there. Thank you for your kind comments. I think I will revisit the drive with some observations in a future video.
@@MarkFixesStuff No probs. Well... You can find them for the Amiga3000 somewere and print your self. Else you need to go to: amigastore.eu/en/624-floppy-drive-replacement-button.html for a replacement button.
Brilliant!!! back in 1989 #easylab4kids connected a peecee floppy drive to my A500 but it didnt work, only drive clicking. If I just knew back then how easy it was. Does anyone here have time-travel device?
I converted the floppy disk drive according to this scheme. Unfortunately, the additional DF1 floppy disk drive does not work with this floppy disk drive. There must be a diode like this picture: www.puzio.pl/tablica/amiga/alps.png
@@ArcadeFan77 i did the same as in this video has game screen but no progress you just add an external diode which is in this video what is the value of the diode can you help ?
Instead of butchering the board, could you not have swapped the leads around on a piece of perf board and a couple of 34 pin connectors? This approach would make it drive-agnostic as well.
Yes, with the caveat that some of the later Escom Amiga 1200 machines had a fix on the motherboard to use PC drives, and that is best reversed before using a modded drive.
After watching this I just got an idea: If you have a DF1: drive from the '90s that appears to be a PC drive and converter board stuck in a case, would it have a chance of damaging anything if I switched in a 1.44/1.76mb drive in place of the 720/880kb drive?
@@MarkFixesStuff If it doesn't work, it's not the end of the universe, it's just my pc 3.5" drive won't write 720k disks in Windows(yes, even through command line or using actual 720k disks, it just errors out) so I have to boot into Ubuntu if I wanna move files to my Amiga. Being able to use PC1: to read 1.44mb disks would save hours of faffing.
@@MarkFixesStuff After a bit of reading, it's to do with the bit rate being too high for Paula to handle. Apparently you'd either need a hardware buffer, or to halve the RPM of the drive somehow, the latter of which is what was used for official A4000 HD drives.
For those of you looking for data sheet for SD705A, the equivalent Toshiba IC is TC8602F. Here is the data sheet for download: datasheet.datasheetarchive.com/originals/distributors/Datasheets-110/DSAP0010186.pdf
@@MarkFixesStuff I wonder if there's a way to modify the Paula chip to allow it to read and write to HD disks. As I recall, it's a bit too slow for that. Might be able to add some hardware there to intercept the signal or something. IDK
@@CoyoteSeven The Amiga HD floppy reduced the RPM's from 300 to 150 to use HD mode, so this would be challenging to archive with PC floppys which rotate constantly at 300RPM. I cannot remember. was it 1024 bytes per sector or 22 sectors? I think, 22 Sectors were used, like the MB02 disc interface for ZX Spectrum And you cannot xcopy game DD to HD discs.
One would think that there is money in someone making new (and affordable) floppy drives to replace the dead ones in all the Amigas out there... wish someone would do that!
Of course. That is why you use the old tape-over-the-hole trick. Even though the OS reads DD only on most Amiga's, the drive will still read as HD if the switch is not activated inside the drive. You can bypass, by using a piece of tape on the floppy Disk it self, or you can bridge the switch inside the drive with solder. The latter, will make the drive read/write permanently in DD mode.
Sorry I didn't get my point across very well and perhaps wasn't clear what i was getting at. Given that the PC drive was most likely HD, could the Amiga now format and read 1.44MB rather than the normal 720KB
So I did this and got a great working floppy drive for my Amiga 2000. When I tried adding an internal Gotek as well, I couldn't get them to work with each other. Yes I set J301. Separately they work great, together, with jumpers set on Gotek and mobo, they don't. One works but the other doesn't. Any suggestions with using a PC converted floppy with a Gotek as two internal drivers on an Amiga 2000? I'm using a "proper" amiga floppy drive cable. I've tried changing the order of the floppies on the cable. DF1 being the furthest away on the cable and DF0 the closest.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
Hey Mark. Just wanted to say thank you. Used this video this week to mod an old PC drive and get my Amiga 600 back up and running. Goes to show, the size of the tool doesn't matter, it's how you use it ;)
Cheers Colin! Well done on the restoration!
@@MarkFixesStuff - At 4:40 Bro, TMI!! ha-ha-ha
You crafty bugger, after being on RMC today you drop this too? Brilliant!
+Rich Kearney Thanks mate!
I never knew you could use a PC floppy on an Amiga! Thank you.
I did. I bought 1.76.MB HD Floppy for Amiga 500, and formatted PC floppies on it.
Certainly not in the hey days of Amigas back in the day. Some PC drives did work on Atari ST's though.
2 things.
1. You are my new hero for playing Tycho.
2. Bought 2 drives to have backups for my Amiga 500. Cheers.
just done this mod today many thanks my A600 has a working floppy.. soooo happy
Deflektor! One of my most-played Amiga disks. Lovely to see the real thing again rather than an ADF.
Great video Mark.
This will make a lot of Amiga users very happy, me included. Thank you for this.
Same,and I've got a panasonic floppy drive on hand for me to mod.
@@gamepad3173 Nice.
i had debated for a while to rebuild an old amiga and source some parts.. but also then had heard that there is someone who made some kind of emulation that can be done on a pc and also another variant for an old apple system. the floppy repair replacement is really great. everything has to come from somewhere. pioneering the future from the past. people like it for sure.
Very interesting. I am not an Amiga owner, but enjoyed the video anyway. Always nice to see items being modified to do something different from their intended use.
and to save you the customer some money.
Awesome video mark! This would of been awesome to know back in the day when I actually owned an Amiga! Maybe if I ever manage to get one again it might have a dodgy floppy drive and I'll need to use your video to modify a PC drive in its stead. Thanks for posting!
Never had an Amiga - much to my disappointment growing up but do like watching a how to... thanks!
Impressive stuff.
I can now officially boast that I saw Mark Fixes Stuff with his small tool in his hand 😍😍
/slides into +Douglas Titchmarsh ‘s DMs
Tip: Always solder the wires first, and put som solder on whatever you are soldering the wire to. Flux well and all you have to do is hold the parts together and apply some heat.
Thank you Svein!
Tools and grease, it's enough to turn a floppy drive into a hard drive... Superb video mate, I never knew this was even possible...
@Mr T. Guru well yeah I imagine it is, but never having needed to, why would I know... 🤔
Sure wish I had this information when I first bought my Amiga 500 back in the day. Thanks!
Just done this for an Amiga 1200 and all I did rather than lift the chip leg five I just cut the track line far easier and safer so no risk of it breaking away from the chip as it's so small. And with everything else done drive working just perfectly so thanks for this video well done.
Oh, BTW, thanks for the tip on the flux. I bought some, and it works quite well.
Thanks for the simple conversion video. I have a bunch of Alp drives and a 2nd A500 motherboard doing nothing. I think I'll mockup a A1000 style case (Checkered 1500) and remake a A1500 for my collection + Pistorme and HDD. I've subscribed and looking forward to more interesting content
Awesome to see a new video from you. Double dose of Mark, here and on RMC, my week is complete!
+Richard Clifton haha! You are easily pleased! Thank you very much, you epic beast you!
I'm impressed that those old Amiga discs still work. I tried my Amiga 1200 out a few years ago and about half the discs didn't load anymore. :(
@Neb6 2200? Yikes! 😲
@Neb6 Did you say 2,200?!? 😱
Very interesting subject to investigate. Great job Mark!
Nice craftsmanship.
To you, Sir, I tip my proverbial hat.
If only my tools were as small.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for watching! I have the tiniest tool!
I might attempt this if I have a spare one of those floppy drives as my amiga 1200s floppy drive is completely dead. Great video!
Good work. 👍 You do well with a solder iron. And what better, to play a game during the night, just like we did in the 80's.
I was tired the next day, but worth it!
It was said that Jeremy Beadle had a 'small tool', but on the other hand ;)
awesome that PC floppy drives are so much compatible!
Great video and great to see you on RMC again 👍
Nice one Sir,I've loved this one!
Hi All, very well done, back in the day, a few of us used the IBM floppy as a second external drive on the 500's and 1000.
I cant recall exactly, but a few components lived in the external connector, i was told if a do open it be very careful.
It was a bit if a trade secret but the people i dealt with were good friends and not strangers worried about who it was done.
There was a few catches, if it failed you could not just use any ibm floppy drive, they had a list of what worked and what did not, eg it only works on Sony or Hitachi or Mitsumi and a list of model numbers
Regards
George
You are a real Hero of my ol'days!!!
The *Stunt Amiga* .... I LIKE it! Didn't even need a helmet.
It's like the Evil Knieval of Amigas
Awesome video thx for doing this! As someone who's been dabbling on hobbyist electronics, I find this quite interesting.
Thank you for watching!
this is amazing. very useful tip here Mark. Thank you.
Used to manufacture both 5 1/2" and 3 1/4" external expansion drives for Amiga in 1980's and still have a stack of PCBs for both drives logic and special connector required by Amiga.
Wow! That’s dedication Helmuth! Back in the early nineties I worked in a diskette duplication factory producing Amiga diskettes. I was a drive technician repairing the machinery.
Is there are way to purchase any of those?
@@bassbacke depends on a number of factors, presently I would need to dig out the circuit diagram and find where I have the PCBs among my stacks of stuff stored. Might even still have some ribbon cables as well to go with the PCB.
Have not paid much attention since early 2000s, and packed away much around 2007. PCBs would be rather cheap so mailing cost might be higher than material. One aspect in those days the 23 pin connector was rare and we tended to use modified 25 pin connectors.
Drives wise we would have delivered close to 1000 3 1/2" and 200 5 1/4" drives in those times, even lost 50 or so on consignment to one Amiga retailer that got liquidated, the liquidator kept all stock at the premises, though our drives were never the property of the shop.
Time to bring the amiga 600 back to life 😍 floppy drive is the only thing that I needed to fix after re capping and sorting the other niggles 🙌🙌🙌
Remember how bloody expensive those external floppy drives for the Amiga was back in the days... And we could only have used a simple PC floppy drive.. Oh well... Piracy costed.
yes, in 1988 i paid 300 Deutschmark for an external NEC Drive.
Never thought I'd see the day. So it can be done!
Loved it :D !always happy when a vid arrives bro :D hope you are well :D
Thank you very much for this very useful modification!
Cheers Peter!!
Awesome vid mate, love it! You should definitely have more subscribers
Thanks this is awsome I've been wondering how I was going to replace my 500+ external drive.
Great work keep it up.
Thanks Andy. What external drive do you use?
Ok, then I also convert my old PC floppy drive to an AMIGA drive and hope that with that drive my old 90's disks will work then. Greetings, Doc64!
it have to be same model. 99.9% you cant have same
@@jarisipilainen3875 Hmmm, that's not good. But thanks for the hint!
Thanks for the tutorial. It works great even with CrossDos.
Brilliant news! Well done!
@@MarkFixesStuff A short follow up. The drive was behaving badly when I had it installed with a GoTek floppy emulator or another disk. Didn't matter if it was DF0: or DF1: or first or last on the floppy cable. I swear it had been working. I did a little more research and saw a video on the channel "Chris Edwards Restoration" where he modified a comparable Alps floppy drive. In the comments, a user, ripxkid, suggested using a diode, cathode connected to Ready, anode to connector pin 34. I also noted Chris did not cut the trace connecting the controller to connector pin 2. I started to trouble shoot the original floppy I converted and in the process broke pin 5 off the controller. So, out came a new drive and I did the modification again only this time I did not cut the trace to connector pin 2 from the controller and I installed a 1N4148 diode between Ready and connector pin 34. I have tested this several different ways and it all seems to work. I am not comfortable with pin 2 connected to two pins on the controller chip, but no smoke and it works. Thought I'd share the information for what it may be worth.
Sorry for rambling. Thank you again for the video. It got me started on a much needed project.
Awesome video! Just remember, it is not the size of the tool, it is how you use it :p
Back in the early 90s my Amiga 500 floppy drive malfunctioned. I purchased a Mitsui PC floppy drive from the local "clone" computer shop and I didn't make any electrical modification to get it to work. Although I had to make some physical modifications to get it to fit into the internal bay. I'm surprised your drive didn't work out of the box like mine did.
ldisc66 most PC drives are set to DS1 by default, and lack the ready signal on the appropriate pin. You were lucky I guess? Worth noting that later A1200 machines from Escom were pre modded to use standard drives.
@@MarkFixesStuff It's wild, decades later I'm still learning new things about the Amiga computer 🍻
Nice work! Really like your videos! Greetings from Germany
I had a PC compatible 3.5" drive for my Amiga 3000. It was a thin little sucker. It also worked in Mac emulation when using Shapeshifter.
Excellent video with great commentary 😁😁. Off to find a pc drive.
Have fun!
Im using sony Z121 drive in my amiga. Works really well and it is reliable.
Hi, this is the most thorough and professional guide I found and trust me I've seen them all. Still didn't solve my problem though. I've got Samsung SFD-321B /LEB rev.T4, did all other dedicated guides say and it still doesn't work. I checked continuity and all seems good. There are many revisions of this drive but mine looks just like yours. Would there be anything else to try?
This reminds me when I explained to a friend of mine, who used PCs, that the Amiga did MFM decoding in software. I wondered if you could write RLL format floppy discs. He thought I was mad. He was probably right.
Nice work Mark 👍
MadPete cheer Pete!!
I used to make external drives for the Amiga! Both 5 1/4 and 3 1/2. There is an adapter that you made that would switch the Amiga lines to an IBM lines. Amiga does not use the track identifier and select. I made up to 4 drives. You do not have take the IBM drive apart.
some 5-10yrs ago(sorry for such a broad time span) there was 1-2 webpages with lists of drives that could be adapted and how to....... I toyed with a few handful and found that a lot of older floppy drives had jumpers, or a lot of easier steps that could be trial and error into working:P; some were missing components that would be needed to be used as an amiga drive(detect the floppy is in)..... this is in large part why I keep every floppy drive I get my hands on(easily have some 30+)
If we are thinking about the same lists, they were wrong in some (many?) cases. Ready Signal was identified by try and error instead of an oscilloscope.
Marcian0 honestly wouldn't be able to tell ya; up to that point I was convinced that PC floppy drives were not compatible at all than I seen some information about some adapter that could be used to adapt a floppy drive; from that I eventually found the list of drives..... I dunno about inconsistencies on drives but that was cause from the start I was quite willing to accept the idea especially with smaller companies there was a likelihood of 152 variants of the same model floppy drives; I was expecting there to be inconsistances..... even now a day on a different topic; installing an alarm system on my car, I'm referring to information available for 4 years worth of 3 different model cars to get an idea where everything should be cause apparently the Canadian version of the car doesn't follow the exact same wiring convention as the American and worse yet the car was made by a different company than it's badge(pontiac vibe:P).... the nature of electronics sometimes lol
As ever mate, very clever stuff.
Great job Mark!
+GadgetUK164 - Retro Gaming Repairs & Mods cheers Gadget! Hope you are well mate.
You know that RD test point that you used isn't a _READY signal? it is a _READ_DATA (PIN 32 of floppy connector). If you mod floppy in this way then when you connect external floppy to amiga, niether of them will work. Ohh and BTW, the quiqest way to mod any pc floppy to use with Amiga, is to solder diode from pin 34(_READY) to pin 10(_SEL0), cut trace on pin2 and solder wire to lifted controller pin, change jumper fron ds1 to ds0, bridge HD floppy sensor.
Mariusz Koźliński thank you. It’s good to learn this. I’ll be making a follow up video in the future
+1 Mariusz. This mod works only with 1 internal floppy drive.
Just found you via RMC. Now subbed.
I know this is a few years old. I actually did this mod on my Alps drive (and did a video last year) and it's worked well. I even added a switch that could undo the mod. One question, for my Amiga 600, I couldn't fit it in the case with the top lid on so I left it off. Only recently did I discover that without the drive's top lid, the caddie mechanism pops out and that can cause the head to snag on the disk as it's being removed, potentially destroying it (had to bend the head spring mechanism back to straighten it out). The solution was to cut a front piece in the front and bent it out of the way. The Amiga 500 may not have that problem but curious if you ever mounted the drive inside your Amiga and how well it fit.
Didn’t know there were any Amigas still living! I wish they were mainstream machines...
Oh yes there are loads of Amiga machines still up and running! I have four or five here!
Im wondering if this concept could work for PC USB floppy drives that support 720K or if some custom drive controller mod would still be required.
Does anyone find that constant click from the floppy annoying?
Cool video, man! I’ve still have about 500 Public Domain disks!
This velleman pad is fabulous.... I want one. :)
+To masz it was a gift from my daughters for my birthday. It’s very nice and my old green mat was looking tired. It has magnetic screw holders!
That stripper you use looks really handy? Care to post where it came from or Amazon affiliate link?
Oh no, that died in the fire and the one on Amazon is stupidly expensive. I actually got it for about £4 in the Lidl special buys!
I love the flux, I have some too and the more exotic ones.
You need a good soldering iron for this. I have a few Amigas. I think id just swap a drive. But nice video.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but i believe that this procedure will also enable the floppy drive to be used with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3.
I don't actually know!
@@MarkFixesStuff Mark, that really surprises me 8-O I thought you'd have known; anyway, just like the Amiga computers, the Spectrum +3, as well as its Amstrad brethren, requires a !Ready signal in order to use a floppy drive, which of course Amstrad's own 3" drives do have. I have seen various "hacks" trying to circumvent the lack of the !Ready signal on many common PC FDDs - such as a switch to turn on when there's a disk in the drive, but this seems more appropriate to me.
Also, before i forget, here's a link to the +3's Drive B: connector:
tietokone.ntrautanen.fi/hardware/hwb/co_ZXSpectrum-DiskB.html
but i think the pin numbers may have been swapped with regards to Upper/Lower side of the PCB
@@BertGrink Ohhh, very interesting! Thank you for the info :)
Nice soldering, but I would've liked to have seen any discussion regarding what the actual changes from a PC to an Amiga drive are, instead of just "I'm cutting x and moving y". Still, nice to see Amiga stuff well into the 21st century. :)
+riz94107 hmm, good point. I’ll be no more descriptive in the next one. Thank you :)
well, I know everyone's a critic with soldering, but 3:50 wasn't all that nice. molten solder on top of cold contacts, wouldn't be too surprised if that bridge just pops off with time
Great tip nice work, I assume that all PC drive boards are of the same type and layout ?
I assume you have to use a 1.44Mb PC drive to convert to Amiga use otherwise you would
be restricted to only using 720KB DD disks ?
@Mr T. Guru Thank you.
Thanks for sharing mate!
Thanks for joining me on my learning journey.
Great video 🙂👍
Thanks Daniel
Haha, loved that video. Guess we'r soulmates ;)
Nice one, how well will it fit in the case?
anthony smith should fit ok with a slight mod to the eject button.
Great Job! wish there was a way to use HD disks, but the Amiga slows rotation to enable High density...
I think some specific Big Box Amiga machines can use PC HD but I'm no expert!
@@MarkFixesStuff any amiga with a 2.04 rom and newer can use high density. There are some hacks on A1k german forum to use sony pc floppy drives as HD.
Nice! I am going to have to try this. Any makes / models to look out for specifically?
Samsung SFD-321B revisions up to T4 are the easiest to mod and very common.
have you also tested the formatting and reading of floppies if they are correctly done with x-copy?
Crikey.. does Velleman still exist? I remember seeing their kits in the now defunct Maplin years ago.
Btw, why did the Amiga have different pin outs? Would've made sense simply using off the shelf parts.
Yes! They still sell kits!
Amiga drives were slightly more complicated than PC drives, using tricks to pack data that PC drives didn’t care about. Often that functionality was just disconnected for the PC market.
actually ibm pc drives were non standard,being set by default to drive 1.. the rest of the industry just adopted it.
Need to get yourself some 28awg wrapping wire or thin magnet wire for bodging. Nice job of it, regardless.
Nifty! This would have saved me some needed coin in 1989 on my A1000. Oh well.
I do have some roadrunner enamelled wire but could not find it for the life of me!
would this work with commodore 1581 disk drive. Can I replace the existing drive with a pc drive with this modification?
I don't actually know - Sorry!
Back in prime time of Amiga 30 years ago, i bought a official 1.76 MB HD Floppy for Amiga and could format 1.38.MB PC Floppies to 1.76.MB on Amiga with FFS.
The real size of PC floppy were 1.38.MB and not 1.44.MB. Back in the days you used 1024 and not 1000. In fact Windows 10/11 still use 1024 instead of 1000.
My CD32 Expansion, Elsat Promodule from 1996 or so came with a internal PC Floppy.
Mark, this won´t work. Ok, works, until you connect external floppy. Then the system will go crazy. RD pad is not ready signal, it´s READ signal. YOu need to connect pin 34 to the pin 32 of the controller, there is Ready signal (not used in PC). Also, there are some older version of DF354, primarily made for IBM (bears IBM FRU part sticker), whether there is no Ready signal present neither on the chip. It works, except Xcopy. So, stick with 121F and 121G sub-version and you are fine.
Thank you for this information. It seems I will need to do some kind of update
@@MarkFixesStuff There is even better mod than I described, that allows READY signal to be present for Xcopy (which is crazy eager for original Chinon floppy). Connect a diode between ready signal (pin 34) and SEL0 (pin 10). Then floppy is always ready when selected, despite it has no real READY signal at all.
Neat fix! I guess it's possibile also with some other different disk drive. How could you make another video in order to fit that in the amiga 500's case as well?
Hello, thanks for the video, very helpfull. Can this convertion also work for a secondary drive in amiga 500? DF1: ? With the proper cord ofcourse
You have not adressed the small plastic eject button issue (it is way different on Amiga's). And you might want to bridge the DD/HD switch inside the drive, to kick it into permanent DD-Mode. This way you can use 3M branded or other high quality HD disks, without the need for a piece of tape. This however is mostly usefull for people like me, still using disks, and have like 450/500 and more disks on hand.
Of course. I leave the case modding to others. I think there is a printable button for these drives out there. Thank you for your kind comments. I think I will revisit the drive with some observations in a future video.
@@MarkFixesStuff No probs. Well... You can find them for the Amiga3000 somewere and print your self. Else you need to go to: amigastore.eu/en/624-floppy-drive-replacement-button.html for a replacement button.
@@MarkFixesStuff Here we go: 3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/d440b256-97b5-4910-8216-748344df29f5/Eject-Button-for-Amiga-3000D-internal-Floppy-Drives
Can you provide a technical description of what's going on? What's DS0 and DS1? Why the pin swapping?
Brilliant!!! back in 1989 #easylab4kids connected a peecee floppy drive to my A500 but it didnt work, only drive clicking.
If I just knew back then how easy it was. Does anyone here have time-travel device?
Only my hazy memories brother.
OMG I remember doing this 'everyday' 20 years ago...
I converted the floppy disk drive according to this scheme. Unfortunately, the additional DF1 floppy disk drive does not work with this floppy disk drive. There must be a diode like this picture: www.puzio.pl/tablica/amiga/alps.png
Did you add or work afterwards?
@@serdarkvanc8175 Before adding the diode it was not working corectly. After adding the diode it is OK.
@@ArcadeFan77 i did the same as in this video has game screen but no progress you just add an external diode which is in this video what is the value of the diode can you help ?
1n4001 1n4007 ?
@@ArcadeFan77 also did you draw the line on c7 and hd2?
Instead of butchering the board, could you not have swapped the leads around on a piece of perf board and a couple of 34 pin connectors? This approach would make it drive-agnostic as well.
Great video, Mark does this mod work on Amiga 1200 too? I have a poorly a1200 with no working drive. Cheers
Yes, with the caveat that some of the later Escom Amiga 1200 machines had a fix on the motherboard to use PC drives, and that is best reversed before using a modded drive.
After watching this I just got an idea:
If you have a DF1: drive from the '90s that appears to be a PC drive and converter board stuck in a case, would it have a chance of damaging anything if I switched in a 1.44/1.76mb drive in place of the 720/880kb drive?
To be honest I’m not sure. I don’t think you’d damage anything by trying but I’m also not sure it would work …
@@MarkFixesStuff If it doesn't work, it's not the end of the universe, it's just my pc 3.5" drive won't write 720k disks in Windows(yes, even through command line or using actual 720k disks, it just errors out) so I have to boot into Ubuntu if I wanna move files to my Amiga.
Being able to use PC1: to read 1.44mb disks would save hours of faffing.
Figured I'd update. It doesn't break anything, it shows up in Workbench and it even tried to use it, but it just errors out if you try to use it.
@@fattomandeibu that’s a shame. Thanks for the update. I wonder if it can be made to work somehow.
@@MarkFixesStuff After a bit of reading, it's to do with the bit rate being too high for Paula to handle. Apparently you'd either need a hardware buffer, or to halve the RPM of the drive somehow, the latter of which is what was used for official A4000 HD drives.
For those of you looking for data sheet for SD705A, the equivalent Toshiba IC is TC8602F. Here is the data sheet for download:
datasheet.datasheetarchive.com/originals/distributors/Datasheets-110/DSAP0010186.pdf
Thank you +X Xycom! That is brilliant!
Hallo Marc
On Pin 19 , has you done a cut there ?
Is that a HD drive or DD? If it is HD, can it format/read/write HD floppys in Amiga or will it work just like a DD drive?
Just in DD mode.
@@MarkFixesStuff Thank you. But it is originally a HD PC drive, isn't it?
@@TheArtofWalls Yes sir!
@@MarkFixesStuff I wonder if there's a way to modify the Paula chip to allow it to read and write to HD disks. As I recall, it's a bit too slow for that. Might be able to add some hardware there to intercept the signal or something. IDK
@@CoyoteSeven The Amiga HD floppy reduced the RPM's from 300 to 150 to use HD mode, so this would be challenging to archive with PC floppys which rotate constantly at 300RPM. I cannot remember. was it 1024 bytes per sector or 22 sectors? I think, 22 Sectors were used, like the MB02 disc interface for ZX Spectrum
And you cannot xcopy game DD to HD discs.
One would think that there is money in someone making new (and affordable) floppy drives to replace the dead ones in all the Amigas out there... wish someone would do that!
can you do a video on making a pc psu to work on an amiga, pretty please, john(Hull)
I'll put it on the list!
Was this a DS-DD drive or a more common DS-HD PC drive. I guess the Amiga will still only recognise the 720KB DD disks?
DS-HD so very common. Not all drives work but quite a few do.
Of course. That is why you use the old tape-over-the-hole trick. Even though the OS reads DD only on most Amiga's, the drive will still read as HD if the switch is not activated inside the drive.
You can bypass, by using a piece of tape on the floppy Disk it self, or you can bridge the switch inside the drive with solder. The latter, will make the drive read/write permanently in DD mode.
@@brostenen Yes indeed. I neglected to mention that. I think there is a jumper on these drives to disable it.
@@MarkFixesStuff Ahh... Sorry to have written it as a (main?)-comment to this video as well. Did not think you read my answer to another viewer. 😁
Sorry I didn't get my point across very well and perhaps wasn't clear what i was getting at. Given that the PC drive was most likely HD, could the Amiga now format and read 1.44MB rather than the normal 720KB
Look at his massive tool!
You can found alla drive from Fujitsu Siemens old computers
So I did this and got a great working floppy drive for my Amiga 2000. When I tried adding an internal Gotek as well, I couldn't get them to work with each other. Yes I set J301. Separately they work great, together, with jumpers set on Gotek and mobo, they don't. One works but the other doesn't. Any suggestions with using a PC converted floppy with a Gotek as two internal drivers on an Amiga 2000? I'm using a "proper" amiga floppy drive cable. I've tried changing the order of the floppies on the cable. DF1 being the furthest away on the cable and DF0 the closest.