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Fab vid! Just FYI… there’s a GitHub project called Amiga-HDDLW that aims to replicate an old adaptor to allow specifically modded PC drives to format to 1.76MB, for later Amiga’s like the A4000. I’ve literally just modded a Sony drive and am going to give this adaptor a test soon… fingers crossed!
Both my Amiga 3000 and 4000 came with HD floppy drives (1.76 MB). This was fully supported in the OS starting from 2.0 if I remember correctly. I often used HD disks for doing backups and storing data. But I never came across any software being shipped on HD disks or anything being distributed on disks that size. And it was convenient that I could use 1.44 MB PC formated HD disks to transfer data between PCs and my Amiga with CrossDOS - but this is not something you are likely to do today. So yes, for most practical retro purposes, focusing on getting a modern drive to just handle common 880 kB disks make sense.
I think if management at Commodore took things more seriously instead of acting like they were trying to get "rich quick" they we would likely seen games and or demos come out in 1.76MB format.
Glad I could help. IF you can discern which model a drive is, there is often a tutorial out there for it. Mind you, they vary in quality. Myself, I could only really try out the drives I have. Maybe if I have some time, I will try and get that Samsung drive to be DD moded as well, that would be ideal.
I have quite a few models and brands. Some have jumpers and some clearly have pads. The bulk i have are Panasonic drives they seem to be not possible to convert. I also have Amiga drives pulled from systems. Im going to see what i can compile
Sounds like an idea, I guess I could try and find where it connects to. Only issue is, this might involve taking the drive totally apart to make the mod, but I guess that depends on the construction of each drive. In truth, each drive uses a controller chip where this line goes to. But sadly, specs for nearly all of the chips do not appears online, beleive me I checked. If they were, then there would be a lot less hit and miss with each different drive/chip type.
Then get to it. Mind you, my experience is, there is certainly a lot of variety in manufacture and how you convert them. Would be interesting to see if someone can get the Samsung drive to be forced to DD mode by default. Thats quite a useful feature in these conversions. I may get another one and have a go at it at some point.
Have you tested transferring data between a PC HD floppy and an Amiga using one of these drives? Many (20+) years ago I heard about converting PC HD floppies, but the problem was the Amiga slows the motor to 150RPM for HD disks, and floppy drive motors are tuned for 300RPM. Slowing down a standard motor resulted in instability and data jitter bad enough for the disks to be unreadable in other drives. The actual Amiga HD floppies had special motors/circuitry to handle both speeds correctly.
I think you answered your own question. From what I understand, its as you say. Amiga HD drives needed specific electronics to get the drives to run at a specific speed. And drives today would be 99% generic PC drives, many of which were made post 2000. I say that, as eventually they became obsolete, would I assume there are still hoards of new/old stock out there, which are good to use, as they have no mechanical wear.
I would love to know if its possible to convert an Apple Mac floppy to an Amiga drive. The sony drives were actually able capable of doing 2MB. Or use a PC drive to create an HD drive for an Amiga. I know some amiga's had HD drives; 1.7MB.
From what I understand, there is no way to get a PC 2mb drive, to work on the Amiga. I understand there was some extra circuitry and the drive had to run at a different speed. Now, having said that, yes, from what I understand newer Amiga models sometimes had 2mb drives. But, here is the question. Are they REALLY that useful today? Quite often we have Goteks, or data transfer via SD card or CF Card. So I personally think a drive that can read 880k disks, is generally the most useful, as pretty much all games/apps/cover disks etc came in that format as it was compatible with ALL Amiga models.
@@andrewenglish3810 Well, the top right one works, and is there to read any disks I do have, because I do have some games on floppy disk. The disk to its left does not work, but I could replace it now, as I have a spare. However, below them is a Gotek, and this is the most useful drive right now as of course I can fit hundreds of floppy disk images on it. But... the issue is, these HAVE to be in adf format, and so they have to have been created by others, or myself, and they are not a direct replacement for a floppy disk. Still VERY useful. But, I think having a physical floppy drive in there will be useful on the occasion when I DO want to use real disks. For example, I might get drivers for a card, which are NOT on the web in any archive, and if I am going to use those drives, I need a real drive. Of course, these situations are rare these days, but there is certainly software out there which has NOT been archived.
No, because PC drives are hardwired to be drive 1, and for an Amiga it needs to be drive 0. The Disk Change signal from pin 34 could be swizzled over to pin 2, but then what about the Ready signal? This is not connected at all, so again an intermediary board would not do the job. So yeah, on balance, some wire, a soldering iron and a bit of patience is more effective in this case...
Sorry, but those drives can not provide100% amiga compatibility. RD means Read, not ready. Samsung has ready, yes, but format a disk with kick 1.3 and WB 1.3 in the CLI, after that try read the directory in the workbench...it will fail.Test all drives as internal with both external drive togehter (xcopy, games who make use of more drives). Try amiga test kit and show what ready signal says, it should be between 200-500ms. You might find problems.
I'll give it a go, the tutorial which had that advice, stated that they had tested it, and it worked. I must admit, I'm not THAT likely to use X-Copy myself, my pirating days are far behind me. However, its worth trying. Have you one of these Alps drives yourself, which you have tested? You sound like you have walked this walk?
@@RetronautTech I've done a lot of tests with many drives. Problem is some drives motor going into sleep mode like samsung. I've also done alps tests with diode mod, all diode mods are obsolete because they are not 100% compatible and causing problems in some combinations (ea. with external drives, built into external drive case, bootselector, Kick/WB1.3 format...)
@@analognexusI think the main gist of the video is it IS possible to at least get drives that read and write to 880kb disks, and HD disks, to one degree or another. Which is many % better than having no drive at all. Of course these days, most rely on Gotek devices, but I think still being able to read real media is (for now) useful. But I guess its only a matter of time until ALL floppy disks are too old to use. Its sad, but its probably going to happen. The good news is, 99% of all the software written for the Amiga seems to be already backed up as digital ADF files :)
Retronaut now has a dedicated Amiga Discord channel, discord.gg/8uxJa6QX where you can chat with like minded Amiga nuts (such as me). For those who JOIN my channel (hit the JOIN button above). There are exclusive Channels on the Discord where you can chat directly with me and other members. So why not jump in today and join the Amiga Discord!
Fab vid! Just FYI… there’s a GitHub project called Amiga-HDDLW that aims to replicate an old adaptor to allow specifically modded PC drives to format to 1.76MB, for later Amiga’s like the A4000. I’ve literally just modded a Sony drive and am going to give this adaptor a test soon… fingers crossed!
Sounds interesting.
Both my Amiga 3000 and 4000 came with HD floppy drives (1.76 MB). This was fully supported in the OS starting from 2.0 if I remember correctly. I often used HD disks for doing backups and storing data. But I never came across any software being shipped on HD disks or anything being distributed on disks that size. And it was convenient that I could use 1.44 MB PC formated HD disks to transfer data between PCs and my Amiga with CrossDOS - but this is not something you are likely to do today. So yes, for most practical retro purposes, focusing on getting a modern drive to just handle common 880 kB disks make sense.
I think if management at Commodore took things more seriously instead of acting like they were trying to get "rich quick" they we would likely seen games and or demos come out in 1.76MB format.
great video and this has inspired me go through all my floppy drives seeing if they have pads that can be modified and sorting them out...
Glad I could help. IF you can discern which model a drive is, there is often a tutorial out there for it. Mind you, they vary in quality. Myself, I could only really try out the drives I have. Maybe if I have some time, I will try and get that Samsung drive to be DD moded as well, that would be ideal.
I have quite a few models and brands. Some have jumpers and some clearly have pads. The bulk i have are Panasonic drives they seem to be not possible to convert. I also have Amiga drives pulled from systems. Im going to see what i can compile
Have you considered bridging the switch the top/front of the drive that identifies DD or HD disks. Its the same as putting tape over the hole.
Sounds like an idea, I guess I could try and find where it connects to. Only issue is, this might involve taking the drive totally apart to make the mod, but I guess that depends on the construction of each drive. In truth, each drive uses a controller chip where this line goes to. But sadly, specs for nearly all of the chips do not appears online, beleive me I checked. If they were, then there would be a lot less hit and miss with each different drive/chip type.
I am sure I have several of these drives in my stash
Then get to it. Mind you, my experience is, there is certainly a lot of variety in manufacture and how you convert them. Would be interesting to see if someone can get the Samsung drive to be forced to DD mode by default. Thats quite a useful feature in these conversions. I may get another one and have a go at it at some point.
Have you tested transferring data between a PC HD floppy and an Amiga using one of these drives? Many (20+) years ago I heard about converting PC HD floppies, but the problem was the Amiga slows the motor to 150RPM for HD disks, and floppy drive motors are tuned for 300RPM. Slowing down a standard motor resulted in instability and data jitter bad enough for the disks to be unreadable in other drives. The actual Amiga HD floppies had special motors/circuitry to handle both speeds correctly.
I think you answered your own question. From what I understand, its as you say. Amiga HD drives needed specific electronics to get the drives to run at a specific speed. And drives today would be 99% generic PC drives, many of which were made post 2000. I say that, as eventually they became obsolete, would I assume there are still hoards of new/old stock out there, which are good to use, as they have no mechanical wear.
I would love to know if its possible to convert an Apple Mac floppy to an Amiga drive. The sony drives were actually able capable of doing 2MB. Or use a PC drive to create an HD drive for an Amiga. I know some amiga's had HD drives; 1.7MB.
From what I understand, there is no way to get a PC 2mb drive, to work on the Amiga. I understand there was some extra circuitry and the drive had to run at a different speed. Now, having said that, yes, from what I understand newer Amiga models sometimes had 2mb drives. But, here is the question. Are they REALLY that useful today? Quite often we have Goteks, or data transfer via SD card or CF Card. So I personally think a drive that can read 880k disks, is generally the most useful, as pretty much all games/apps/cover disks etc came in that format as it was compatible with ALL Amiga models.
@@RetronautTech Sure, but why do you have floppy drives in your A2000?
@@andrewenglish3810 Well, the top right one works, and is there to read any disks I do have, because I do have some games on floppy disk. The disk to its left does not work, but I could replace it now, as I have a spare.
However, below them is a Gotek, and this is the most useful drive right now as of course I can fit hundreds of floppy disk images on it. But... the issue is, these HAVE to be in adf format, and so they have to have been created by others, or myself, and they are not a direct replacement for a floppy disk. Still VERY useful.
But, I think having a physical floppy drive in there will be useful on the occasion when I DO want to use real disks. For example, I might get drivers for a card, which are NOT on the web in any archive, and if I am going to use those drives, I need a real drive. Of course, these situations are rare these days, but there is certainly software out there which has NOT been archived.
wouldn't it be easier to just develop a board to go between the drive and cables to use it in an amiga?
No, because PC drives are hardwired to be drive 1, and for an Amiga it needs to be drive 0. The Disk Change signal from pin 34 could be swizzled over to pin 2, but then what about the Ready signal? This is not connected at all, so again an intermediary board would not do the job. So yeah, on balance, some wire, a soldering iron and a bit of patience is more effective in this case...
Sorry, but those drives can not provide100% amiga compatibility. RD means Read, not ready. Samsung has ready, yes, but format a disk with kick 1.3 and WB 1.3 in the CLI, after that try read the directory in the workbench...it will fail.Test all drives as internal with both external drive togehter (xcopy, games who make use of more drives). Try amiga test kit and show what ready signal says, it should be between 200-500ms. You might find problems.
I'll give it a go, the tutorial which had that advice, stated that they had tested it, and it worked. I must admit, I'm not THAT likely to use X-Copy myself, my pirating days are far behind me. However, its worth trying. Have you one of these Alps drives yourself, which you have tested? You sound like you have walked this walk?
@@RetronautTech I've done a lot of tests with many drives. Problem is some drives motor going into sleep mode like samsung. I've also done alps tests with diode mod, all diode mods are obsolete because they are not 100% compatible and causing problems in some combinations (ea. with external drives, built into external drive case, bootselector, Kick/WB1.3 format...)
@@analognexusI think the main gist of the video is it IS possible to at least get drives that read and write to 880kb disks, and HD disks, to one degree or another. Which is many % better than having no drive at all. Of course these days, most rely on Gotek devices, but I think still being able to read real media is (for now) useful. But I guess its only a matter of time until ALL floppy disks are too old to use. Its sad, but its probably going to happen.
The good news is, 99% of all the software written for the Amiga seems to be already backed up as digital ADF files :)