Use a PC Floppy drive on a Commodore Amiga!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 พ.ย. 2019
- Join me as we convert a boring IBM PC standard floppy disk drive to work on a Commodore Amiga computer. We cover every step on this ALPS DF354 drive and finally test with some Amiga Disks.
The basic mods are pretty similar from drive to drive, often with only the solder pad locations changing.
Not all models can be converted but a lot can, so if you've hoarded a pile of old PC floppy drives then now might be the time to give some of them a new lease of life!
Please remember to subscribe to get your fix!
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Please watch: "Building a Commodore Amiga A600 Chip RAM Expansion - Step by Step!"
• Building a Commodore A...
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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.
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
2 things.
1. You are my new hero for playing Tycho.
2. Bought 2 drives to have backups for my Amiga 500. Cheers.
Deflektor! One of my most-played Amiga disks. Lovely to see the real thing again rather than an ADF.
Great video Mark.
Very interesting subject to investigate. Great job Mark!
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.
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.
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.
Great video and great to see you on RMC again 👍
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
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!
Nice one Sir,I've loved this one!
Never had an Amiga - much to my disappointment growing up but do like watching a how to... thanks!
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.
Sure wish I had this information when I first bought my Amiga 500 back in the day. Thanks!
this is amazing. very useful tip here Mark. Thank you.
You are a real Hero of my ol'days!!!
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!
It was said that Jeremy Beadle had a 'small tool', but on the other hand ;)
Loved it :D !always happy when a vid arrives bro :D hope you are well :D
awesome that PC floppy drives are so much compatible!
just done this mod today many thanks my A600 has a working floppy.. soooo happy
Nice work Mark 👍
MadPete cheer Pete!!
As ever mate, very clever stuff.
Awesome vid mate, love it! You should definitely have more subscribers
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!
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!
Thank you very much for this very useful modification!
Cheers Peter!!
Great job Mark!
+GadgetUK164 - Retro Gaming Repairs & Mods cheers Gadget! Hope you are well mate.
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... 🤔
Never thought I'd see the day. So it can be done!
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?
Awesome video thx for doing this! As someone who's been dabbling on hobbyist electronics, I find this quite interesting.
Thank you for watching!
Oh, BTW, thanks for the tip on the flux. I bought some, and it works quite well.
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 🙌🙌🙌
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!
Nice work! Really like your videos! Greetings from Germany
Thanks for sharing mate!
Thanks for joining me on my learning journey.
Just found you via RMC. Now subbed.
Great gonna be needing to do this for my A600 soon :)
+thebongmaster oh yes, or even think about FlashFloppy!
thats a plan a little later on :) just need to get something working soon to boot up while i am waiting for parts :) I only have the mainboard atm XD need everything else XD gonna take a while to gather the rest due to funds.
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?!? 😱
Great video 🙂👍
Thanks Daniel
Excellent video with great commentary 😁😁. Off to find a pc drive.
Have fun!
The *Stunt Amiga* .... I LIKE it! Didn't even need a helmet.
It's like the Evil Knieval of Amigas
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
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 love the flux, I have some too and the more exotic ones.
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
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.
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!
Im using sony Z121 drive in my amiga. Works really well and it is reliable.
Great video! 👍 😉
+Gaz Marshall thank you mate!
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.
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.
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.
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!
Awesome video! Just remember, it is not the size of the tool, it is how you use it :p
Awesome 👍
+gavinc74 thanks!
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.
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.
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 🍻
have you also tested the formatting and reading of floppies if they are correctly done with x-copy?
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
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.
Haha, loved that video. Guess we'r soulmates ;)
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
Who needs floppy drives when this Amiga must use a 128 to 256GB solid state drive or SD card having all Amiga 500 game roms? This is why the year 2023-24 must make the Amiga 500 change all of this making this useful and easier on everyone including me.
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.
Look at his massive tool!
OMG I remember doing this 'everyday' 20 years ago...
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
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.
Hi. Thanks for the video, I'll use it. Now... what about the eject button?. I own an A1200. Do you think it will fit?.
Nice one, how well will it fit in the case?
anthony smith should fit ok with a slight mod to the eject button.
The controller chip on the video is 44 pin, the drive I’m trying to modify is 52 pin. There is no continuity between pin 19 and pin 2 of the connector. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Nice video and easy to follow. Could you do a similar one for CD drives?
Cd drives have a normal SCSI or ide interface and should work unmodified.
congratulations for the project I thought I read that a diode between PIN 34 and PIN 10 should also be applied to you. or does it work the same?
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!
THANKS
+Javier you’re welcome!
Nice. Does it still click when no disk is loaded like the OEM drive did?
@Mr T. Guru Thanks: figures. Would be a great upgrade if it didn't.
You can found alla drive from Fujitsu Siemens old computers
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!
Can you provide a technical description of what's going on? What's DS0 and DS1? Why the pin swapping?
Does it make a difference, which ALPS DF354 I have. Can I modify all of them the same way, or does this specifically apply to the ALPS DF354H090F?
I wonder what would happen i did this mod on my Amithlon Pc... I do have the same Alps drive... could I read amiga disks? My guess is that it would not work because of the hardware I/O side of the PC mainboard. Correct or not?
Can you also adapt the drives in a manor that they are usable as DF1 or as DF1 and DF2?
There are DF0 and DF1 jumper points on a lot of boards. For anything more complex I believe a cable modification would be needed.
@@MarkFixesStuff It's not only the jumper points you have to worry about but also obtaining a 'case' and cable to actually put the drive physically in. Back in the 90s we had this brand called "KCS" and they made once a dual floppy drive in one case, so you had df1 and df2 in one case. Today with all the options available, like 3d printing and guys like you who really know their stuff I am surprised such a dual case drive has not been made. I think you could score a nice one with that if you buy up all these cheap ass PC floppy drives, and make them work in one case as DF1 and DF2.
Does anyone find that constant click from the floppy annoying?
Cool video, man! I’ve still have about 500 Public Domain disks!
Does this mod allow the A500 to read and write HD disks? PC FAT format?
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!
I wonder what the process is to get a PC drive working on a +3?
Mat Recardo that’s a different story but quite easy.
Do these floppies for the Amiga work with ED diskettes?