Good work sorting this out! I have the same drive. Different adaptor board design but mine also just ‘floats’ above the metal case. I added a few sticky-back rubber pads under the board to stop it shorting as was also worried about that!
@@gavinc5255 Yeah 👍 it's a pretty poor design. The HD thing really caught me out as well, and I didn't even know until a few months ago that HD was even supported by the Amiga (it was in an 8-bit manshed video from a few months ago). You did the right thing putting those pads in!
The A4000 came with a HD drive I understand but I have a thought many (maybe later?) Amiga’s can handle HD but it needs to be the Amiga 4000 drive or the drive needs a specific adaptor and to be modified a certain way. Just for interest… there’s a GitHub project by Schlae for a modern recreation of an existing HD drive adaptor, which works with modified PC floppy drives (sometimes… it’s picky!) to allow up to 1.76mb.
@@gavinc5255 I didn't know that about the 4000. I remember back in the day I would use crossdos to take files from pc to the Amiga and back, but remember it was a pain as you had to use DD when the PC was almost always using HD disks (at the time).
If you fancy a play, you could see if the workbench disk formatting tool will recognise the HD disk. It may need WB3.1 or newer (not sure!) but I know this and WB3.2 will auto recognise a HD disk in an Amiga compatible HD drive as 1.76mb. If you can format, write to and read the disk, then it’s working (formatting alone isn’t the best test as it can error on read/writes if not working properly). More a curiosity than a fab feature though as most Amiga software uses DD for compatibility anyway!
Inserting an HD disk in an HD drive with the HD notch not taped off will actually in most drives actually switch to other read/write levels. An HD disk will have some (when comparing it analogue) different signal levels than DD disks. If the disk is formatted in DD format it will most likely work fine in an DD drive. The HD drive expects other signals and doesn't know what to do with it. Trying to format an HD disk in an 1.44 drive in most cases fails because of the HD notch - taping it closed will make it possible to do just the same.
I have the same drive here on my bench. Because the drive does something different to how native Amiga HD floppy drives operate, they need you to install a PowerXL patch. What makes me scratch my head, though, is that the drive refuses to acknowledge my floppies are NOT write protected. So while it can read DD and HD floppies alike, I can't use the drive to write anything to a floppy, be it DD or HD.
@@mathiasheyer3079 interesting. I've yet to put it through it's paces to see how well it is working (or not working). You might have a dodgy switch that is sensing the write protection?
@@mathiasheyer3079 I just tried it and it does indeed say that the disks are write protected (when they are not). It behaves the same with both DD and HD disks.
@@mathiasheyer3079 The problem appears to be that if a HD disk has been inserted into the drive then it always says the drive is write protected until the computer is rebooted. This drive is weird.
Did you try to format a HD disk at HD capacity with the drive? Would be interesting to see if Workbench just recognizes it without additional drivers. I used to have a few Two-Disk Games back in the day, that could have been made to work on a single HD disk with a single Alias command.
@@ShieTar_ no, I haven't tried that yet I was wondering if the support for HD disks is natively built into workbench 3.2? Although these days a HD disk isn't that much use as no software was ever distributed on it and there are better ways to store personal data than on floppy disk 💾
@@DavePoo2 Curious, I thought write protection is identified in the exact same way on DD & HD disks. Maybe the OS is misinterpreting a response it gets from the drive when trying to write to it? I did a little google, and it seems like there were some silly modifications necessary to run the HD disks at half speed, since the AMIGA chips could not support the 500 kbit/s speed required to normally write to or read from a HD disk. Maybe the board in the external case you have forgot to implement that and never actually worked? Or maybe there is some jumper or special software required to deal with that aspect. And I admit, my interest in this is purely academical / out of curiosity. I also don't imagine anybody would have used these disks on the AMIGA once Hard drives of decent size became reasonably affordable.
@@ShieTar_ There is a video going live this evening which shows what it's doing. But essentially the drive becomes read-only once any HD disk is accessed. I might try and disable the HD disk detection as it's more trouble than it is worth.
@@paszTube I generally have pretty bad luck with floppy drive, so just the fact that the drive worked at all was a bonus. I suppose the HD thing is more hindrance than help these days because there is no actual software released on HD and it just makes the drive more complicated (and won't read DD formatted disks that people wrote onto HD disks! Unless you cover the HD notch hole)
Never in any Star Trek do you hear the chief engineer tell the captain "The dilithium chamber is shorting on the warp nasel"...... took them 300 years but build standards improves.
@@TheSudsy I do, but I had it my head that the software would know whether it was DD or HD by reading the disk. Don't know why I was thinking that, it's been a long time since I used HD disks (and I never used one on an Amiga until this video)
Good work sorting this out! I have the same drive. Different adaptor board design but mine also just ‘floats’ above the metal case. I added a few sticky-back rubber pads under the board to stop it shorting as was also worried about that!
@@gavinc5255 Yeah 👍 it's a pretty poor design. The HD thing really caught me out as well, and I didn't even know until a few months ago that HD was even supported by the Amiga (it was in an 8-bit manshed video from a few months ago). You did the right thing putting those pads in!
The A4000 came with a HD drive I understand but I have a thought many (maybe later?) Amiga’s can handle HD but it needs to be the Amiga 4000 drive or the drive needs a specific adaptor and to be modified a certain way. Just for interest… there’s a GitHub project by Schlae for a modern recreation of an existing HD drive adaptor, which works with modified PC floppy drives (sometimes… it’s picky!) to allow up to 1.76mb.
@@gavinc5255 I didn't know that about the 4000. I remember back in the day I would use crossdos to take files from pc to the Amiga and back, but remember it was a pain as you had to use DD when the PC was almost always using HD disks (at the time).
If you fancy a play, you could see if the workbench disk formatting tool will recognise the HD disk. It may need WB3.1 or newer (not sure!) but I know this and WB3.2 will auto recognise a HD disk in an Amiga compatible HD drive as 1.76mb. If you can format, write to and read the disk, then it’s working (formatting alone isn’t the best test as it can error on read/writes if not working properly). More a curiosity than a fab feature though as most Amiga software uses DD for compatibility anyway!
Well done Dave. £20 certainly was a bargain and another drive saved from the scrap heap.
Good work 🛠️⚙️🪛
Inserting an HD disk in an HD drive with the HD notch not taped off will actually in most drives actually switch to other read/write levels.
An HD disk will have some (when comparing it analogue) different signal levels than DD disks. If the disk is formatted in DD format it will most likely work fine in an DD drive. The HD drive expects other signals and doesn't know what to do with it.
Trying to format an HD disk in an 1.44 drive in most cases fails because of the HD notch - taping it closed will make it possible to do just the same.
The Amiga Whisperer.
It probably has a no click feature, that's why it seems too quiet without a disk in it.
I have the same drive here on my bench. Because the drive does something different to how native Amiga HD floppy drives operate, they need you to install a PowerXL patch.
What makes me scratch my head, though, is that the drive refuses to acknowledge my floppies are NOT write protected. So while it can read DD and HD floppies alike, I can't use the drive to write anything to a floppy, be it DD or HD.
@@mathiasheyer3079 interesting. I've yet to put it through it's paces to see how well it is working (or not working). You might have a dodgy switch that is sensing the write protection?
@@mathiasheyer3079 I just tried it and it does indeed say that the disks are write protected (when they are not). It behaves the same with both DD and HD disks.
@@mathiasheyer3079 however. Amiga test kit does correctly detect that the write protection is on or off. So the switch in the drive isn't faulty.
@@mathiasheyer3079 The problem appears to be that if a HD disk has been inserted into the drive then it always says the drive is write protected until the computer is rebooted. This drive is weird.
That was a lot of inserting the same disk without assuming that the disk itself was faulty... Disks are getting very fussy after all these years
I've got plenty of bad disks but these are known working disks (and they work in the DF0: drive).
Did you tried to cover with tape HD detection hole, and then test?
@@JosipBasic no, but I think I did mention to do that in the video. I'm almost certain that would correct the problem with that Octamed disk.
Did you try to format a HD disk at HD capacity with the drive? Would be interesting to see if Workbench just recognizes it without additional drivers.
I used to have a few Two-Disk Games back in the day, that could have been made to work on a single HD disk with a single Alias command.
@@ShieTar_ no, I haven't tried that yet
I was wondering if the support for HD disks is natively built into workbench 3.2? Although these days a HD disk isn't that much use as no software was ever distributed on it and there are better ways to store personal data than on floppy disk 💾
@@ShieTar_ yes workbench is recognising the disk as high density, but it is saying that the disk is write protected when it is not.
@@DavePoo2 Curious, I thought write protection is identified in the exact same way on DD & HD disks. Maybe the OS is misinterpreting a response it gets from the drive when trying to write to it?
I did a little google, and it seems like there were some silly modifications necessary to run the HD disks at half speed, since the AMIGA chips could not support the 500 kbit/s speed required to normally write to or read from a HD disk. Maybe the board in the external case you have forgot to implement that and never actually worked? Or maybe there is some jumper or special software required to deal with that aspect.
And I admit, my interest in this is purely academical / out of curiosity. I also don't imagine anybody would have used these disks on the AMIGA once Hard drives of decent size became reasonably affordable.
@@ShieTar_ There is a video going live this evening which shows what it's doing. But essentially the drive becomes read-only once any HD disk is accessed. I might try and disable the HD disk detection as it's more trouble than it is worth.
A working high density drive and two entertaining and educational videos, I say that 20 pounds has a great return on investment!
@@paszTube I generally have pretty bad luck with floppy drive, so just the fact that the drive worked at all was a bonus. I suppose the HD thing is more hindrance than help these days because there is no actual software released on HD and it just makes the drive more complicated (and won't read DD formatted disks that people wrote onto HD disks! Unless you cover the HD notch hole)
Never in any Star Trek do you hear the chief engineer tell the captain "The dilithium chamber is shorting on the warp nasel"...... took them 300 years but build standards improves.
I don't remember them having to deal with short circuits at all, but was star trek tech not supposed to be electronic? Was it future magic?
i got to 11 minutes thinking, does he even know that HD disks have an extra notch............
@@TheSudsy I do, but I had it my head that the software would know whether it was DD or HD by reading the disk. Don't know why I was thinking that, it's been a long time since I used HD disks (and I never used one on an Amiga until this video)
@@DavePoo2 we all have so much knowledge that has degraded over time. I only knew it becasue i had a HD drive back in the day