#3.5 Disk drives
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I saw your message about drives and I thought I would pass along some of what
I know so far about Amiga drives. All drives are not created equal! Drives
for the Amiga must be able to do two things most (The ones I looked at
anyway) drives do not.
#1 They must be able to send "DISK CHANGED"
#2 They must be able to latch the "MOTOR" signal. The part number on the
Amigas external drive is P/N 134-100678-008-0
And by the way both the internal and external drives that I looked at were
NEC. Two things I hated about the way Amiga did the drives was using those
&#$!! "cute" DB23 connectors and making the drive control signals funky. I
know they have reasons for not liking the standard arangment. I hate it too!
But still who wants to pay $300.00 for a crummy $75.00 drive? Oh I forgot to
mention the other particulars are 80 track double sided double density. If
you do buy those bargan disk drives and they don't have the extra signals be
prepared to do some soldering.
It might interest you to know that the external drive has a "Paddle board" to
latch motor (I Think) and provide termination for some signals. Who thinks
up this ….Stuff? Oh well when I get the last bug out of my home brew
external drive I'll drop another note. Right now it only works if you don't
change disks. ie no "DISK CHANGED" signal……… YET!