dleigh@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Darren Leigh) (10/13/88)
I've been calling all over the Silicon Valley area trying to get a
replacement for the internal drive on my A1000. No one has them and
CBM is back-ordered.
1. Can I mail order these from anywhere?
2. How compatible is the external drive with the internal one? Can I
swap the two for now without dire consequences?
3. Could I buy a 3.5 inch diskette drive somewhere else and use it?
I have heard that the ones in the Amiga are non-standard.
Any and all help appreciated.
========
Darren Leigh
Internet: dleigh@hplabs.hp.com
UUCP: hplabs!dleighwtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) (10/17/88)
I looked inside my A1000. The disk drive seems to be a garden variety NEC 3.5 inch drive. Probably any standard drive would work. You'd have to get the documentation for both drives to make sure that you had the feature jumpers set equivalently. The external 3.5 inch drive includes a PAL chip on a little board. When Amigados boots, it sends a sequence over the drive select line. The drive will return a sequnece. When Amigados finds a drive, it can then send a command to allow it to diasychain to the next drive on the string. Other than a couple of leads, most signals are paralleled on the external drives. I don't have my schematics here at work, so I don't want to say something dumb about which leads; it think that it is the motor/on motor/off that is used by the PAL to figure out which drive is selected. Once you get past the circuit board with the PAL on it, the drive unit should be the same as the internally mounted disk. Note that the external 5.25 inch disk lacks the PAL, and thus is not automatically detected by Amigados. That means that the 5.25 inch drive has to be the last device, and there can only be one 5.25 inch disk. You should be able to unplug an external drive from its case and substitue it for the internal drive. --Bill
GregM@cup.portal.com (Greg Scott Miller) (10/19/88)
I can't answer all of your questions, but I can tell you that the 3.5 in my external A1010 is the same as in my A1000, and I've swapped them before. For the most part, any "ibm" 720K drive is hardware-compatible with the requirements of the 1000. I'm not sure, however, about the physical needs of the eject button. Hope that helps - some. - Greg GregM@cup.portal.com
chimelis@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Chris Chimelis) (10/20/88)
In article <10158@cup.portal.com> GregM@cup.portal.com (Greg Scott Miller) writes: >I can't answer all of your questions, but I can tell you that the 3.5 in >my external A1010 is the same as in my A1000, and I've swapped them before. >For the most part, any "ibm" 720K drive is hardware-compatible with the >requirements of the 1000. I'm not sure, however, about the physical needs >of the eject button. IBM-type 720K drives work fine. I had one hooked up to my 2000 for a long time. I was using a Toshiba that was made for IBM PC/XT/AT's. I almost hooked it up to the 1000, but never got around to it. Chris Chimelis chimelis@refuge.colorado.edu ncar!boulder!refuge!chimelis chimelis%boulder@colorado.bitnet