david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- Resident E-mail Hack) (03/21/88)
I just went through a slightly scary experience with my A2000. I was trying to add an off-the-shelf 3.5" drive (Sony MP-F63W-01D) as an internal drive and somewhere in the fiddling broke things -- a blown surface mount transistor in the disk drive and something in the on board drive electronics. I think that during the fiddling I might have plugged the power cable in backwards -- which is a neat trick considering how the power cables are constructed. (BTW, my machine was out of warranty :-(). Anyway, while talking to my local dealer I asked him about the sort of drive I can use, and he's under the impression that there is some sort of special drive you have to use for Amiga's. Now, he's a nice guy and everything but he doesn't seem to be fully at ease with hardware issues. (His repair work is done off site by somebody who I feel confident of). Anyway, I thought I'd ask y'all. Anyway, I just took a look in the Hardware Reference Manual (HRM?) and found out that there is *one* difference -- the drive is supposed to remember the state of it's motor. It didn't talk about any other differences. Is this an important difference? I suppose one of two things would be different. Either the drive will pay attention to the motor line all the time and whenever any motor is supposed to run this one will also run, or the drive will spin down whenever it's not selected. The first difference would put some extra demand on the power supply, but I've got an A2000 here ... the second one could make things a little bit slower in situations where you're "jumping" from one drive to another. I think it's kind of ridiculous to pay $200 for an add-on drive that'd just be a bare drive when I can buy (and already own) bare 3.5" drives for $130 ... I *don't* mind paying that much for an add-on drive that also includes case & power supply. -- <---- David Herron -- The E-Mail guy <david@ms.uky.edu> <---- or: {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET <---- <---- "Oh, I dunno -- I think Sean would be rather tasty!" -- Becky