Amiga A1020 5.25" floppy drive (was Re: Atari modem)

On 19-May-99, Mark wrote: Hail! I don't know the answer to that. I don't know of that many A1020 owners in North America, either. :) It was basically only used for reading MS-DOS format 360K disks with Transformer, but there was also commercial software that used it to read/write C=1541 disks. I think one of the RKMs mentions software for reading/writing Apple ][ disks, too, and I'd like to locate that. (I can only _read_ Apple disks ATM). There were third party Amiga-compatible 5.25" drives made. Picking up a random magazine (Amiga Format, January 1991) and leafing through, I found an ad for the Cumana CAX1000S on p.165. Not really compatible, though, as the Cumana drive has a high density mechanism in it. I think there were others as well, also with high density mechanisms. The Cumana drive also doesn't seem to have its own power supply. The A1020 has its own internal supply, instead of drawing off the Amiga's floppy port. I've never met a C=1571 in real life, but I think the A1020 uses the same case as that drive. Just look for a 1571 with a checkmark logo on it. :) The mech is an ALPS DS/DD, but I don't know the exact model number. Doesn't matter, because any standard mech will do. The interface PCB only has three TTL chips and a few capacitors and maybe a transistor (can't see the third leg). It's probably not _quite_ the same as as the board from a 3.5" drive, because the A1020 isn't recognized and mounted automatically. It has to be MOUNTed manually, using an appropriate mountlist. (440K Amiga disks! WooHoo!) It has the passthrough for daisychaining other drives, too. There's really not much to it. Rigging up the appropriate cabling between any old 5.25" mechanism and the innards of an A1010 would probably work. Note that there is no diskchange signal from the drive. You have to remember to issue the diskchange command when swapping Amiga-formatted 5.25" disks, to avoid corruption. Not that this is likely to be a great concern. :) -- Doug Spence ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/