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LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:10 am

Lately I've been wanting to get my Amiga 500 a nice external floppy so that I can make backup copies or be able to run Workbench and other applications. Over on Amibay, however, I haven't had much luck yet in landing a decent one.

Either a decent 1010 drive, or even something nice like a Cumana external floppy, would do me well. Even if I do finally go the distance and put a Gotek into my A500, I can at least have *some* floppy disk fun with it. :)

(Upshot of that: I can make my own ADFs that way as well! ;) )

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:18 am

I'll take a look at my pile. I may have an extra. (or two)

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LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:53 am

Sounds good! :)

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:57 am

I can tell you from personal experience, once you get df1: games like Bard's Tale are simply a joy to play. Your game in df0: and character disk in df1:. The two drives humming along like they are singing in a choir. The experience bordered on the magical for me.

That being said, you'll also be stunned to see how many early games simply didn't seek out df1: at all. Or, you might put a disk in df1: and get the software to launch, but then it would get confused later on because the code was hard-wired for df0:. It happens.

I'm trying to remember - did you get a new power supply from Ray Carlsen?

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LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Wed Sep 27, 2017 10:21 am

intric8 wrote: I'm trying to remember - did you get a new power supply from Ray Carlsen?
Yeah, I got one a while back. I might ask him for a second one as a spare soon, though.

I do need to get another mouse, though. Mine doesn't read on the Y axis at all no matter how much I try cleaning it. Amiga Bill suggested getting a Rys MKII USB adapter and using a USB mouse, which means I may even get one of these. :)

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Sep 28, 2017 10:12 pm

I took a look in my pile o' stuff and found this spare external floppy drive. It could use a mild cleaning.

This is the CA-880. "CA" stands for the "California Access" and was considered by a few as "the Cadillac of external floppy drives."

The reasons are pretty simple:
  • It is very low profile and slim.
  • It is quiet.
  • It has a metal casing - not plastic like the Commodore drives. Very high-quality build.
  • It has a On/Off switch on the back. The Commodore 1010 drives were "always on" but typically sat dormant unless you put a disk in there.
  • And it has a port on the back to daisy chain yet another drive, but seriously you shouldn't ever need to go that route in my opinion.
IMG_1983.jpg
IMG_1984.jpg

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LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Sat Sep 30, 2017 6:21 am

The cleaning part is easy. Does it still work reading and writing disks?

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sat Sep 30, 2017 1:35 pm

Yep - last I checked it does.





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