Comments on: Making A Great Working Chinon FZ-506 Floppy Drive Interface For Reading Amiga 5.25 Inch Floppies

By: Albert van Bemmelen

Albert van Bemmelen — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 08:39:39 +0000

Yes indeed Boris. Most of our 40 year or more old computer hardware probably still works today because those chips and components were manufactured in a time they were quite expensive to produce. And because the internal circuits were not as dense as they are today with nano size structures (now even made with shorter UV wavelength wafer circuits - produced with machines of worldfamous Dutch ASML).

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By: Boris

Boris — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 13:57:51 +0000

Hi Albert,

I quite enjoyed your article. I still have several C64s and 1541s (along with my first, bought in 1986), still love to play with old and new games that, believe it or not, are still being produced today by hardcore fans. I also witnessed the '80s and later demoscene. The only drawback is that this days, more than using them, I pass more time in trying to repair them... Which is quite normal for 40 years old technology, sometimes I'm amazed that it still works...

Cheers!

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By: Albert van Bemmelen

Albert van Bemmelen — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 11:49:46 +0000

In reply to Albert van Bemmelen.

More info on changing most known 3.5 inch original PC drives into Amiga drives can be found in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajA_JkMNTVc

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By: Albert van Bemmelen

Albert van Bemmelen — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 10:16:29 +0000

Addendum: Although 3.5 inch diskdrives also have a Density Select pin2 on the 34-pin Shugart bus Floppydrive connector it was clearly not connected in Rob's schematic in the article. So it is not used and HighDensity or DoubleDensity disks have to be selected manually in the Drawbridge screen menu. Oddly however is that pin2 clearly was mentioned on Rob's Amiga Floppydrive Drawbridge webpage going to be connected to the mini Pro Arduino module pin A3!
But I didn't use or needed that connection in my Chinon FZ-506 project. And neither used it in my other perfectly working 3.5 inch Floppy drive interface.
And any PC 3.5 inch floppy drive can also simply be made a direct replacement Amiga DF0: drive by removing the DS1: solder jumper by setting it to DS0:. Plus by removing the 000 (zero ohm) DC resistor and place it on the open RDY resistor position instead, so RDY is grounded to gnd (uneven odd pins 1 to 33). And add a wire connection from the now removed previous top DC resistor position (on my drive pin 26 on a SEMEN SF12H021A chip) going to pin 2 of the 34 pin shugart bus floppyconnector.

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By: Albert van Bemmelen

Albert van Bemmelen — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 08:29:33 +0000

In reply to Yogesh Panchal.

I have many of those -mostly desktop and other Windows 95 upto Windows 11- computers too Yogesh. But they never were as much fun as the first 8/16 bit computers C64/128 and Amiga after them. The old Windows 95 mini tower computer I still have has a special VESA Local Bus mainboard (was a short-lived expansion bus introduced during the i486 generation computers) that still drives my electronics IC-tester slotcard with Eprom reader and GAL reader/writer that only install and work on that mainboard. But it also runs a special CD drive that can rewrite special rewritable CD-ROM discs in a caddy over 50.000 times (but that probably was just a questional selling argument that only is true as long as the laser head is still functional). Sadly these older Windows computers nowadays - even the still good working ones ! - are thrown away simply because most of them no longer are capable to go online with their older Windows pre-7 versions and their too old unsafe browsers that no longer support it! And even if the date and time no longer matches the actual time -when the RTC lithium battery runs out on our good working mainboards- our browsers prevent going online for security reasons and we no longer can connect with the internet because our browsers prevent that.

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By: Yogesh Panchal

Yogesh Panchal — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 16:21:08 +0000

Albert,
Never heard of Amiga or other Commodore, i entered the field of computer in 1993 era of XT 8088 X86 machine & used lots of 16 BIT IDE IO Cards for assembling the machines.

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By: Albert van Bemmelen

Albert van Bemmelen — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 10:22:38 +0000

And by using a green USB-to-PS2 adapter plugged in also some of the USB mice (those supporting PS/2 communication protocols) can be tested with this Joystick tester!

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By: Albert van Bemmelen

Albert van Bemmelen — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 10:11:57 +0000

Here I think a very interesting tip I found out, for Gamers & Commodore computer owners/users, to test Joysticks and Amiga mouses or even PS2 PC mouses with this hardware =>

https://www.pcbway.com/project/shareproject/Atari_Joystick_Tester.html

https://www.pcbway.com/project/shareproject/AMIGA_PS_2_MOUSE_CONVERTER__ADAPTER____PIC16F628_A__1.html

Testing PS2 mouses works by using first the PS2-to-Amiga- mouse-adapter plugged in into the Joystick tester. And Amiga mouses directly plug in into the Joystick tester.

It works great to be able to test Joysticks and Commodore/Atari or PC mouses without any computer connected!

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By: Albert van Bemmelen

Albert van Bemmelen — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 06:58:37 +0000

In reply to Mark J.

I never made a Youtube channel intentionally Mark J, as far as I am aware of?
But I guess it looks that way after having uploaded several videos also from previous articles.
I myself however always prefer reading and downloading pdf documents because they take less time to examine and often contain all information in a printable form. And videos often only show the results of the made projects and tests.

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By: Mark J

Mark J — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 00:39:52 +0000

Albert I know that. I meant that I did not know that you specifically had a youtube channel.

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