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My Amiga 3000 is starting to show its age, and recently one of the two internal floppy disk drives appears to have given up the ghost... I'd like to replace the drive but the A3000 case doesn't have a standard 3.5" rectangle for the drive's faceplate. Instead, the A3000 case has a molded 'slot' for the floppy to fit through and for the 'eject-button' to fit through.

This brings me to two questions: first, is there a supplier of 'new' compatible floppy disk drives for vintage Amigas? And second, what is the solution to the faceplate/button problem?

I've done some light googling, and located a few overseas vendors selling drives, but they seem to always show drives with standard faceplates. I don't doubt a drive designed to work with an Amiga 500/1200/2000/whatever would work electrically; it will probably even mount in the bay just fine, but the mechanics of the faceplate/button arrangement seems flaky.

Any suggestions?

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    Generally, "where can I buy..." questions are off-topic on SE sites, this one included. Also, this site works best with a single question per posting.
    – user12
    Commented Jun 30, 2016 at 15:45
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    Your first question, "is there a supplier of 'new' compatible floppy disk drives for vintage Amigas?" should be removed from the question; it's (probably!) off-topic. However, the first and third paragraphs - and your second question - are fine.
    – wizzwizz4 ♦
    Commented Jun 30, 2016 at 18:15
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    Have you tried cleaning the disk detect sensor? A dirty one will make the drive act dead.
    – snips-n-snails
    Commented Jul 1, 2016 at 6:25
  • traal, I followed the link you provided and verified the detect sensor is working properly. Thanks for the suggestion! - Unfortunately, the bad drive seems to be working except it recognizes everything inserted as DF0:NDOS and fails to format new disks. I will continue to troubleshoot the drive, but I'm anxious to have some drives in my stockpile for the future.
    – Geo...
    Commented Jul 4, 2016 at 16:07

2 Answers 2

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Here and here are lists of drives that work on Amigas either natively or that can be electrically modified to work on Amigas. Some of the drives are still in production. Those vendors you found selling drives for Amigas probably already made any necessary electrical modifications.

Then, those drives are 1" tall, so if the Amiga 3000 takes 1-1/4" tall drives, you may need to add 1/4" spacers to the mounting holes on what looks like the bottom of the drive to get the drive to fit properly in the chassis.

Then for the Amiga 3000, I expect you will need to remove the faceplate from the new drive. If the old eject button doesn't fit properly on the new drive, you may need to fashion a new button like this one for the A600 and A1200 and this slightly different one for the A500. Have you done any 3-D design work or CNC milling/3D printing?

I don't have a definitive answer for you, but I hope this helps a little. Let us know what you discover.

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You might also try and look at modern solutions.

The HxC floppy emulator which can be pricy or you could go with a GOTEK drive, and modify the enclosure to fit in the A3000. GOTEK drives have at the moment 2 firmwares, the Free which isn't being developed anymore. And you can contact the guy with the HxC, whom also makes a firmware for this device. No more flaky disks with read errors.

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  • Thanks Carsten, I've considered it. But I'm doing an (almost) factory-like mint condition refurb on my A3000 and I'm committed to having floppies in there! I've got a stack of 3.5" drives in my junk pile (but at a different location) and so when I get access to those drives I'm going to see about doing a conversion mod as mentioned above. I don't think the conversion will be difficult, I think the darn non-standard A3000 plastic eject buttons will be my problem. I'll post my results when I have some.
    – Geo...
    Commented Jul 15, 2016 at 11:45

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