Amiga A1200: Fixing a faulty floppy drive the easy way

One of the most common failure points on an Amiga is its floppy drive. I've experienced this twice; firstly with my A600 over 20 years ago, and more recently with my A1200.

There are a number of mods out there to make certain PC-compatible HD floppy drives into Amiga-compatible DD floppy drives, but to be honest I wasn't sure how any of the drives I had on hand would respond to a mod like this.

Instead, I chose to buy an adapter that I spotted on one of Adrian Black's Midweek Mini Mail Call videos a while back. It looked simple, which I find relatable.

The only downside is that these are produced in limited quantities by a one-man operation, so these are not always available. That said, it's worth waiting for if you want to replace your broken Amiga floppy drive with another mechanical floppy drive the easy way.

I don't have a 3D printer handy to print up a floppy drive button that's able to clip securely onto the replacement drive, so I had to take the button from my A600's long dead floppy drive and attach it to the replacement drive with epoxy.

As I didn't want to waste perfectly good surplus epoxy, I took the opportunity to install some of Hey Birt's A1200 case savers as preventative maintenance.

Note that I didn't go into much detail about how to install this mod; Adrian did a much better job of this than I ever could. This video is more about raising awareness of this mod and showing just how simple yet effective it is to use.

Thanks to Adrian for allowing me to borrow a snippet from MMMC#27.
Links:
Adrian's Digital Basement MMMC#27 featuring Amiga floppy drive adapter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCOtz2EWD_8&t=46s

eBay listing for Amiga floppy drive adapter
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/333509649554
Note: The seller (Andreas) does not currently ship directly to Australia.

Amiga A1200 case savers
https://www.soigeneris.com/amiga-1200-case-saver-kit
Contents:
0:00 Intro
1:02 Andreas' amazing Amiga adapter (w/ added alliteration)
1:30 Sticking things together
2:21 Preventative maintenance (A1200 case savers)
3:22 The mod is fitted
5:00 Booting from floppy
5:22 "Is that noise normal?" Yes. Yes it is.
6:24 Reading from floppy after booting
6:45 Copying from floppy to CF card
7:02 Conclusion and outro
Music from Chillhop Music, used under licence (in order of appearance)
"railway pulse" by mommy, Sleepy Fish
Copyright Chillhop Music - https://chll.to/22e98763

Видео Amiga A1200: Fixing a faulty floppy drive the easy way канала OzRetrocomp