Sony MPF110-04 in an external drive - what others will fit?

Merlin

Ministry of Retr0bright and Street Judge
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OK, one for the hardware guys.

BippyM kindly sent me an external Amiga floppy drive that was reported to unable to read dics. The drive itself looks somewhat like an AmiTek unit and the actual drive within it is a Sony MPF110-04. This drive plugged into the obligatory adapter board with the external 23-pin port.

The question is, what modern PC floppy drive can I hack to replace the Sony floppy drive unit? Could I use one from the Amiga Compatibility lists that are posted on various sites, with the relevant hack applied?

I would dearly like to get this drive back into the land of the living.
 
Re: Sony MPF110-04 in an external drive - what others will fit?

Most external drives are unmodified pc units. Just toss a drive and test it.

No harm will be done to the board or drive.

If don't work, you must to modify the drive to Amiga standard. I can tell you how. :wink:
 
Re: Sony MPF110-04 in an external drive - what others will fit?

Cool! sounds good to me.... (y)
 
might as well reopen this one. A google search for mpf110-04 led me here anyway. I have the same problem as melin. I bought an 'untested' drive from ebay and of course it doesnt work. did you ever succeed in fixing that melin? And I thought that external drives used amiga compatible drives, but rkauer recons otherwise, which is cool cos I have loads of pc drives and bits of external drives. Wouldnt mind some clever peeps sharing their knowledge about this.
 
Modifying a PC drive to Amiga use is almost no-brainer.

Swap the 2 x 34 pins, solder a jumper wire from pin #30 to the "new" 34, move the DS0-DS1 jumper/solder pad/Zer0-Ohm SMD resistor to DS0 position and all is done.

Notice that this don't work on the Power XL external drive: it uses a Sony MPF920-3 PC drive and don't accept any other unit. Also the little PAL chip on the board dies very easily, giving you a nice doorstop.
 
No, I hadn't but now that rkauer has given me the answer, I'm off to try it....
 
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