|1-3.5" Hard Drive Fitting Guide by Andy Bolt Mega Disclaimer --------------- Following these instructions could seriously fuck up your Amiga. I take no responsibility for this what-so-ever. Do it at your own risk, etc. Why Bother? ----------- 3.5" IDE drives are a lot cheeper, bigger and faster than 2.5" ones, or SCSI drives conected to the PCMCIA socket. (mine does 1.39 Mb/sec) If you don't want a hard drive at all, then see a doctor now, who will attempt to sort out your head. I decided to right this after my own nightmare experience fitting a 3.5" hard drive, and also because with the prices of 3.5" drives dropping every day, every Amiga owner should get one. |1-The Instructions... 1. Get your hands on a dirt cheap 3.5" IDE hard drive from a cheapo PC dealer. Typically this will cost about £100+VAT for a 1/2 GByte drive, or £120+VAT for 800 megs. You will also need a 3.5" data and power cable for about £15 from an advertiser in an Amiga mag and a prepping program such as RDPrep from a PD. library. You will also need a philips and a flat head screwdriver and a decent work space . You should only attempt to fit a 3.5" hard drive if you are fairly technically minded and I will be in no way responsible if you make a mess of it. You can kiss goodbye to your warranty too. I'm not sure if this procedure is exactly the same for the new Amiga Tech A1200s. 2. Earth yourself by touching a radiator to get rid of any static in you. Turn your A1200 upside down and remove the three screws along the bottom and two at each side of the casing. Holding the case together, turn your Amiga the right way up and gently remove the lid, which is clipped in place at the back, and put it to the right. Be carefull as the LEDs are still atatched by wires. 3. Lift the keyboard out of the notches it rests in and let it slide forwards. You should now be able to see where the power LEDs are connected to the mother board. Gently remove this plug so that you can put the lid to one side. 4. Place the keyboard upside down to the rear of the Amiga so you can see the top of the shielding. You should see the cradle to the left for a 2.5" drive which can be gently removed and discarded. You should also see a part of the shielding in the centre of the computer which sticks up. This should be removed by bending up the tabs holding it down with a small screwdriver. Make sure you fold the flaps back down afterwards or they will stick in your HD. 5. To the front of the part of circuit board you have just exposed you should see a small set of about 10 pins sticking up. These need to be covered to prevent the hard drive touching them which shorts them out and crashes your Amiga. I used one of those sticky backed foam pads. 6. If you look at the floppy drive you should see a power connector consisting of about 4 wires linking it to the motherboard. Remove this wire, noting where it came from. It can be a bugger to get out so take care. 7. You should notice that on your hard drive ribbon cable one wire is marked, usually in red. The small end of this cable should be attached to the IDE controller, which can be seen through a gap in the shielding to the left, so that the marked wire corresponds to the "1" printed on the A1200 circuit board. Be careful not to bend any pins or to mis-align the cable so that pins protrude from either end. Make sure it is pushed down firmly. Repeat this with the other end of the cable and your hard drive, which should also have a "1" marked on the circuit board. 8. Take the new power cable which should have 3 plugs on it. The two small ones go where you took the floppy drive cable from, and the large one should fit onto the hard drive. All these plugs are keyed so that they will only go in one socket, one way up. 9. Locate the hard drive fairly centrally, with the circuit board down and the wires to the left. It should rest against the rear of the Amiga and the small lip in the middle of the shielding. Make sure the wires are tidy and the data cable is folded flat. The power cable should run in front of the drive. 10. Take hold of the keyboard and bring it back in to position, so that its ribbon cable is stretched over the top of the hard drive. Adjust the position of the hard drive if necessary. 11. Thread the LED cable from the top part of the casing back through the cut out in the keyboard and plug it back in. Make sure the keyboard is sitting correctly in the grooves and cutouts along the front of the A1200 and place the top casing loosely over the keyboard. Apply firm pressure to the back edge of the casing so that the top is clipped firmly on. The Front of the casing will probably now be sticking up in the air. Press this down and hold the two halves of the front of the casing firmly together. You may have to jiggle the keyboard a bit. Now turn the Amiga over whilst being careful to hold the front of it together and replace the middle screw, followed by the two from the corners. There will probably be a bit of a gap along the edges of the computer so you will have to squeeze them together to get the side screws in. 12. Turn your A1200 the right way up and plug everything back in. Switch it on and you should hear your drive whirring. If it is pre-installed workbench should appear within about 20 seconds, but if it isn't you should now refer to the instructions with your prep software. FAQs ---- Q. My hard drive is properly set up but it will not boot from cold. Why? A. Some 3.5" hard drives take to long to get up to working speed, so your Amiga gives up looking for it and looks for a floppy instead. To boot from your hard drive you will need to reset your Amiga (Ctrl, Amiga + Amiga) after you have switched on and your HD should boot. My Drive is a Conner 420Mb, and boots from cold with out any problems, in about 12secs, or 9secs for a warm reset. These are the sort of figures that would make a PC owner trying to load Windows look very sad indeed. Q. The hard drive doesn't power up. A. You probably have the data cable on the wrong way, or have pins protuding from it. You may also have a dodgy conection with the power cable. Q. Neither the hard drive or the floppy work. A. I had a problem from repetedly removing the mother board floppy power conector the pastic part of the plug on the mother board rode up on the pins, so that when pluged in the floppy power cable no longer made contact. It took me ages to figure this out, but you just need to make sure the plastic part of the plug is pushed right down onto the motherboard. Q. Is this the only way to do it. A. No. I originaly had instructions to fit the drive in the top left hand corner of your Amiga, which involved ripping out all the shielding, and resting the drive on top of the IDE interface, and then it still didn't fit, so, after bringing my Amiga back from the brink of death, I decided to go about fitting it my own way, after seeing a few photos of it done my way. Q. Doesn't the drive need to be secured in any way? A. Not unless to plan to take your Amiga bungee jumping. The drive is a very tight fit so it will not move around. Q. What about power supply? A. The standard A1200 supply will probably not be enough if you have many more peripherals conected, especially accelerators. Before you splash out on a Goliath pack though, try an A500 supply, which is twice as powerfull as the A1200 one. Frequent crashes are a sign that your power supply isn't up to it. Q. I give up/ its not possible/ what shall I do A. Get a proper Amiga dealer who specialises in 3.5" drives to fit it for you, or get an external mounting box for the drive. -End-