@database LSD-aminet/hard/hack/happy_hard_drive.guide @master happy_hard_drive.guide @$VER: 1.0 @author "Matt Whitfield and Steve Clack" @remark Copyright 1997 Matt Whitfield, Steve Clack and Liquid Software Design @remark This may not be redistributed in any changed form. If it is included on @remark any compilation CDs, the authors must be contacted to receive a copy @remark of the CD first. @node "Main" "How to make your hard drive happier..." @{b}How to connect your 3.5" HDD to your Amiga 1200 in a nice friendly way, @{ub}@{i}or@{ui}@{b} How to make your currently installed 3.5" HDD a lot happier (i.e. cooler)@{ub} @{"Introduction" link "Introduction" 0} @{"What you need" link "Needed" 0} @{"How to build the project" link "Build" 0} @{"Programs" link "Programs"} you can use to test your drives @{"Disclaimer & Copyright" link "Disclaimer"} @{"Authors & Contact" link "Authors"} @{"Drive Connections" link "connex"} Copyright (C) 1997 Matt Whitfield, Steve Clack and Liquid Software Design @endnode @node "Introduction" "Introduction" @{b}@{i}Introduction@{ub}@{ui} Okay. So you want a hard drive, or maybe you already have one. People tell you that 3.5" drives work fine in an A1200, so you try one out. It works just fine until one day you start to run a BBS and find you leave your amiga on for a few weeks. One morning, you wake up to find the hard drive light consistently on, and your amiga is very hot. You take your hard drive out, cool it down, and luckily it still works, as does your amiga. You dont want a fright like that again so that is where this hack comes in. This hack was born when we connected a broken ProGrab 24 RT to Matt's A1200 and it didn't work. We took the A1200 apart to check the PCMCIA port was not broken and found out the hard drive was very hot. So we decided to remedy this situation.... Please note here that neither Matt Whitfield nor Steve Clack can in any way be held responsible for any damage caused by the use of this information nor for damage resulting from innacuracies herein. Do not take this warning too lightly, as we broke 2 floppy drives making this hack. That is not to say that everyone who does this hack will break their floppy drives, but be warned of the risk before you start, and you must know what you are doing. @endnode @node "Programs" "Programs to test your set up" @{b}@{i}Programs to test your set up@{ub}@{ui} We have included the program DriveID by Dick Diederik, which is useful for testing the floppy drive set-up, and it will be obviously apparant if you have a hard drive, because you will be able to see it in HD Toolbox. @endnode @node "Needed" "What you need to build this project" @{b}@{i}What you need to build this project@{ub}@{ui} @{b}Parts:@{ub} 1 Amiga 1200 1 3.5" IDE/EIDE Hard Disk 1 44-pin Micro IDE -> 40-pin IDE Adaptor cable, at least 25cm long 1 Power adaptor cable (1 * small -> 1 * big, 1 * small) @{b}Optional Parts:@{ub} 1 External 3.5" Amiga Disk Drive (to use this you must have the ribbon cable) 35cm 40-way standard ribbon cable 2 34-pin drive heads @{b}Tools needed:@{ub} Screwdriver Pliers @{b}Other needed things:@{ub} Nerves of steel @endnode @node "Build" "How to build the project" @{i}@{b}How to build the project@{ui}@{ub} We'll do this in simple steps... 1. Remove the A1200's Casing by removing the three screws at the front, and the two at the very edges and lifting the top off. Welcome to the inside of your amiga. 2. Remove the keyboard. For now you can just yank the flat cable out from the motherboard, and remove the actual keyboard. Put it to one side for now. 3. Remove the floppy drive. Note that this is held down by 2 screws under the back of the amiga. Also at this time you should remove any metal plates that are around this area as they will get in the way later. 4. Remove the RF Shield by undoing all the screws you can see (including the one at the front of the case, on the bottom), then prying up the tabs that hold it down and lifting it off fairly firmly. Fold it up, stamp on it, do whatever you like with it, because it is not going back in there! :) 5. You now have two options. You can either have no drive DF0: and use only the external drives, or have DF0: externally, by using the parts mentioned in the 'optional parts list'. 5.1a) We will first deal with having no drive DF0:, as this is an easier solution, once you know what you are doing. Get the ribbon cable from the floppy drive, and with a piece of wire, connect pin 10 to pin 2. You can just stick the wire into the holes, and that should make a connection. What this does is fools the amiga into thinking there is never a disk in DF0:, but that it does work. Once this is done, take the ribbon cable and fold it triangularly so that the cable fits underneath where the floppy drive was. For those of you who are interested, see the @{"technical background" link "tech"} 5.2a) The other option is to take the amigas DF0 device into the outside world. This is perhaps a more ugly solution but it has the advantage of retaining compatibility with some software that requires DF0. An example of this might be the demo 'Big Time Sensuality'. This is where the optional parts come in. Take the external floppy drive, and take the case off. Just a note to owners of Cumana drives (like Matt is)... To open your drive just take a screw driver (flat one) to the back of the case, put it in the crack and twist until the case snaps open. Do this both sides, then force it open. It should snap open before it breaks, but don't blame me if it actually does snap. Now you will notice in most drives they have a main drive mechanism (similar to the internal drive removed earlier) and a small circuit board which has leads that plug into the drive, or in some drives (such as the Cumana ones) plugs straight into the back of the drive. Remove this circuit board by undoing any necessary screws etc. If your drive interface does not have 34 pins, @{b}STOP NOW@{ub}. The drive must have a 34-pin interface for this hack to work. b) Now, take the ribbon cable and strip off the 6 extra wires at the opposite end to the marked wire. It does not actually matter, but the marked wire helps a lot. Do not throw the 6 wire bit away as we will need that for drive power. Now, take the ribbon cable used to connect the internal drive originally and take off the black heads. This is done by putting a screw driver in the side of the head and prising the small tabs up. Do this gently or they will snap. If you do not feel comfortable doing this you can buy 34-pin heads from any good computer shop. If your computer shop does not sell them, then insult the owners because many shops do not cater for 'hardware hackers' :). Now that you have the heads off, put them on the long 34-wire cable. This is done by placing the head around the wire and squeezing them gently with a large pair of pliers. Once again, do this gently because the connections are prone to snapping. Matt broke his own, but managed to do Steve's without breaking them! (Practise makes perfect!) Also be careful that if your drive heads have notches you put them in the right way round. The easiest way to do this is look at which way they were when you took them off the original cabling. c) Now you should have a long drive cable. You now need a long power cable. Take 2 of the wires off from the 6 wire leftover, and throw them away. With the other 4, mark one wire all the way down with a felt marker or similar, so that you can know which end is which. Now take the original drive power cable, and cut it exactly in half. With a pair of pliers or scissors (or even your teeth) strip all the wires on both sections. Strip off the wires on the 4 wire ribbon cable, and then connect the 4 way ribbon cable in between the two halfs of the original connection. Make sure you remain consistent with your connections (i.e. keep the same colour going to the same colour at both ends) because if you mess this part up, you will almost certainly blow up your drive, which will then smell nice. d) You have two options of how to take the drive cables out of the Amiga, you can either take them out from just above the disk drive port, or you can take them out of where the internal floppy drive used to be. If you want to take the wires out of the disk drive port, you must remove your motherboard, push the interface cable through, then put a slight kink in the cable, because the internal interface is not in line with the disk drive port. Look at this @{"diagram" system "run >nil: multiview DrivePort.Iff"} to see how to do this. This is what Matt did. Then putting the motherboard back in, be firm because the RF shield will hinder putting the wires through the disk drive port hole. Your other option is to fold the interface cable triangularly and run it under where the floppy drive used to be, and out through the internal floppy disk hole. This is what Steve did. Make sure you pass the interface cable 1through the hole before plugging it in anywhere, otherwise you will be frustrated when you come to put the computer back together. e) Now take the interface and power cables, and feed them through the back of the external drives casing (we put them through where the pass through port had been) and plug the cables into the drive mechanism. Put the casing back together and lay it on the desk. 6. Now comes the part of putting the Hard Disk into the Casing. This is relatively easy. First of all, lay the Hard Disk in the place where the floppy drive had been, to check that it sits in alright. Also, make sure all the tabs on the RF shield are folded down, and you have gone over the areas where the drive will touch with insulating tape or something similar. Fix the Hard Disk in place however you see fit, just make sure it is fairly secure. Steve stuck his down with tape, and Matt fixed his with screws and double sided sticky pads (he had to make new holes in the back of the case in order to screw the drive down). @{b}Important:@{ub} If you have an accelerator card, make sure the drive can sit in place without hindering the positioning of the card. Above all, make sure they do not touch. Even if just by 1mm, make sure they do not touch. Matt found that his Hard Disk sat very close to his 68030 (on his GVP Turbo Plus Series ][) and this made it harder to control the positioning of the Hard Disk. 7. Now take the 44-pin to 40-pin adaptor cable, and plug it in to the main IDE interface on the motherboard, then into the Hard Disk. If you wish, you can put a kink in it, in a similar fashion to before, like Matt did. When you have done this, your setup should look like in this @{"diagram" system "run >nil: multiview HardDrive.IFF"}. 8. You are now almost ready to put your computer back together. First though, it is a very good idea to check that it works at this point. Make sure the white housing of the keyboard connector on the motherboard is lifted up, and plug the keyboard in. Then boot up the machine. If it all works fine, then great. If it pauses and the drive does not click @{b}turn off now.@{ub} This probably means the cable is in back-to-front, so check this. If the power is in OK, then check the power. If the hard drive does not work, then check the cable and power. If all cables and power are OK, then check the wiring. If the wiring is fine check the ribbon cable to the drives have their backs firmly on. If all this is alright and it still doesnt work then you are up shit creek without a paddle, because you have almost certainly blown something up. :( 9. If you are here, it is probably working, so congratulations on a successful hardware hack. Your 3.5" HDD will live longer than most 'normally' put in drives, and you can put your A1200 up against something without having to worry about being able to put the disks in! You now have a successfully hacked A1200. So put the top on, do up the screws and roll! Don't forget to put the drive lights back onto the motherboard, and dont worry, the connector will only fit one way round. Click here to read about @{"further possibilites" link "further"} with this project. @endnode @node "further" "Further Possibilites with this project" @{b}@{i}Further Possibilities with this prohect@{ub}@{ui} Before we continue, we must say that we have not performed any of the following hacks, and say that these are entirely theoretical. You could, if you wish, make the drive detachable, by getting a 40-pin male and a 40-pin female adaptor, then cutting the interface and power cables, then clipping them both in, in the same way as before. If you do this, make sure you line up the cables right both ends, or you will have more explosions! Another beauty of this project is that you can now have 2 3.5" Hard Disks within your amiga. To do this, it is best to have 2 drives of the same type. To do this, you need some 40-pin cable and another 40-pin head. Just take off the existing head, then press both cables together (making sure you line up the pin 1s) and put the head back on. Then put the other head on the end of the cable that is loose. Plug this into the other Hard Disk and then plug a power cable into the other Hard Disk (you may have to get this). Set one drive to master (the one closest to the motherboard, in terms of the IDE cable) and the other to slave. You now have a two drive system. Many people will tell you this can not happen without a buffer. Well it can. Because I know several people who have done it. Companies like Golden Image will tell you that you cannot do it to sell you their devices. Ignore their warnings. Go for it. But dont come running to me if you blow your 1200 up. The most likely scenario is you run out of power. In this case, you could get another PSU and power the drives by making the psu plug in to the back of the external drive (if you chose to make one) and passing power to the Hard Disks like that. Yet another good point of this project, is that you could have a CD Drive plugged in, by running the IDE cable out of the side of the computer through the disk drive hole, like with Steve's method of attaching the floppy drive, and then attaching the CD Drive there. The possibilities are truly endless. Also, becuase there is now so much space where other 3.5" Hard Drives are, you could install a fan, to cool your system down. Another possibility, is to put the internal disk drive in the other end of the Amiga. This is probably possible, but we have not investigated it, and probably will not. This is because we're quite happy with our external DF0! If anyone does perform any of these hacks, please let us know, so that we can document what you did for others to use. @endnode @node "tech" "Technical background to 'No DF0: hack'" @{b}@{i}Technical background to 'No DF0: hack'@{ub}@{ui} This pulls DISKCHANGE low when DRIVE SELECT 0 is low. What this means is that when the amiga polls the disk drive to say 'hello, are you there and is there a disk in?' it says 'hello, yes i am and no there isn't.' Originally we had tried just pulling READY low permanently, but this made READY low all the time for @{b}all drives.@{ub} This meant the amiga detected DF0, DF1, DF2 and DF3 whether they were there or not. Then we tried the same with DISKCHANGE, and this detected the right number of drives, but did not let any of them signal a disk. So it was only when we found the drive pinouts in Dick Diederik's PCFloppy2Amiga project, that we could link DRIVE SELECT 0 straight to DISKCHANGE, thus allowing any external drives to be used, but disabling DF0 and avoiding any wait states. @endnode @node "disclaimer" "Disclaimer & Copyright" @{b}@{i}Disclaimer@{ui}@{ub} This document is provided "as-is" and the authors accept no responsibility for damage and/or loss of data/equipment as a result from performing the hardware hack as described in this document or any accompanying material. @{b}@{i}Copyright@{ub}@{ui} This document is Copyright 1997 (C) Matt Whitfield, Steve Clack and Liquid Software Design This document may not be redistributed in any changed form. If it is included in any compilation CD's the authors must be contacted to receive a copy first. @endnode @node "Authors" "Authors & Contact Info" @{b}@{i}Authors@{ub}@{ui} We both live on the Isle of Wight. Matt is co-sysop of Steve's BBS, and we often meet up for fun and games, and this time, a lot of hardware hacking :)) That's enough about us... if you want to know more then @{i}@{b}contact us@{ui}@{ub}: E-Mail: Matt: mattw@ndirect.co.uk Steve: steeevc@ndirect.co.uk BBS: --==## Total Eclipse On-Line ##==-- +44(0)1983 522428 Liquid Software Design HQ Maxs Pro, KewlCD & KewlCDPro, MMC, MagicFile & BBS Chat support WWW: http://www.ndirect.co.uk/tronix-d Thanks to: Dick Diederik for PCFloppy2Amiga, sorry we didnt have time to ask! Ozz Scott for being the hackiest bloke about, and giving me the final idea of how to fix the 'Disable DF0 Hack' Jake for being fat, lazy and stepping on Matt's motherboard Commodore for being amusing while they lasted Micro$oft for ensuring the world is a worse place to compute each year All scene groups for keeping me attracted to the amiga for so long! """"" ( o o ) +----oooo---(_)---ooo----+ | | | Liquid Software Design | | The sun and the stars | | | | Oooo | | oooO ( ) | +-------( )--) /-------+ \\ ( (_/ \\_) ANSI by jaVa maN/LsD @endnode @node "connex" "Connections for the project" @{b}@{i}Connections for the project@{ub}@{ui} You don't need to know this, but we found it useful so here it is. The connector for the power supply consists of 4 pins: Pin # Connection 1 5 volts 2 Ground 3 Ground 4 12 volts Be careful with this one, as getting it wrong could be fatal (well for your drive, at any rate!) The actual drive connector only uses 17 of the 34 pins. All of the odd numbered pins are connected to ground. In the 'Dir' (direction) column, 1 means from drive to amiga and 2 means from amiga to drive. Pin # Connection Dir Description 2 DISKCHANGE 1 Goes low when selected and disk isnt in 4 IN USE 1 Activates when drive motor spins 6 DRIVE SELECT 3 2 Low when drive 3 is selected * 8 INDEX 1 Low every rotation when select is low 10 DRIVE SELECT 0 2 Low when drive 0 is selected * 12 DRIVE SELECT 1 2 Low when drive 1 is selected * 14 DRIVE SELECT 2 2 Low when drive 2 is selected * 16 MOTORON 2 Drive motor spins when MOTORON is low 18 DIR. SELECT 2 Low for inwards, High for outwards 20 STEP 2 When low head is stepped to next track + 22 WRITE DATA 2 Data to be written to disk 24 WRITE GATE 2 When low data is written to disk 26 TRACK 0 1 Low when head is over track 0 28 WRITE PROTECT 1 Low when selected and disk is protected 30 READ DATA 1 Data is written to this line from the disk 32 SIDE 1 SELECT 2 Selects side to be written to / read from 34 READY 1 Low when selected and ready to read / write * I.E. Low when computer wants to talk to this drive. + The next track is determined by DIR (Direction) SELECT Here are the pins for the IDE Hard Drive: Pin # Connection Pin # Connection 1 -Reset 2 GND 3 Data 7 4 Data 8 5 Data 6 6 Data 9 7 Data 5 8 Data 10 9 Data 4 10 Data 11 11 Data 3 12 Data 12 13 Data 2 14 Data 13 15 Data 1 16 Data 14 17 Data 0 18 Data 15 19 GND 20 Key 21 (reserved) 22 GND 23 -IOW 24 GND 25 -IOR 26 GND 27 IO Chrdy 28 Ale 29 (reserved) 30 GND 31 IRQ14 32 -IOCS16 33 Addr 1 34 (reserved) 35 Addr 0 36 Addr 2 37 -CS0 (1F0-1F7) 38 -CS1 (3f6-3f7) 39 -Active 40 GND Dont ask us to explain these as we only *just* grabbed them off from the internet :) @endnode @remark This may not be redistributed in any changed form. If it is included on @remark any compilation CDs, the authors must be contacted to receive a copy @remark of the CD first. @remark End Of Guide