Disk Interface Options for a 464 Plus

[chrisgreen]

Hi everyone

Assuming it arrives in one piece, I've just acquired a 464 Plus to join the rest of my CPC collection. Although I bought a 6128 plus a few years ago, reacquiring a 464 Plus was important as I had one back in the day (it replaced my original 464) and it was quite special to me (it was the machine I first went online with, I did all my exam coursework for school on it, I learned how to do desktop publishing with it, among many other things).

Anyway - back in the 80s, I had about a three foot long daisy chain of peripherals hanging off the back of my original 464 Plus - including a Multiface, Rombo, RS232 interface and a DDI-1 interface for my 3inch and 3.5inch disk drives. Much later on, someone I met through WACCI did the modification to fit the drive interface internally and added the external centronics port for my drives to connect to.

I'm looking at my options now for adding disk drive access to my new 464 Plus, mainly so I can add a Gotek (but also a 3inch drive if needed - I have FD-1 units here as well). More RAM will be needed, but I have a Mother X4 expansion board for it already, with a 512K RAM board ready to go on it, so if I don't fit more ram internally, that will do in the meantime.

I have a DDI-1 interface, but can't remember what modifications need doing to it (other than removing the ROM) to get it to work on a Plus. Anyone know or can point me to the right info please?

If I go for the internal option (as detailed on the wiki), how easy is it to get all the bits these days? Would like to avoid cannibalising the DDI-1 for parts if I can avoid it?

Also, I reached out to Zaxon as he was doing a Plus version of his DDI-5 combined disk interface, Gotek and RAM expansion, so I was hoping to just buy that for an easy solution to everything. However, for reasons I don't know he won't reply to my messages (even though he is reading them). So I'm guessing that's a non-starter.

Thanks
Chris

[zhulien]

I have personally dealt with Zaxon many times (bought over a dozen things from him).  He is on occasions hard to contact, but it seems to be seasonal - perhaps he is on holiday or something... and when he does reply he is very good with his products and support.

I don't want to critisice too much because he does a lot of good for the CPC community and is actually reliable - but... if I had the skill set he had, I would operate a bit more asertive and I'd probably try a kickstarter for a new CPC...

It definitely doesn't give others much coinfidence when he doesn't reply.

[kawickboy]

CPC 464 & 6128 were quite different, 6128 doesn't have the same limitations as the 464. But 464+ & 6128+ are quite the same computer, with different drive and ram. So, DDI-5 for 464+ should be a totally new hardware, for a quite rare computer.

[Mark_wllms]

I'd be very tempted to look at the USIFAC II interface card, which adds disk emulation and is much better than a Gotek.
I know that it works on the 464, because it emulates the AMSDOS ROM, but I'm not sure that it works on the CPC+ machines.