3.5" Floppy on Amstrad CPC464

[retrofatty]

Hi Everyone,
I'm really sorry if this has been covered 100s of times, but all the answers I can find online are really confusing me and I need an "idiots guide".I didn't have a floppy drive with my CPC464 back in the day...A couple of years ago I purchased a DDI-4 from Zaxon and then also purchased a USB floppy emulator and cable on eBay and once setup have been able to run .dsk images without a problem.  However I would love to be able to attach a 3.5" floppy drive to the system in place of the floppy emulator (or even better as well as if possible?).Then I assume I could write a stack of games onto floppies and run them on the actual hardware?I understand you have to get a drive with a ready signal, but again each model number I type into eBay seems to have tons or different revisions and I don't want to end up getting the wrong kit.Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I have only been on this forum for a short time but everyone has been so helpful and I am really grateful.Once again apologies if the same question has been asked before.
Best Wishes.

[GeoffB17]

Yes, there are a lot of options here, but don't panic too much.

Some drives have a ready signal, that's nice, you can use one of those easily.

Others may NOT have such a signal, but the drive can be modified, practically (i.e. a bit of wire, or a dab of solder, etc, and there may be instructions on the web 'how-to') and this isn't too bad.

If neither if these are available, there is always the option of tweaking the wires so that a ready is forced - this isn't always totally OK, for example any software that detects 'no disk' may have a problem (like Disckit, and I think the game 'The Pawn' did something like this too when installing) but there's a way of getting around this.


So, basically, if you can find a drive that does work, then go for it, but there's no point in looking too hard for something that's not THAT vital.

I use a 3.5" drive on my PCW.   It is just a drive I happened to have.   No ready signal.   No practical  'fix'.   So I just wired up a cable to 'force' the ready, and added a push-button to 'break' the ready as required, and all is fine.

Geoff

[retrofatty]

Thanks Geoff.  Really appreciate your advice. 

[GeoffB17]

There's a lot of info about all this on the web, quite a bit with how-to pics etc.   Not just for the CPC and PCW machines, which are very similar, but also for Amiga computers which have pretty much the same needs in this regard.   So search re Amiga as well!

There's some into on the Dutch PCW fan site, at http://www.fvemple.nl/index.html and follow the link re fitting a 3.5" drive, and via that to the page about 'tested' which lists various drives that should work - note the comment that if it works for the CPC, then it should work for the PCW too, and obviously if this applies, then the reverse will too.

If you need the link about the cable setup (that will let just about ANY drive work) then let me know.   The web site that was from is now dead, but I think it's archived somewhere and I may have a link that does work.  This is the cable I made up, with the push button for the benefit of things like Disckit.

Geoff