Hello everyone,
My name is Dionisis and i just joined the forum, i already found a ton of useful info in here!.
I am 37 yr old from Greece and i am the proud owner of a CPC6128 since 1987. Sadly my CPC went to storage from 1996 (the year i got my first PC, a Pentium MMX@166Mhz) till yesterday when i decided to pull my CPC from the moth balls.
I unboxed my computer, i cleaned it thoroughly to regain its former glory, i set it on a table and connected everything and crossed my fingers that it would still be operational, i press the switches and it turned on after 22 years of the last time it was used. It really felt amazing seeing the blue/yellow color scheme that started everything for me, i then think to myself excellent! time to load a game and inserted my genuine Turrican 2 disk into the drive only to discover that the drive is completely dead :( . That really felt like a punch in the stomach.
After the original shock i took it apart to see what was going on with the drive and it is unsalvageable, the belt has disintegrated, the motor is seized and the corrosion on the pcb of the drive is like soaking it on salt water. The main pcb of the computer looks perfect though except some dust that i cleaned with a soft brush and some compressed air can. Finding a new working 3" drive seems out of the question because i can't locate a replacement (so far) so i decided to use a 3.5" that i had laying around, i tested the drive on an old PC i have and it works. I already found how to connect it but i'm not sure if it is compatible and i don't want to risk any damage to my CPC. The drive is a citizen Z1D.
The question is, should i risk connecting it? or is it better to buy one that is guarantied to work from ebay?
If my question should go to another category please let me know.
I am also considering getting an M4 board to bring my CPC to the 21st century but this is yet to be decided.
Thanks everyone, big respect for the people that have done so much work in here, i still have to search for a lot of things in this forum but i will find everything in time.
Quote from: dionisisg on 16:43, 19 August 18
Hello everyone,
My name is Dionisis and i just joined the forum, i already found a ton of useful info in here!.
I am 37 yr old from Greece and i am the proud owner of a CPC6128 since 1987. Sadly my CPC went to storage from 1996 (the year i got my first PC, a Pentium MMX@166Mhz) till yesterday when i decided to pull my CPC from the moth balls.
I unboxed my computer, i cleaned it thoroughly to regain its former glory, i set it on a table and connected everything and crossed my fingers that it would still be operational, i press the switches and it turned on after 22 years of the last time it was used. It really felt amazing seeing the blue/yellow color scheme that started everything for me, i then think to myself excellent! time to load a game and inserted my genuine Turrican 2 disk into the drive only to discover that the drive is completely dead :( . That really felt like a punch in the stomach.
After the original shock i took it apart to see what was going on with the drive and it is unsalvageable, the belt has disintegrated, the motor is seized and the corrosion on the pcb of the drive is like soaking it on salt water. The main pcb of the computer looks perfect though except some dust that i cleaned with a soft brush and some compressed air can. Finding a new working 3" drive seems out of the question because i can't locate a replacement (so far) so i decided to use a 3.5" that i had laying around, i tested the drive on an old PC i have and it works. I already found how to connect it but i'm not sure if it is compatible and i don't want to risk any damage to my CPC. The drive is a citizen Z1D.
The question is, should i risk connecting it? or is it better to buy one that is guarantied to work from ebay?
If my question should go to another category please let me know.
I am also considering getting an M4 board to bring my CPC to the 21st century but this is yet to be decided.
Thanks everyone, big respect for the people that have done so much work in here, i still have to search for a lot of things in this forum but i will find everything in time.
Welcome.
Rather than connecting the 3.5" drive or replacing the 3", I would go for a gotek (usb floppy emulator) on ebay (it's very cheap). Unless you need to restore some of your old discs or like the sound of read errors :)
Quote from: Duke on 19:42, 19 August 18
Welcome.
Rather than connecting the 3.5" drive or replacing the 3", I would go for a gotek (usb floppy emulator) on ebay (it's very cheap). Unless you need to restore some of your old discs or like the sound of read errors :)
Actually i don't need it, it just is the easy way to immediately write some disks using a PC (A retro one) to load something to my CPC, the sounds are a nostalgic issue but i can live without them, i will most probably go for a floppy emulator solution but being able to use a diskette in 2018 is also desirable :D
Welcome aboard
Quote from: VincentGR on 20:12, 19 August 18
Welcome aboard
Thanks fellow CPComrade, and i see you are Greek, please tell me you live in Athens near Glyfada and have a spare drive!!! i'm not saying this in Greek because we are in an English speaking forum
Sorry but I work very far from Athens and I visit my homeland once a year for a week.
I need a spare drive too for a cpc that I have with me here.
I use my m4 wifi and a tape cable for games :picard:
if i can locate a source for a genuine drive here in Athens and there are more than 1 available, i will contact you in case you still want one. I'm going to look in all possible places that might still have them(Stournarh str, Mpotash str etc). There are still some stores open that date from this era, we might be lucky.
Welcome to the forum! It's good to hear the CPC still works, even if the floppy drive is 'past its best'...
I'd suggest getting a Floppy-emulator, like the HxC (which I use) or the Gotek... it will make it easier than working with real floppy disks, as blank floppy disks are hard to get these days, and even real software floppy disks are now starting to fail
Anyway, however you manage to restore the machine, I'm glad you're still enjoying the CPC!
Quote from: keith56 on 22:37, 19 August 18
Welcome to the forum! It's good to hear the CPC still works, even if the floppy drive is 'past its best'...
I'd suggest getting a Floppy-emulator, like the HxC (which I use) or the Gotek... it will make it easier than working with real floppy disks, as blank floppy disks are hard to get these days, and even real software floppy disks are now starting to fail
Anyway, however you manage to restore the machine, I'm glad you're still enjoying the CPC!
Glad i joined already!, a lot of nice people in here but you can't really go wrong with people that love CPCs :D , the floppy emulator seems the way to go but i would still like to find an original drive, if not for using it just to check the overflowing disk storage box to see what is working and what is not, i mostly care about the genuine ones and i have quite a lot of them (47 to be exact), i will compile a list and take some pictures of the boxes to post them at some point. Some highlights are - Turrican 2, X-out, Fighter Bomber, Dragon Ninja, Super Cars and the list goes on.
Welcome to the forum! Hope you can find a replacement drive soon.
Welcome mate!
Probably kinda hard to find one unfortunately, not too many spare units in Greece that I've seen... So probably eBay is your best bet!
Speaking of which, I thought I had seen a notification in my inbox for one a few days ago so I searched my email and found this little thing (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EME-101-3-039-039-External-Compact-Floppy-Disk-Drive-for-Amstrad-CPC-/110910857220?hash=item19d2cd6004&pt=UK_VintageComputing_RL&nma=true&si=6lFvLu2xXBypzJ3tophvhPo4SIw%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557)from 2012... Only £10.50!!
Quote from: Gryzor on 13:14, 20 August 18
Welcome mate!
Probably kinda hard to find one unfortunately, not too many spare units in Greece that I've seen... So probably eBay is your best bet!
Speaking of which, I thought I had seen a notification in my inbox for one a few days ago so I searched my email and found this little thing (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EME-101-3-039-039-External-Compact-Floppy-Disk-Drive-for-Amstrad-CPC-/110910857220?hash=item19d2cd6004&pt=UK_VintageComputing_RL&nma=true&si=6lFvLu2xXBypzJ3tophvhPo4SIw%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557)from 2012... Only £10.50!!
Hello there, this guy was practically giving it away, i am confident i will locate a drive in the end, i have decided to get a floppy emulator but i really want to check my genuine disks and see if they work, one other solution is to find a latest model spectrum with the drive, buy it cheap and transplant it, some of this machines occasional appear on XE (greek classifieds newspaper & website for non greeks to understand what XE is) for pretty good prices.
Haven't checked XE lately but I'd be surprised if you could find a Speccy +3 for less! If it's so perhaps I should start paying attention :D
And yeah, I understand the need for the original... modern solutions are very handy, but nothing beats the olf whirring and clicking!
Quote from: Gryzor on 14:12, 20 August 18
Haven't checked XE lately but I'd be surprised if you could find a Speccy +3 for less! If it's so perhaps I should start paying attention :D
And yeah, I understand the need for the original... modern solutions are very handy, but nothing beats the olf whirring and clicking!
I have spent so much of my allowance as a kid on these games that i really want them to be in working condition.