Gee-k.net

It's been a long time since I posted anything on here. I've let the ball drop as it were!
A few things have been going on since I last posted. I started making a how to video on making an external 3.5" floppy drive for the Amstrad cpc 6128. After recording a bit of footage and editing it down a bit, I managed to delete my /home partition on my pc when I was updating my OS that I was using for making said video. So, I've lost all my footage. I'm not sure yet if I will re-record it all and try again. In the meantime I decided that I would try making a more complicated (yet simple enough) program to get to grips with using Locomotive BASIC.
I can't remember why I chose to make this particular program, but I somehow did...
... Read More!

So if you've followed the previous blog posts about making a PC 3.5" floppy drive work with your Amstrad CPC 6128, then you should have a working drive and be able to make physical copies of the disc images you have.
To make things better I decided to make my own ribbon cable, connect some switches so I can choose side A or B on the disk AND also a switch to make the external drive take over as drive A. Sadly doing this method doesn't change the internal drive to drive B. It is possible, but I don't fancy doing it as it involves cutting traces on the board. Not something I want to do to my 30+ year old machine. It's made it this far, no point in killing it now.
To make the ribbon cable, I bought half a metre of 34 way ribbon c... Read More!

So you've got the floppy drive all powered and plugged in, but got no Amstrad CPC software on 3.5" discs yet?
The first thing I done was to cover the high density hole on the floppy's I had then format them to data discs (using CP/M to format on drive B) then I downloaded discology and copied my 3" disc of CP/M to a 3.5" disc.
That done three things for me; Confirmed that the software I was using on my pc worked, the 3.5" floppy drive worked as it should and that I now have a backup of my rather old CP/M disc.

So how do you go about this I hear you ask. Well, If you read the fir... Read More!

Part three of making a standard 3.5" floppy drive work with your Amstrad cpc 6128 is rather easy in one way, but not so easy in another.
The easiest way to get your floppy drive connected to the Amstrad CPC is to use a ribbon cable from an old PC. Old enough that it had a 5.25" floppy drive in it.
The reason for using such an old cable is that it just so happens to use the same connections you need for connecting your floppy directly to the Amstrad CPC with no modifications. One end being a normal floppy IDE connector and the other being an edge connector.
Sounds easy doesn't it? Well it is... once you have a cable. If you're lucky enough to have a stock of the cables, then fantastic! Otherwise you'll be searching the i... Read More!

After getting the ready signal sorted on the floppy drive, the next thing that was needed was to get the drive powered.
I done some research on what kind of amperage a floppy drive needs to run correctly and came up with the recurring answer of around 700ma from a 5v DC power supply. The great thing about this is that it means that I was able to use a USB cable to power the drive. Seeing as I have numerous USB cables in the house, I cut the end off of one and then set about finding a way to connect it to the drive itself.

The floppy drives use a Berg Connector to connect them from an ATX power supply. I have an old ATX power supply in my loft, waiting to be use... Read More!