Yes, but only 360K / double density. (assuming it is the Amiga model A1020 drive).

http://www.zimmers.net/cbmpics/damigas2.html

Hi all,

I have a external 5.25" diskdrive which I can connect on the diskdrive port on the back of my A1200.

When I boot my A1200 this drives pops up as a DF1: ?

On the back of the drive there are a couple of switches which allows me to select the drive number and switch between 40 or 80 tracks.

When I try to format a 5.25" floppy I get an error: #21

Is it possible to read PC DOS floppies with this drive?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I have an unbranded 5.25" drive on my A1200 and I wrote this mount file

For PC1 with info set at C:Mount Activate=1 Unit=1 [ thats the info file ]
PC1 in DOSDrivers Devs
FileSystem = L:CrossDOSFileSystem
Device=mfm.device
Unit=2
Flags=1
Surfaces=2
BlocksPerTrack=9
Reserved=1
Interleave=0
LowCyl=0
HighCyl=39
Buffers=20
BuffMemType=1
StackSize=600
Priority=5
Glovec=-1
DosType=0x4D534400
Mount=1

I have it switched on and with 80 track

I tend to use Double Sided Double Density. I can read all my PC DOS disks no problem. I also have the 1060 hooked up to the A1000 so I read PC disks on that machine also. My Checkmate also has 5.25 floppy drive and thats running 2.04. On the 1200 in the main room I only have a 5.25" drive as an external and it runs IFF anim as a kinda screen saver most of the time. I actually prefer the 5.25" drive as I use as a general drive. Floppies last a lot longer than people would have you believe. I have about six drives connected to everything from VICs, C64s and C128s here and they all work without fault. I use a disk head cleaner when I've used an old degraded disk and clogged the head. Another trick is to simply turn the unit upsidedown and back the right way. Works a charm on one drive I have.

I move the 5.25" drive around from machine to machine and use it quite regularly. The trick as I keep saying here is to get your kit working and keep running it. It only degrades through lack of use. Seriously. I have a 1571 hooked up to a C64C mucking around with Simons Basic and it playing up something dreadful when I first used it but after continuous daily use works without fault. Reads and runs all my GEOS stuff no issue. I have a pair of 1570s on another C64 and they also run daily without fault.

So if you do get the drive working keep it oiled by using regularly and it'll keep working.

I recently fitted a 5.25 drive to an IBM PC/1 and runs without fault. Allows me to create DOS disks and the like for the 1060 Sidecar. Amazing that all the manuals were still online and I was able to configure the many jumpers to get the unit working. Great tool. The 5.25" lives on .

Personally, I kinda like the clunk of a 3.5" drive, and the similar sound of a ZIP drive.
Plus both have media that will fit in your shirt pocket (as long as you're not using a pocket protector).
It's the ultimate in geek.

USB and SD cards? Great for massive storage, but zero tactile appeal.

Like the comeback of vinyl, I wish someone would come up with a new removable recording medium that looked and felt like a 5.25" floppy, but would fit modern data requirements and be able to store several hundreds of GB.

There were multiple approaches to design such media, for example ZIP (100MB back then), which died due to reliability issues, JAZ, which died for the same reason, and DVD-RAM, which had rather slow access time and little market penetration.

I experiented with ZIP and DVD-RAM, and while the former still works (first generation high-quality drive) but is too small to be of any practical use today, I had never success with the latter due to many issues with the file system implementation under linux. Frankly, it was only half as useful as it could have been, and I found USB-sticks much faster, more convenient and a lot more reliable than any removable medium that requires some sort of mechanical interaction with the player device (such as rotating the disk).

I have a external 5.25" diskdrive which I can connect on the diskdrive port on the back of my A1200.

When I boot my A1200 this drives pops up as a DF1: ?

On the back of the drive there are a couple of switches which allows me to select the drive number and switch between 40 or 80 tracks.

When I try to format a 5.25" floppy I get an error: #21

Is it possible to read PC DOS floppies with this drive?

Sounds like you have a third-party 5.25" drive, not a Commodore A1020. In a way that's good, because with the switch set to 80 tracks it should work just like a normal 3.5" drive; it should be recognised by the system and you can format (DSDD) 5.25" disks to 880KB just like a 3.5" disk.

For initial testing, see whether you can reliably format double-density 5.25" disks and e.g. DiskCopy a 3.5" Amiga disk to them.

For reading PC floppy disks (160KB/180KB/320KB/360KB, double-density 40 tracks) you can use CrossDOS. You might need to set the appropriate Flags value in your mount file to tell CrossDOS to double-step the heads. That's because in 80-track mode it has to step heads twice to move to the next track of a 40-track disk.

I don't recommend using your drive with the switch set to 40-track mode. Also, the drive won't work with high density disks, so make sure you're not using those.

Maybe it's just me, but there's something so computery about the 5.25" floppy. Something about this thin sheath of plastic, with its label in the top left resembling a stamp on an envelope, as if I am somehow posting a letter to the computer when I slide it into the drive slot.

Lol, I suppose an 8" floppy (or cassette) would be like mailing a parcel?  

Turns out that v2.12 was a special version written for the OEM version for the TI Professional in 1983/1984 or Texas Instruments Portable Professional Computer (PPC)

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=472

If possible, I would appreciate an image of that disk.