Task: Purchase an Amiga 1010 External Floppy Disk Drive
Needed: Amiga Computer (e.g. 500, 600, 1200)
Time: 15-30 Minutes Online
Introduction
I really enjoy using floppy disks. It reminds me of my experience using floppies on my Atari 800 in the early 1980s. While there are lots of devices to load games and software on the Amigas (e.g. PiStorm and Gotek), I really wanted an external floppy drive since my Amiga 500 does not have an internal drive, and my Amiga 1200 only has the on internal drive making it more difficult to copy and prepare disks.
A year ago, I picked up a nice Amiga 1010 3.5″ floppy drive at the Vintage Computer Festival SoCal near Los Angeles and got a second this year at the same VCF. The 1010 was released alongside the Amiga 1000 in 1985 and is compatible with every model. I like the look of the drive, and it is very solid. As you can see below, the two drives look nice together next to my Amiga 1200. The drive formats 720KB DS/DD floppies to 880K of storage. I have previously recommended a fairly reliable supplier of 3.5″ floppies.
The drive plugs into the floppy drive port on the back of the Amigas. Each drive has a port for daisy chaining additional drives as I did here with the second one.
Instructions
I was able to purchase my two drives at the VCF for around $50 each. One was not working but just needed the heads cleaned. These sell for around $100 to $200 on eBay which seems like a lot to me. You might hold for a local one for less if you can wait.
Simply plug the cable into the floppy drive port on the back of the Amiga and you are ready to go. The unit draws power directly from the Amiga. Note that the red light only comes on when in use. This drive will be DF1 while the internal drive will be DF0.
Comments
Very happy to have these! Note that can also plug a Gotek into one of the drives for copying ADF files to floppy which is what I did here to make some disks with games and software as shown above for Sim City and Sys Info.
My only complaint with these drives is that the cable on the back is not detachable. That would have been nice. It is also pretty short. Also, taking them apart is a bit of a pain since there are a lot of screws of different sizes in hard-to-reach places.
There is a later model of floppy drive called the 1011 that is slimer and even more expensive on eBay.
