Commodore Amiga Floppy breakthrough for all Emulation fans

The Commodore Amiga has always had a compatibility problem with floppy disks on other platforms, we just can't read them easily. Emulation fans are used to the ADF format and we can rip disks within the Amiga OS ourselves on real hardware or by using additional hardware on a modern PC. But ripping disks isn't the same as just popping them in the drive and running them. Thanks to the hard work of Rob Smith that gap has now been bridged.
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[@blindazabat9527]

I had a tear in my eye when hearing the "tick tick" of the hungry disk drive!

[@BronsonTheCat]

Rob Smith bringing The Cure to the Amiga floppy woes!

[@ASCIITerminal]

I love solutions to things that "cannot be done"!

[@barnabydinosaurroadsafetyp3457]

amiga fans still around ..... good to see bizarre but good...

[@TVperson1]

"cannot be done" ie "I can't be f**ked figuring that out"

[@Tech-geeky]

but... but it can :D

[@jitmancanth6698]

25-ish years ago, my Amiga 1200 setup was complete, once I installed a hard drive, and found a utility to read MS-DOS formatted discs on my Amiga. I'd spend my lunch hours at college on the Internet, downloading .lha files to 720k discs to take home to my Amiga. Never thought that the reverse would be an option, or even needed.

[@3dmotormaker]

This sole invention has rekindled my interest in the Amiga...

[@U4iaF8]

Nice to see my tune getting an airing in its native format. Long live ProTracker. =8*)

[@RMCRetro]

Oooh you made the mod?

[@U4iaF8]

@@RMCRetro a long long time ago, but yes. That's me =8*)

[@RMCRetro]

Awesome! Great tune thank you

[@U4iaF8]

@@RMCRetro More than welcome. You've used it to show off a great bit of tech. Now I'm sat here thinking i could get my stack of disks out of the garage that have been lugged from house to house for the last 30 years! =8*)

[@alexscarbro796]

Oh man! Hearing U4IA Cryptoburners again after so many years was a wonderful blast from the past!

[@Gekneveld]

What a song!

[@cowbutt6]

I worked with him for a couple of years as my first job after uni. I've sent him a link to this video.

[@U4iaF8]

Nice to hear that you enjoyed my music. Thank you all. Always makes my day.

[@stuartaxon2898]

One thing I love about RMC; the delivery is the same as presenters on Tomorrows World back in the day.

[@RMCRetro]

Haha that's really quite the compliment thank you

[@TheGuruMeditation]

WOAH! This is freaking awesome. There are a bunch of folks in WAUG who have been asking me for this for years. I will show you video at tonight's meeting. Great job RMC!

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

Fancy meeting you here, AmigaBill!

[@eloquent_ape]

Thanks for yet another great episode, Neil. For once one that will actually SAVE me money rather than the opposite. A bit of information on that Colgate game (and a fun piece of bonus trivia at the end): It's actually not German, but Danish. It was developed by Silverrock Productions (of Hugo fame). It's also not called "Colgate", but "Harald Hårdtand: Kampen om de Rene Tænder" (roughly translated "Harold Hardtooth: The Fight for Clean Teeth"). The confusion over the name likely stems from the fact that the Colgate logo takes up 50% of the menu screen and the actual title of the game is relegated to a small text string underneath. I was employed at a later iteration of Silverrock Productions, later named ITE and finally NDS Denmark, having gone through a few buyouts and takeovers. Harald Hårdtand was one of a couple of brand deal games developed there - another one being "Guldkorn Expressen" based on a popular Danish cereal product called Guldkorn (pretty much the same as Quaker's Sugar Puffs - and in fact, Quaker later took over production before selling it off again). A fun piece of inside trivia on the Harald Hårdtand game: The released MS-DOS port of the game could not be completed. The porting duties were handed off to a third party who apparently never finished developing the last levels of the game, but instead just increased the difficulty exponentially to make sure no-one would be any the wiser. I don't remember if a fixed version was ever released to remedy that, but I do know that it took a while before we found out. QA back then was not what it is today. :) [Darn. I edited the message for grammar and lost the heart icon from Neil. Oh, well. Easy come, easy go. :) ]

[@10p6]

Awesome. As Neil says distilled water on discs. Do not use any type of alcohol to clean the disks as it will eventually dissolve them.

[@pnvgordinho]

The guys that made the new c64 announce that this year they are going to do an Amiga. This drive would be cool to be used in such project.

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

Whoa, I need to look into that!

[@Yesterzine]

The new C64 is basically just a Raspberry Pi with notions so I'm not sure what that'd give you over a Pi400 done right though.

[@tahirahmed33]

Cool

[@pnvgordinho]

@@Yesterzine If they make an Amiga, full size, with a working keyboard and a floppy drive like this, I would rather have this Amiga than a PI400. Im sure it would cost a lot more but I would prefer that Amiga. They are probably not going to put a disk drive but if they put something like this, it would be a cool thing to have.

[@scouse1967]

@@Yesterzine There is no Raspberry Pi board inside the new "The C64" computer but infact it has a main PCB board with the main IC chip and some components onboard and a small PCB board for the side USB ports and power button.Yes the machine is based around Commodore 64 Emulation and it does this so brilliant. No messing around with settings/options and it's an extremely well made product.

[@stewartbladensb]

My god, I remember Pro Tracker! You could rip the audio straight from the game “Flash Back” and play it in Pro Tracker. I remember my mind being blown at the time that I could see how they made the music on a, for the time, triple A game.

[@jonc-1989]

Long Live the Amiga! It will hopefully never truly die

[@delphicdescant]

The aesthetic of the Amiga UI has always been a bit enchanting to me. I'm not old enough to have ever used one when they were contemporary, but I like a lot about the interface design.

[@richpickings2845]

If you ask me a knighthood is in order.....what a marvelous piece of work by Rob Smith !!

[@8BitRetroJournal]

I didn't realize there was a difficulty of actual reading Amiga floppies on a PC (I'm new to the scene). The drive mod to convert a PC to work on an Amiga only requires looking at pin 2 (density select) and pin 34 (disk change/ready) so you'd think the PC controller would have complete ability to do whatever is necessary to read that disk. Interesting that it couldn't and you need additional hardware (interface) to get it to work. I'm guessing Rob's USB floppy is just a standard USB drive he took apart and interfaced his board with. I'll have to check out his Discord server...pretty cool project.

[@artstatedigital]

If this does, as you say, make its way to the Raspberry Pi 𝑨𝑴𝑰𝑮𝑨 emulators, my world will be complete.

[@elbiggus]

Pro tip: in UAE, slide the floppy speed to the left instead of right and there's a "Turbo" option which is essentially an "as fast as it can go" speed.

[@wohlhabendermanager]

Just a very small heads up: I've actually had ADFs that wouldn't load properly on the Turbo setting (I admit, it was like 2 or 3 out of hundreds of floppies loaded). So, if you run into a loading problem, try setting the speed back to 100% and see if that works. In the long run, the Turbo option will save you a lot of time, though.

[@JarppaGuru]

we are 1970 kids we allready know how wait floppy load xD

[@RetroJack]

This is truly amazing - well done, Rob!

[@IanSlothieRolfe]

Being able to directly read a legacy disk is a great step forward. I have lots of disks from a number of platforms that might have interesting things on (well, interesting to me!) but will take time & effort to image, mount in an emulator and poke about on, so the job drifts towards the bottom of the to-do iist. Not to mention that being able to use real hardware on an emulator adds to the experience enormously.

[@BrennanYoung]

yep, lots of weird floppy formats that are difficult to work with (sewing machines, synthesisers etc.)

[@bobabrowncoat]

I love hearing about new ways to use old tech.

[@ClassicRetroByte]

The Amiga will never die. So is the love for them.

[@wishusknight3009]

It seems more so than other platforms eh.

[@ABrit-bt6ce]

At the cold death at the end of time will somebody have their Amiga be the last light to go out.

[@theophilusthistler5885]

Although I love the Amiga I wish a recent enough foindry run of 40nM or less would produce an officially licenced and blessed A500, A1200, A4000 on single SOC w/ modern I/O + single to breakout legacy BUS, size of a deck of smokes. Something portable om battery that can still support now and future upgrades.

[@wishusknight3009]

@@theophilusthistler5885 That does exist, Its the DE10 Nano aka The MisTer project.

[@Offensive_Username]

If only the Amiga scene wasn't full of conservative boomers.

[@ghostmouthzach56]

Two videos in one week! Wow, thanks Neil! :D

[@A3rgan]

I remember following Rob's documentation to build a prototype for using a real disk drive late last year - amazing to see how it's come along and how slick the final solution is!

[@rmrepairs]

Fantastic effort, appreciate your hard work sir.

[@amigacoverdisk]

Really awesome bit of kit. Great work by Rob!

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Great stuff! I can think of a lot of potential projects with that drive as a main component!

[@WalrusFPGA]

Excelsior! Cheers to the engineers who transform "can't be done" into a fully-functional & delivered product. Y'all make my retro-nerd world go 'round! (and you too Neil, RMC is always a highlight in my YT feed

[@briero]

The bit the end about checking disks before you buy them sounds like the basis for a hand held / portable Amiga project for you 😃

[@joerinaldi5]

Thanks to Rob and you for letting us know of the latest Amiga projects especially the external floppy for pc. I love your suggestion to one day having it work on a RPi...all the best and thanks again.

[@doktor6495]

That's absolutely great! I mean, no question, my favorite is playing on the original hardware. But to have the opportunity to quickly get disk images of your old disks or write adf's to a real disk are fantastic! Greetings, Doc64!

[@ItsCrapContent]

This has blown my mind ....I need one ....great vid and thanks 👍

[@desiv1170]

I'm reminded of the DOS program disk2fdi. Everyone said over and over you can't read an Amiga disk on a PC... It was just accepted as fact. Then disk2FDI comes out, and if you have a PC with two onboard floppy drives, you can make an image of the amiga disk on your PC. I am always impressed with those type of "It's impossible..." "Hold my Jolt cola..." moments. ;-)

[@stevien196]

I had a Commodore Amiga. It was in retrospect, epic. Well done, the presenter for bringing it back to to life. Thanks. Brilliant.

[@troelshansen6650]

The Colgate-palmolive game is actually danish. Made by Silverrock which also made the Hugo games. Its horribly expensive as original

[@Thunderstormworld]

While watching this video a colgate advert played halfway, they're watching us

[@troelshansen6650]

@@Thunderstormworld They are.....

[@M0UAW_IO83]

Well this made me smile, a lot! It's always felt awkward swapping ADF files about whenever I've run up WinUAE, this just makes it more like the days when I owned an Amiga.

[@sffpv9671]

Game changer. Amiga dev scene never fails to disappoint. Cheers Neil for the insight.

[@32Bits]

This is Great! been waiting for this for a long time! This will be a great with AmigaOS3.2's ability to mount ADF's

[@Beaps73]

As I was watching I thought, ripping narrr so what. I thought, a real-time disk loader would be miles better and then.... WOW my eyes lit up. I need this in my life.

[@mauliousmick]

Great stuff! I'm so happy to see peeps still creating cool stuff for the Amigas 👍🏻👍🏻

[@arutha613]

Fabulous bit of kit! Adding this to my want list.... I have a couple of storage boxes of disks in the loft, and many have random titles that I wrote but now have no idea what they were! This will be so much more convenient than getting one of my amigas out just for archiving. Brilliant! I get the feeling I’ll need that printed disk cleaner too......

[@10MARC]

Very clever indeed! We have been wanting one of these for quite a long time.

[@gendolookin]

I just have to comment about how great that recycled wood wall looks behind you. It really looks amazing!

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks Taylor!

[@duncanstyles133]

Have spent the day playing with one of these modified drives with WinUAE. WOW! I think this is a game changer. Great work Rob Smith.

[@RichLOiD]

Wow wow WOW! This is fantastic work, Amiga will never die!

[@RichLOiD]

Rob's waiting list has now been joined. Thanks Neil for another excellent video explaining with the perfect level of detail, you got my Amiga juices all flowing!

[@oldskoolpaul77]

This is really interesting stuff! Great video!

[@raggersragnarsson6255]

Thank you, thank you and thanks again Neil for this and the genius creator of of this very special bit of kit. I have 100s of Amiga 500 discs and I haven't been able to use my Amiga for nearly 20 years as it needs a 'trash to treasure' in my own cave to get it working again. This will come in extremely handy!

[@MarcoPon]

Support for this on the MiSTer Amiga core would be very nice. It will be probably just a matter of time.

[@bruwin]

The main mister guy is very much against using original media. He wouldn't even work on getting cd rom drvers enabled for the ao486 core. He thinks it's pointless, which is a shame.

[@ridiculous_gaming]

Floppies on Amiga. It was $30 back then for 10 blank Kao disks here in Canada...boy did I own many. The disk ticking is a pleasure to hear as well. Fantastic and brilliant work.

[@edz]

So much useful info in this video. Really great job!

[@BertGrink]

I am utterly gobsmacked! This is human ingenuity at its finest. A big round of applause to Rob Smith 👏👏👏 Not just for making this project in the first place, but in particular for making it open source, so that anyone with fewer than ten thumbs* can make it themselves. I visited Rob Smith's website, fully expecting to only see ready-made drives selling for ££££, but instead I found all these amazing instructions on how to DIY it. Not only is Mr. Smith devilishly clever - or so it seems - but his community spirit is of the highest level as well. Faith in Humanity is pretty much restored again 😊 * And an Arduino 😄

[@TheJosep70]

It's amazing to still see so much enthusiasm for Amiga games. I still fire up my A1200 from time to time but most of its games haven't aged well for me.

[@jarrodhook]

Really enjoyed this video - I've just subbed so I look forward to working thru the backlog of videos and the future ones too!

[@chojintheorig]

this is really ground breaking - thanks for your video upload

[@BAZFANSHOTHITSClassicTunes]

That is an awesome drive, i definatly want one. Not much in tech impress's me very much. But this is brilliant. Thanks Neil for bringing this to our attention.

[@erinwiebe7026]

Interesting timing. I had only just written an .adf file to floppy to transfer to my Amiga (using an old IBM slim USB floppy drive) only moments before clicking this video. The reason my Amiga is running at all is thanks in large part to the very active Amiga community that Neil refers to as well. Great community!

[@Thunderstormworld]

I own 2 working Amiga's, one with a 80MB hard drive

[@markvickers8353]

Definitely subbed you sir, Do more Amiga stuff please! it's nice to see my favourite system getting love.

[@LusRetroSource]

Really enjoy seeing projects like this being made. So cool!

[@giovannitessito5672]

Scusami ho una tastiera Roland.e.96 ho montato l'emulatore floppy USB però non lo riconosce mi puoi dire come fare Grazie

[@shelby3822]

You look so smart working in your new space!

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks Shelby!

[@SolitaryBro]

9:22 That would be a screen grab of the Red Dwarf episode called "Parallel Universe" from 1988. In this screen grab the crew are performing a song called "Tongue Tied" sung by Danny John-Jules (The Cat) and, was releases in 1993 and reached number 17 in the UK charts. It was a great episode!

[@ripxkid]

Wow this is something we've been waiting for years and years....amazing!

[@LordRenegrade]

6:06 - my area too. The water's so hard you could skate on it even when it's NOT frozen.

[@DarenPage]

Thanks for the heads-up! Just joined the waiting list!

[@spankthemunkey1594]

such a " cracking " bit of kit , just what is needed . nice work

[@namakudamono]

Incredible development! Perhaps it’s time to ask my Dad to dig my old Amiga disk boxes out of the loft and send them over? I love the authentic Amiga UI shown in the Windows app too. Fantastic work to everyone involved!

[@anthonywebb6479]

Your new fangled floppy disk data technology is relatively easy to retrieve compared to my cassette tape collection that I still have from my first home computer.

[@rodhester2166]

amiga games in the dorm back in the late 80s.. so much fun

[@MrPMover]

I have been using Amiga Explorer for years to copy adf files to my 1200 via serial. it takes about 8 minutes at a time. this is a game-changer

[@MaffiLu]

Thank you for pointing me at this little piece of hardware! :D

[@moviebod]

I see the wall turned out very nice. I love the industrial look, I know nothing about Amigas except what I have learned from you and it is interesting.

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks bod!

[@tonanornottonull7132]

All hail Rob Smith!

[@wcarver2150]

That pile of floppies is pure nostalgia. Demo disks with Body Blows and Bars & Pipes coupled with pirated versions of Rick Dangerous and Cannon Fodder - plus the odd retail copy of some game :)

[@johngalvin6352]

Big shout out to Rob, genius, respect. I have disks that say samples on the cover.

[@silverian]

Awesome way to archive and backup old Amiga games!

[@hrorm]

Ahhh what I would not give to hear my old Amiga music !! Thank you for this video.

[@elmosexwhistle]

Great vid Neil. Honestly, that drive is really impressive, I’d likely use it for copying files to my hardware Amigas, as they both have internal CF drives and it’s a pain to open them up 🤣 (haven’t tried out PCMCIA on the 1200 yet but I will)

[@fordprefect80]

Looks like a great product. The only device I ever used was a program called Paradise. It used a cable from a pc to the Amiga to transfer an ADF image directly to Amiga floppy and it did the job pretty well.

[@BacktrackerShowRewindssVinylCl]

Yeah, mine too til my Amiga gave out! 😢

[@mark12358]

Great job, truly amazing result! Big hail to Rob! I'm so interested and enthusiast that I've carefully put a like thumb on just every comment and reply since now, as a little contribute!

[@RMCRetro]

Hehe thanks Mark, and yes Rob has done a great job not just in making this but documenting it so thoroughly

[@mark12358]

@@RMCRetro True, I'm just watching. Cheers, M

[@75slaine]

👏Fantastic news. Great to see this.

[@opiejaye]

Oh this looks great, I've joined the waiting list for one.

[@SteffenSkov]

OHMYGOD! The good old floppy drive clicking! 😄😍

[@RetroGameCoders]

Amiga Forever should definitely bundle this :D

[@krnlg]

The retro scene is amazing right now, not just for the Amiga but all sorts! I recently discovered that there are projects to make 1:1 recreations of logic boards for Macintosh SE, SE/30 and Classic machines. Then you have all these awesome Arduino, Pi and FPGA projects. Just so much going on, I love it :)

[@simonm8906]

Well thanks for the heads up. I literally just spent the last six weeks backing up several thousand Amiga disks recovered from my mums attic to my PC using a null modem cable.... FML

[@Insertdiskgames]

WITCHCRAFT! Honestly this is the most amazing solution I've seen so far for reading Amiga disks. I literally have hundreds of mysterious old floppies that need exploring. I can't wait to get my hands on one of these. Writing back to disks to play on the real hardware is a real "game changer".

[@jtsiomb]

Very useful device, even for people like me who are not interested in emulators. I've been using a version of this for some time for writing ADFs to disks for use with my amiga. Extremely handy.

[@waynenewark5363]

I simply love "Take a trip from me" at 4:13. I've just created a Greaseweazle using an old PC 3.5" floppy drive and a Fluxengine to use with a Teac Dual Floppy Combo (for both 3.5" and 5.25" floppies). This is a great addition especially for those with no (or limited) soldering skills.

[@waynenewark5363]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/nmmVc6mkm7CNp6M

[@U4iaF8]

Glad you liked to tune. Cheers =8*)

[@andreafluffkitten]

That is a very neat bit of gear.

[@ifweshadows1761]

Would be great if this was supported by Minimig on the MiSTer FPGA device. I've jumped on the waiting list anyway in anticipation. :D Just remembered, I once spent a weekend trying to get CrossDos to work properly so I could read PC discs on my Amiga. Seems ironic to now be trying to read Amiga discs on my PC!

[@bazza5699]

exactly what i was thinking :)

[@karl-heinznapp2874]

Brilliant! While I already converted my old disks using the Kryoflux, I nevertheless just set myself on Rob's waiting list!

[@RetroBoxRoom]

Something else to put on the Christmas list!

[@theophilusthistler5885]

If your'e naughty you'll get vapour-ware in your stocking.

[@goodie2shoes]

I recently found my old Amiga in the attic of my parents home. I'm falling in love all over again.

[@HelloKittyFanMan..]

Oh wow, that emulation takes it clear down to the level of making the new drive act like an Amiga's mechanically! Very intersting! I've always thought that tick-tock of the Amiga drive without a disk in it was really stupid and annoying, since it's the only computer standard I've known do that. And it's obviously not necessary, and I'd have to put a disk in just to make the annoyance go away!

[@paulb4uk]

Superb bit of kit

[@robertosswald5896]

This is awesome, and he also provided great instructions for building it, although it seems quite tricky due to cramped space inside the slim floppy drive. This, and amiberry are just amazing projects, and the way to get that old Amiga into the 21st century without spending 100s of £/$/€

[@randymulder9105]

This makes me cry with utter joy! My life is complete. More complete once I set this up.

[@wohlhabendermanager]

This is so cool. It's amazing how many options we have nowadays to preserve floppy disks. I mean, I have the ADF Transfer disks for Amiga 500, which is relatively cheap, but a lot of hassle with constantly switching disks (might be better on the A600/Amigas with CF card readers), Amiga Explorer and the ADF Sender Terminal. But both these options require additional cabling AND cards (most modern PCs don't have a COM port anymore) and the PC obviously needs to be close to the Amiga so you can connect the null modem cables. This however gives you total freedom of where your PC and where your Amiga is, no additional hardware (other than the Arduino) is necessary. This is really great!

[@KasperSOlesen]

Nice. I only have the SuperCard Pro right now, but have thought about getting GreaseWeasel. Now I guess I need one for sure :)

[@MrButtonpresser]

Nerd-gasm cranked up to 11, love it.