Power XL Floppy

[StuKeith]

Has anyone got one of these, or know what it looks like?

I was about to stick this one on ebay, then I noticed the power computing logo on the drive!

It got me thinking if this was a power XL drive.

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r232/stuartkeith/discdrive2.jpg
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r232/stuartkeith/discdrive3.jpg
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r232/stuartkeith/discdrive.jpg

[Harrison]

I've got a PC XL drive, but it doesn't look like the one you have there. My XL drive has a completely metal case and and is plain without the Power Computing Logo on the case.

I do also have a standard external Amiga Power Computing drive with the X Copy compatible hardware built in and it looks identical to that one you have.

But I just saw on amiga.org that you tested it and it did read HD floppies, so it might be an earlier one. If you need the drivers disk for the drive let me know and I will do you an ADF of the disk.

[AlexJ]

I've got a XL drive like the one in the photo. I'm sure i've still got the advert for it somewhere.

[Harrison]

How much did you pay for your one originally? I'm sure mine cost over £100 back in the day. I have the original box in the loft so may even still have the receipt with it.

BTW, Stu, that drive looks like it's been to the gulf war or something. What happened to it?

[StuKeith]

How much did you pay for your one originally? I'm sure mine cost over £100 back in the day. I have the original box in the loft so may even still have the receipt with it.

BTW, Stu, that drive looks like it's been to the gulf war or something. What happened to it?

Not sure, got it in a job lot of amiga stuff! Ive had it for over a year now and didnt even know it was one, was about to stick it on ebay and then noticed the logo!

Taken the case off to paint it, and the controller board says HDAmiga on the chip!

[AlexJ]

How much did you pay for your one originally? I'm sure mine cost over £100 back in the day. I have the original box in the loft so may even still have the receipt with it.

Not sure. It was a gift, and I didn't really have all that much of an idea about the concept of money at the time. I just saw it as the solution to me and my dad's problem of having to swap disks millions of times in order to start a race on Geoff Crammond's F1GP.

If I can find the advert, that might give a clue.

EDIT:And here we go:
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/1787/xlvo7.jpg

Going slightly off-topic, how far away is the hardware section on the main site? It would be really useful to be able to start to catalogue these things for future reference.

[Harrison]

Well there we go. I thought it was around the £100 mark. Mad now to think I once paid that much for a floppy disk drive! :o

As for the Hardware section, I am still working on it, but hopefully it will be up and running in the next couple of months. I have some work to do on the main site code first and then some more on the hardware section templates, but that should only take a couple of days work at most. I will post more details closer to the time.

[Harrison]

Here are a couple of shots of my Power Computing XL drive, so you can all see the difference.


http://www.amiga.me.uk/off_site_images/My_Amigas/PC_1.7XL_1.jpg

http://www.amiga.me.uk/off_site_images/My_Amigas/PC_1.7XL_2.jpg


As you can see the drive looks very different to the one Stu has (and the one in the advert).

My drive pictured here was produced after the original plastic one and has a completely plain metal case, and you can also see that it also doesn't have the two switches on the back..

The original plastic one looks identical to my Power Computing 880B Floppy Drive, including the two switches on the back that are for selecting the built in X-Copy Cyclone compatible disk copying hardware. This was one reason I didn't think it was an XL drive as I don't think they have this copying hardware in them, just the 880B 880K models did.

[hacky]

Hello

I got a mysterious floppy drive from Ebay.

It was called "Blitzcopy floppy HD floppy" in the Ebay offer..


So I got the hardware and the drive is working as normal (DD) but I´m not able to use the hidden special features of this drive because I do not have the software "Blitzcopy".

Does anybody here knows something about this mystious Soft and Hardware ?

I´m really interested to try out the missing Blitzcopy software.

If someone could help me I would be very grateful.

Here are some picutures of the hardware.
The drive has an ON/OFF/Auto switch.

I got two driver disks from an other person for the Power Computing XL drive.
I tried the driver 1.32 and 1.3 but I was unable to read or write any HD disk.

So what do I have here ? Is it just a DD drive ?
Is the Auto switch really for Cyclone/X-copy ?
I thought there must be a software called Blitzcopy but I could not find it.

http://david.linuxprofessionals.org/diverses/Amiga/Amiga-Bilder/floppy1.jpg

http://david.linuxprofessionals.org/diverses/Amiga/Amiga-Bilder/floppy2.jpg

http://david.linuxprofessionals.org/diverses/Amiga/Amiga-Bilder/floppy3.jpg

.

[Buleste]

Just noticed on the underside of the PCB it says Powerdrive which to me sounds as though it's just an extra floppy and cannot read/write HD floppies. Can't find any info on it so i may be wrong.

[Harrison]

It definitely looks like a Power Computing External floppy drive. The actual model of drive might be harder to work out though. To use the HD functionality of one of the Power XL drives I think you need to have the drivers installed and booting as part of the Workbench startup sequence. Anyone, please correct me if I'm wrong.

You said the drive came with the XL floppy disks. If needed the instructions and drivers should be on there. I think, but could also be wrong, that this will only work on a Workbench 3 or newer machine, such as an A1200.

[Buleste]

I've noticed that you've had a reply to your post on EAB and someone has said that as your Amigas are 060's the normal XL drivers do not work and has posted a link with the correct drivers.

If anyone else has a XL drive can thay check what it says on the PCB as if it says Powerdrive then Hacky's may be a XL but if it says XL then Hacky has just a spare external DD.

[hacky]

Thank you.

I got the disks from the EAB Zone.
I also found the 060 patch but did not try the 060 patch because I only testet with a normal A1200 @68020. WB3.1/Kick3.1

I tried the driver disks but could not get HD modes running.

I just did some tests with Cyclone.

Cyclone recognizes the drive as kind of dongle because it gives no error messages out when I try to copy a disk to df1:

So the first cyclone copy test does not work and the speed test failed too (freeze).

I think it is a kind of dongle and a dd drive.

The seller wrote something about Blitzcopy , what is this mysterious blitzcopy ?

Maybe I need an other driver for HD support ?

[Buleste]

Sounds like it's just a normal external disk drive then. It doesn't even look like a dongle. What it looks like is a PC Disk drive adapted so that it can be used as an external drive but with no HD support.

[Harrison]

Yeah, all external Amiga disk drives have an extra circuit in them like that anyway to make the drives work with the Amiga's file structure. I expect the drive is just a standard Power Computing 880B normal double density disk drive.