Amiga HD additions

[toomanymikes]

Hi, im new to this forum so I need some catch up advice from regulars. I have been reading a few messages and I was wondering what advantages installing a hard drive to the Amiga has? Is this a difficult operation or can any old fool with a screwdriver (me) do it?

[AlexJ]

Amongst the main advantages are you can have a customised Workbench with no concern about the limited space of the floppy disk, and you can install some multi-disk games onto it so you don't need to swap disks during play.

[Sharingan]

You'll never want to go back to Workbench-on-floppy-disk once you've tried a HD-installed version. It's a night and day difference.

As for installing a HD, it kind of depends on which model Amiga you have. If it's an A600 or A1200, they do have an internal 44-pin ATA interface that supports a 2.5 inch drive. The problem is finding an actual drive that still works.

I've opened up my Amigas quite a few times, and it's not very complicated at all if you've also done some PC installations - same principle.

[toomanymikes]

Really? I might look into it then - are the drives really that hard to find or is there modern drives that are compatable?

[Sharingan]

Modern drives would likely blow the crap out of a standard A600/A1200's power supply - I think they're only rated at 20-something Watts

I'm pretty sure you could still find a compatible drive somewhere. Maybe Harrison can help you out - he's the resident Amiga guru around here.

[Submeg]

And if not, an SD card or equivalent idea could be used...