Acorn A3000

[drewdavis]

Hello,

I wondered if anyone knows if it is possible to use the floppy drive emulator with the Acorn/BBC A3000 Archimedes.

The A3000 does have a 34 pin floppy drive which I believe is pin compatible with PC floppies. Indeed there is at least one PC emulator that runs on the machine which boots DOS from a PC floppy.

Any help/advice would be very much appreciated.

Regards

[Ukwebb]

A3000 isn't 8 bit
but yes it can use a gotek. In fact my a3000 has a gotek with flashfloppy and the original floppy drive in at the same time

[baz4096]

(I've moved this Topic from 8-bit Acorn Hardware to 32-bit Acorn Hardware)

[philpem]

Hello,

I wondered if anyone knows if it is possible to use the floppy drive emulator with the Acorn/BBC A3000 Archimedes.

The A3000 does have a 34 pin floppy drive which I believe is pin compatible with PC floppies. Indeed there is at least one PC emulator that runs on the machine which boots DOS from a PC floppy.

Any help/advice would be very much appreciated.

Regards

It is, but the A3000 interface isn't compatible with PC drives without some modifications to the drive and/or the floppy cable. With a Gotek the situation is much better.

You'll want to install the FlashFloppy firmware (if it doesn't come with it already) and configure it (in FF.CFG) for an Acorn RISC system, with a Shugart-type disk drive. Jumpers should be set for drive select zero (DS0).

After that you should be able to "just" load ADFs and HFEs from the USB stick.

[OllieP]

So I have managed to just about resurrect an A3000. I installed a Gotek but it doesn’t work. Each time I click on the drive icon, i get a drive empty error. I believe I have the correct FF.CFG file and jumper S0 set, the Gotek worked fine in an A3020 (before it died - the A3020). I tried the Gotek from my A440, same issue. I tried a real floppy drive and that works fine.

Is there something additional that needs to be done for an A3000?

Interface=shugart
Host=acorn

Jumper S0 set

800K ADF images


I guess I haven’t checked the version of flash floppy installed but since the drives work on other machines I assume this is ok.

[philpem]

The A3000 requires a Ready signal - the Gotek may need configuring for that. Alas I can't remember the magic incantation off hand, but it should be mentioned in the notes in the FF.CFG, or the Flashfloppy documentation.

[OllieP]

Thanks, I’ll check