A500 Mini – Floppy or hard?

Prototype PCB’s will be here late next week 🙂

So, whilst waiting, I’ve been playing around a little with the CAD and the ‘extras’ for the keyboard kits – the Real Mini 42″ scale floppy disc.

The cocnept is – to have a ‘working’ floppy disc that you can play games off.

The concept, once again!

The Sliced and supported Floppies!!

Real mini floppy

Real mni floppy rear

Still some work to do optimising, but i’m rather happy with this second attempt at printing. The metal part has been cut out on my KNK ZING vinyl cutter and has been extracted from a projected sketch.

That works for the Amiga side – But, people will need a way of getting the games onto the floppies , so – Early days yet, An External mini floppy disc drive for a PC!

Cutaway view

A 1011 Clone!

This was surprisingly quick to knock up . I found an image of an eBay sale, imported as a canvas, ‘traced the canvas’ and set the scale around the floppy disc slot. I’ve never owned one of these so had to work from many pictures. Still a lot more to do, but fundementally, i’m keeping the exact same PCB’s and mechanism / holder that i’m creating for the A500 Mini. Just putting it in a shell and using a different USB cable….

I will be releasing the design files publicly for this thing so anyone can print up / adjust and make their own ones as international postage gets expensive for things larger than 25mm high here in the UK…I’ll also offer up these for sale with keyboard kits

And, if you’re wondering, just how many picures…and files needed to create a floppy drive and disc…….Here’s a quick snapshot of my A500Mini folder – just for the floppy! and these are the ones i’ve kept for now….

A500 Mini II Part 7 – other ‘stuff’

Along the way, I’ve been tweaking some other bits – The Real miniature fake USB Floppy disc is progressing nicely

IT FITS!!

I’m on the second design of the 3D Printed insert, this will hold the USB PCB and also be the interface and guide rails for the floppy.

I’ve also received my memory solution for the discs, it fits superbly! – it can be seen in the badly printed / broken green area. The dimensions are exactly the same as the 3D print i’ve put in

I’ve also purchased some silver brushed effect sticky foil so I can re-create that beloved silver cover….and even have created the label ready to cut out on my dusty KNK ZING vinyl cutter thingy. Hopefully I can make the adhesive sticky enough!

A Floppy fits in the drive!

Tiny

The silver ‘label’

I’ve also started stocking up on Printer resin, ordered a load of sample parts from Aliexpress, test fitted PCB’s…..started on box design, started tweaking firmware, there’s dozens of tasks to do!