My belowed Amiga 1200 has been sent for recapping (which I recomend you as obligatory with your old Amiga, as condensators tends with time to brake and spill onto tracks on motherboard and destroy the pcb – there is no rule – it’s more towards the computers stored for years and not used, but generally – if you have old Amiga, recap it as soon as you can) – I have decided after recapping my Amiga 600 that I donot want to spend a few hours with magnifying glass and soldering equipment to recap next Amiga.
In Poland generally there is only one service with great reputation – retrolab.pl – so I’ve sent them my computer.
After week and a half I got my Amiga back, with small surprice inside – skeleton frame for Gotek floppy emulator. I use Gotek HxC for Amiga (even having collection of boxed games and programs) because… it’s faster. Gotek is very flexible in HxC firmware – I have used it for emulating floppy drive for Amstrad CPC6128 clone – JustCPC128 by Piotr Bugaj as well as floppy drive for old PC and ZX Spectrum 128k +3. Gotek is easy to install inside typical 3,5″ hole, but in Amiga floppy drive is deeper inside, there is only slot for disc and eject button. No front panel. It means whole Gotek front panel is not well visible inside. I used to hook and connect inside Amiga long (around 0,5 meter) floppy cable and power cable that were coming outside the Amiga case thru floppy hole. Aestheric -5 but it works.
However for not so much more more that I have paid for these two cables (so around 10 GBP) you can get the skeleton frame for Gotek and replace your floppy drive with Gotek pcb.
Oryginally the Gotek pcb is inside the case that is exactly the same size as floppy drive, unfortunately it’s not the best placement of both display and buttons with USB slot for easy access to them when you use it with Amiga, but any other changes means redesigning the pcb and LCD/buttons/USB placement.
Mounting the Gotek on the skeleton and the whole mount inside Amiga is very simple, it’s taken me 3 minutes max
So for now – retrolab.pl Gotek’s skeleton mount is great to keep your Amiga almost stock, without modding it non reversable way and I definately recommend you to go for it.
You can order Gotek skeleton mount for your Amiga on retrolab.pl’s profiles on Ebay or Allegro or thru their page:
Retrolab.pl Gotek skelefon mount for Amiga 1200 and Amiga 600
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price - 10/1010/10
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easy of use / need special skills at start - 10/1010/10
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ergonomic - 8/108/10
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aesthetic - 8/108/10
Summary
It’s bargain cost actually and you can put Gotek inside your Amiga without cutting / drilling.
It allows you to mount Gotek inside Amiga, it’s not new design of floppy emulator, just skeleton mount for Gotek.
I’m just thinking if printing this from material similiar to colour of Amiga case or anything but lit not kind of bubble transparent material will improve aesthetic of this mod.