Amiga 4000 High Density Floppy Drive Face Plate and Button

thingiverse

I recently acquired an Amiga 4000 desktop last year, but unfortunately, it came with a few major problems, including severe corrosion and broken circuit traces. In fact, I've already replaced 19 capacitors, 5 SIMM slots, one Ricoh real-time clock chip, one battery, one F245 logic chip, and I just discovered a cracked solder joint on the Super Buster Rev 11 chip - this is as of March 2018, and my list may grow longer in the future. The missing floppy face plate and button on the high-density floppy drive were the least of my concerns when I bought this A4000. I mistakenly thought I could swap the face plate from a dead FG-357 floppy drive into the Amiga version, which is PC-compatible and easier to find. I found a nice-looking one with dead electronics and purchased it cheaply. However, when it arrived, I immediately realized that the Amiga high-density drive (F-357 A) is about 50 percent taller than the FG-357. The Amiga version commands ridiculously high prices, so I couldn't just buy a junk drive for the face plate alone. That's how this project began. This design isn't an exact match to the original, since I don't have the original face plate to work from. I know the original had a rectangular light pipe for the indicator LED, but I opted for a simple hole instead. The hole fits perfectly with the LED, so it looks completely natural. The front proportions are roughly based on my FG-357 face plate. Note that this design doesn't include a spring-loaded front door - I didn't bother with this detail since making strong and reliable tiny pins with FDM is just not viable. Both the face plate and button are designed to be press fits. I did have to use an exacto knife to trim the tab on the floppy button, which fits into the eject bar on the floppy. I know from doing several prototypes that if the button tab is a bit loose, a drop of super glue will hold it in without damaging the drive. I recommend assembling it in this order: 1. Attach the button first - see the picture above to see how a properly-seated button looks. 2. Hang a sacrificial floppy disk halfway out of the drive to help align the face plate. 3. Slowly push the face plate into place, being careful to align the notch at the top of the drive with the notch on the top of the face plate. The long tabs on the sides of the face plate slide down to the screw mounts on either side of the drive. You may need to use a screwdriver to gently bend the tabs until they slide over the screw mounts. Once that's done, you should be able to push the face plate completely onto the drive. 4. Screw the floppy drive back onto the Amiga drive bay, being careful to make sure that the drive screws engage the holes in the plastic tabs. You should now have a totally rejuvenated floppy drive! I used Hatchbox White PLA for this print. Print it at .1 resolution with supports (no raft), as there is a tiny part of the front plate which needs support. Also, print it at 100% infill - if your print height is aligned perfectly, it's barely obvious that it's a printed part unless you look closely. The white color stands out like a sore thumb on my 4000, since I've never bothered to Retrobright it. I'm fine with that, as it has an original Commodore Express service label on it, which I'd rather keep for the novelty factor.