Raspberry Pi Emulates Amiga 1200, Uses Real Floppy Disks

Raspberry Pi Amiga 1200 — (Image credit: Rob Fisher)

There’s no better retro computing companion than the Amiga. From its rich history to the classic old-school design, modern computers just don’t feel the same as that era of home computing. Itching to get that old feeling back into his life, Rob Fisher decided to build an Amiga 1200 emulation project using none other than our favorite SBC—the Raspberry Pi. Not only does this project look like an Amiga, it sports a working floppy drive that the Pi is able to interact with thanks to a clever interface card.

To build the project, Fisher is housing a Raspberry Pi inside of a modern Amiga 1200 replica shell. While you could easily use almost any Pi for this project, he opted to use a Raspberry Pi 4 to power the machine. To make full use of the case design, the ports on the Pi have been routed to the outside of the shell for access, including the floppy drive. This makes for a seamless experience as the project consists of just one unit unless you plug in some accessories.

As we mentioned above, the main hardware used in this project is a RaspberryPi 4 set inside of an Amiga 1200 shell. In addition to the Pi, he’s using an A500 keyboard from eBay for input. A Greaseweazle floppy adapter board is used to help the Pi interface with a PC floppy drive. All of the ports, including the floppy drive, are mounted with extensions so they can be easily accessed from the outside of the case. A 3D-printed button is used to release the floppy drive.

In another video, Fisher gives us a look at what the Amiga project looks like in action. It’s running Pimiga 3, an Amiga emulation application that can be programmed to get the classic look and feel of the original operating system. If you want to read more about emulating the Amiga, check out our guide on how to emulate the Amiga on a Raspberry Pi. In the demo video, Fisher also demonstrates the floppy drive is completely functional by popping in a few Amiga magazine cover disks to see how they perform.

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Ash Hill is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware with a wealth of experience in the hobby electronics, 3D printing and PCs. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting while also finding the best coupons and deals on all tech.

5 Comments Comment from the forums

RobFisher11

I thought the thumbnail in my Google Now feed looked familiar. Thanks for the write-up, Ash!
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Hooda Thunkett

I'm impressed. Amiga floppies were notorious for being incompatible on non-Amiga drives due to being CLV and so having more sectors per track as you moved out from the center, as opposed to CAV and having a standard number of sectors for all tracks like PCs.
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TerryLaze

Hooda Thunkett said:
I'm impressed. Amiga floppies were notorious for being incompatible on non-Amiga drives due to being CLV and so having more sectors per track as you moved out from the center, as opposed to CAV and having a standard number of sectors for all tracks like PCs.
As the article notes, and links to, this uses Greaseweazle which has been around for a pretty long time, and it also only works with images which means that the Pi reads the whole floppy into ram, or disk, and works on that, you can basically save yourself the money and just use adf files.
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RetroPassionUK

Thank you linking to us :-)
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RobFisher11

TerryLaze said:
As the article notes, and links to, this uses Greaseweazle which has been around for a pretty long time, and it also only works with images which means that the Pi reads the whole floppy into ram, or disk, and works on that, you can basically save yourself the money and just use adf files.
It can read the whole floppy into ram, but it doesn't have to. With Amiberry, it works in a mode where it reads the same way an Amiga would. You can even hear the drive ticking when there is no disk in, and it will automatically detect any disk you insert, just like the Amiga did.
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