One thing that could drive you crazy when playing games on several floppy disks was all that swapping of the disks. So having an external floppy disk drive was for many a gift from heaven. It also was such a great gift when copying floppy disks. And copying we did. The program I used the most for copying disks was X-Copy.
X-Copy for the Amiga
I bought my external disk drive in October 1992 for the sum of 169,95 guilders. At the time a lot of money especially when you consider I was still going to school. But I earned some money working in my free time.
Receipt showing it was bought in October 1992
Warranty card
Front cover of the manual
I bought the Golden Image Master 3A-1 manufactured by Jin Tech Electronics Corp. from Taiwan. I used it together with my Amiga 500. Unfortunately it does not work any more. It has been a long time since I tried it for the last time. Once I have my Amiga 500 up and running again I will perform some tests with the drive.
Top view of the drive
Bottom view of the drive
Front view of the drive
Back view of the drive
I do miss the days of the floppy disks. Having this huge collection of floppy disks and somehow trying to archive it all. At first the floppy disks still had a really expensive price tag. I still paid around 80 Dutch guilders for 10 pieces of TDK or Sony floppy disks. Later it changed to around 40 Dutch guilders for the good brand. It changed when the white label floppy disks came out which had a price tag from at first 10 Dutch guilders to later under the 5 Dutch guilders. I still have all my floppy disk boxes stuffed full with floppy disks. 880Kb on one floppy disk.
Coder's Blog 
oldschoolgameblog
Nice article, Coder! Cool that you’ve saved the original receipt! 🙂
An extra disk-drive was, as you wrote, heaven for many of us. It made copying games, demos and utility-disks (remember those old-fashioned utility packs? Cool DOS-menus!) much easier.
I remember purchasing Monkey Island 2… do I need to write more? 😉 It came on over 10 floppy disks!
Like you, I’ve still got quite a large collection of old floppies. Some of them are used even today, but many of them haven’t been touched for years and years.
I dig your new design by the way!
Coder
I can’t believe I kept it. 🙂 I changed the design because for the old design the width was to small. I am working on some programming tutorials which would (the source code) look horrible with the old theme. Now I can make it look good and it is easier to read.
Anonymous
Dear Sir, If you would like to sell it, just let me know. Since I may consider to purchase it. My e-mail: orcunkokcu@yahoo.com
Joe Floyd
Hi,
I have this same drive (new to me from e-bay). In my case, the drive is the Atari ST version. You posted a picture of the manual front cover. Do you still happen to have the manual? Like you my drive no longer works, but I did find a replacement floppy disk drive which I’m told is compatible with the TEAC FD-235F found inside my GoldenImage Master 3A-1D.
What I was hoping for is some information from the manual which might give me some hints as to how to set the jumpers on the floppy drive.
Also, I’ve tried using the Master 3A-1D with a Gotek floppy emulator board and this does work. The Atari ST can read and write the Gotek device, but the Gotek seems to respond to both A and B drive commands.
My specific question is if you have scanned the entire Master 3A-1D manual. If so can you share the manual?
Regards,
Joe
Jon Robertson
Oh, the irony. I also bought one of these from eBay, for my recently acquired Amiga 2000. I was doing a Google search for the manual and came across this post. 😉
Joe, if you get a hold of a scan for the manual, would you post an update here?
I have an 3.5″ and a Gotek emulator installed internally. The Golden Image drive I bought is an external drive. It has a switch for drive 0/1. I’m assuming that if I set it to drive 0, it will become DF2:. I suppose I’ll find out for sure later tonight when I have a chance to connect it. I have not yet tested it to determine if it even works.
Avi
I was wondering if you ever scanned the manual? I too am looking for more info on this drive… The power supply mine came with is not correct and is dead. Any help would be appreciated.
C128 Guy
Looking for a copy of the manual for this if you would be kind enough to scan it! I just bought one without the drive itself.