Here’s something I picked up from eBay. One of the things the ad mentions was the external FDD would not work. I opened up the A1200 and lookie there. A full size 3.5″ drive. That thing is just sucking power and it is tied to the power for the internal FDD. It kinda makes sense there is no power left for the external FDD.

And of course you can’t plug a 40 pin (full size 3.5″ IDE) into a 44 pin (laptop size 2.5″ IDE). So just shove an adapter in there also.