There's been a lot of open hardware floppy controller projects lately. Here's some I know.<p>Fluxengine (multi-format): <a href="http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/" rel="nofollow">http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/</a><p>Arduino-based : <a href="http://amiga.robsmithdev.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">http://amiga.robsmithdev.co.uk/</a><p>USB meant specifically for Amiga floppies: <a href="https://github.com/jtsiomb/usbamigafloppy" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jtsiomb/usbamigafloppy</a><p>DiskIO. IDE+Floppy for ECB bus: <a href="https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:ecb:diskio-v3:start" rel="nofollow">https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:ecb:di...</a><p>xt-fdc. Floppy controller for ISA bus: <a href="https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:isa:xt-fdc:start" rel="nofollow">https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:isa:xt...</a><p>zfdcv1. Floppy controller for S100 bus: <a href="https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:s100:zfdcv1:start" rel="nofollow">https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:s100:z...</a>
Thanks for all the interest. Our shipping operations are temporarily stopped due to COVID-19 so please do not order if you expect to receive your order promptly!<p>The stay-at-home order in our area is "until further notice" with no expiration date. We can't provide an estimated ship date.
I'm currently using a Floppy Emu on my Apple IIe- it maps disk files on an SD card to the Apple controller's wire protocol.<p>My main complaint was that it doesn't sound like a disk drive (Apple drives had a very distinctive sound), but the creator also has a device that makes that sound if you want.<p>My second complaint was that it's slightly slower than an actual disk drive (however, since my disk drives keep breaking/corrupting files, I can live with this).<p>Finally, it seems to corrupt some of the data on transport (or somehow work differently than an actual floppy), so some programs crash or fail in a different way.<p>That said I continue to think it's hilarious that the disk drive for my Apple has a far more powerful processor and more storage space than an Apple IIe ever did, and I just use it to act like a fake disk drive.
For anyone else curious about the index hole thing, there's a diagram here:<p><a href="http://electronicstechnician.tpub.com/14091/css/The-5-25-Inch-Floppy-Disk-Construction-261.htm" rel="nofollow">http://electronicstechnician.tpub.com/14091/css/The-5-25-Inc...</a><p>This page discusses a hardware modification that can be done to allow <i>two</i> TEAC-55GFR drives to work together, where one is loaded with an unflipped disk and supplies the required index signal to the other drive:<p><a href="http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi/FLIPPY.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi/FLIPPY.htm</a>
If you want to reminisce about old floppy drives, and the other floppy formats that never made it, the 8-bit guy did a good video on old storage mediums: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvXXkB2jic0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvXXkB2jic0</a>
As far as I know the state of the art is reading and writing the raw magnetic flux to/from a disk with something like this: <a href="http://softpres.org/glossary:kryoflux" rel="nofollow">http://softpres.org/glossary:kryoflux</a><p>This method supports more or less any platform, and images can be made with copy protection in place (for emulators that support it), or copies to new disk media preserving the original copy protection.
<i>Most PC-style drives can't read the second side of "flippy" disks</i><p>That's baloney. The whole idea of a 'flippy disk' was to be able to read the second side of a single-sided disk. To make a flippy-disk you merely had to make an index hole in the correct position of the floppy's envelope and a write-enable notch in the correction position of the envelope also.<p>I made a cardboard template to mark those positions and used a hole-punch of this kind:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leather_punch" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leather_punch</a><p>to make the holes themselves. Note that for the index hole, you had to carefully punch a hole in the envelope <i>only</i>, not the actual magnetic media itself.
When I found this sight, I was uncertain if one could still buy this device or if the owner was even still active, but then I checked the front page: "March, 2020: Orders may be delayed due to the COVID-19 situation. Thank you for your patience and understanding." The previous news post was from 2017. I think the owner's commitment to this project is amazing. I think that that the owner had to explicitly call out delays due to COVID-19 is also noteworthy.
Is there a similar VHS reader anywhere?<p>I've looked for a VHS-to-digital converter, but couldn't find any. The only seeming solution is getting a TV tuner card, plugging an old VHS player to it, and actually playing the VHS on it, and using TV Tuner software to record it.
AFAIK, the cables were identical in 3.5" and 5.25" drives.<p>So this interface probably works for both.<p>I swapped out a 5.25" drive on a BBC Micro for a modern 3.5" drive and even got it to work using HD media (the BBC used SD).
I think I encountered 5¼" floppies only near the beginning of my computing life so I only had a couple at the school lab but this is the first I've heard of <i>flippy</i> disks. What a clever name! If most PC drives couldn't read these, which manufacturer drives did people use?
Interesting device. would be great if this supported odd formats like this one does: <a href="https://www.vesalia.de/e_catweaselmk4.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.vesalia.de/e_catweaselmk4.htm</a>
I always wondered why PCs maintained support for 3.5" disks, but not for 5.25". Fortunately, beforehand I had presciently copied my hundreds of floppies to CD-ROMs. But I still keep finding more :-)
I see that it's been tested up to MacOS Sierra. I wonder if this could be used on Catalina.<p>I've read online that even USB floppy drives are no longer supported in macOS. Which is disappointing.
The limitations of this one are pretty crippling. It hardly counts as a controller, it's just a USB floppy reader. Even the software has some absurd limitations.