Floppy emulator

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ed
  • Start date Start date
E

Ed

I am looking for a device that plugs into the floppy cable that emulates the
1.44meg floppy.
I am not looking to emulate the floppy with emulation software.
Can anyone help me or point me to sufficient resources to design one?
Thanks
 
I am looking for a device that plugs into the floppy cable that emulates
the 1.44meg floppy.
I am not looking to emulate the floppy with emulation software.
Can anyone help me or point me to sufficient resources to design one?
Thanks
Click to expand...

Why can't you use a real device?
 
1) Floppy drives are fading away.
2)I would like an electronic method to transfer data to an older device that
uses a floppy drive that has no other method of external data transfer..
3)I have been asked if I can to do this by many customers of mine.
 
Ed said:
2)I would like an electronic method to transfer data to an older device that
uses a floppy drive that has no other method of external data transfer..
Click to expand...

I don't get it. Don't you need a real floppy disk in this case?
 
Previously Ed said:
1) Floppy drives are fading away.
2)I would like an electronic method to transfer data to an older device that
uses a floppy drive that has no other method of external data transfer..
3)I have been asked if I can to do this by many customers of mine.
Click to expand...

Well, I have a bit experience on copying floppies by digitizing the
track. Unless you want to also emulate copy protection, a signal
resolution of 2us is enough. In memory you need just about 2MB
to hold the contents of a floppy. My guess is that this can be done
with a modern signal processor without too much trouble. Since there
appears so be no significant market for this device, I would expect
development cost in the 10'000...100'000 Euro/USD range and
a per-pice price of maybe 1000 Euro/USD. If you are willing to
spend that, find an engineering outfit that does custom
elecronics. It should nto be a hard task conceptually.

Arno
 
I am looking for a device that plugs into the floppy cable that emulates the
1.44meg floppy.
I am not looking to emulate the floppy with emulation software.
Can anyone help me or point me to sufficient resources to design one?
Thanks
Click to expand...
You can start by learning what the floppy disk controller needs from
the floppy disk drive.
http://saint.atari.org/html/doc/wd17722.html
http://home.comcast.net/~swtpc6800/DC5/TMS279X_DataSheet.pdf
These are old documents, but they provide better details.
 
Rod said:
No suprises there.
Click to expand...

Exactly, considering it appears from his statement that the only way
to get data into the one machine is with via a floppy drive, implying
the need for a disk to insert into that drive.
Nope, not if the electronic emulation is good enough.
Click to expand...

You mean cable the two devices directly togther, with the emulator
in-between?
 
1) Floppy drives are fading away.

Everything is fading away, but not everything gets emulated.
2)I would like an electronic method to transfer data to an older device
that uses a floppy drive that has no other method of external data
transfer..
3)I have been asked if I can to do this by many customers of mine.
Click to expand...

Such a big market! You will make a fortune!
 
chrisv said:
Rod Speed wrote
Click to expand...
Exactly, considering it appears from his statement that the only
way to get data into the one machine is with via a floppy drive,
implying the need for a disk to insert into that drive.
Click to expand...
You mean cable the two devices directly
togther, with the emulator in-between?
Click to expand...

Nope, something that appears to the system to
be a floppy drive but which is in fact something
else instead, like say a flashrom drive.
 
Ed said:
1) Floppy drives are fading away.
Click to expand...

Which makes them cheap.
2)I would like an electronic method to transfer data to an older device
that uses a floppy drive that has no other method of external data
transfer..
Click to expand...

How will emulating a floppy drive accomplish this?
3)I have been asked if I can to do this by many customers of
mine.
Click to expand...

Well, your answer is "no". If you could you'd already have designed the
device.

It looks to me like you're looking for an expensive way to replace an 8
dollar component.
 
J. Clarke said:
Interesting concept. Apparently flawed in the execution though.
Click to expand...

It worked well at the time on systems that didn't have usb.

One initial floppy with drivers, and the flashpath "fake floppy"
were all you needed to transfer data on smartmedia.
 
Mike said:
It worked well at the time on systems that didn't have usb.

One initial floppy with drivers, and the flashpath "fake floppy"
were all you needed to transfer data on smartmedia.
Click to expand...

The trouble is that it will only work on systems for which drivers
exist--using it to transfer data from a PC to some arcane CNC system for
example wouldn't work.
 
J. Clarke wrote:
[flashpath floppy based smartmedia reader]
The trouble is that it will only work on systems for which drivers
exist--using it to transfer data from a PC to some arcane CNC
system for example wouldn't work.
Click to expand...

It did have a DOS driver...
 
Mike said:
J. Clarke wrote:
[flashpath floppy based smartmedia reader]
The trouble is that it will only work on systems for which drivers
exist--using it to transfer data from a PC to some arcane CNC
system for example wouldn't work.
Click to expand...

It did have a DOS driver...
Click to expand...

Which helps you with a 68HC11 machine how?
 
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