FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller
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FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller
1–10 of 80 posts
Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller
#2Pricing is here for the curious: http://shop.deviceside.com/
Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller
#3AFAIK, the cables were identical in 3.5" and 5.25" drives.
So this interface probably works for both.
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).
Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller
#4Isn't there an USB FDD standard? Why are they using a proprietary protocol instead of that?
Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller
#5Interesting device. would be great if this supported odd formats like this one does: https://www.vesalia.de/e_catweaselmk4.htm
Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller
#6AFAIK, the cables were identical in 3.5" and 5.25" drives. So this interface probably works for both. 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).
They were. The connectors at the end of the drives were different and that was all (adapters were common, probably still available)
There's also scsi 3.5" drives out there. Some ThinkPads had them. In fact, those drives were 2.88MB, just like on the NeXT, the 1.44 was common but one of a large number of capacities in that form factor...
If you do this, use dd, not cat. Why? dd has this
noerror continue after read errors
You're going to get errors. Lots of errors! However, 80% or so of the time, most of the disk is still recoverable, but only if you use the right tools.
It's going to be slow, real slow. A few minutes a disk with errors.
Now that I think of it, you can probably swap the NeXT and thinkpad drives with a little effort. I bet there's a good arbitrage on eBay here if I'm right.
There's systems that go the other way, sd card/usb disk to fake floppy but what I really want is usb to fake floppy. In this model the usb exposes itself as a configurable given capacity drive on both ends of the pipe, fake on both ends
At the modern computer I copy over the files to the fake drive disk by disk and on the old computer I tap enter accordingly. Then someone can do a 20 disk install or whatever without a bunch of effort. It's not a hard device to make but i checked and i still don't see it
Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller
#7Isn't there an USB FDD standard? Why are they using a proprietary protocol instead of that?
I suspect the USB FDD standard does not support telling the device what type of disk is inserted. This supports far more than the IBM compatible disks that can be determined just from the notches.
Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller
#8I see that it's been tested up to MacOS Sierra. I wonder if this could be used on Catalina.
I've read online that even USB floppy drives are no longer supported in macOS. Which is disappointing.
Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller
#9As 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: http://softpres.org/glossary:kryoflux
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.
Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller
#10Interesting device. would be great if this supported odd formats like this one does: https://www.vesalia.de/e_catweaselmk4.htm
Did. That product, and its successor, are discontinued.