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FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

deviceside.com

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Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#12

Post by bcoates »

Nextgrid wrote: post #4

Isn't there an USB FDD standard? Why are they using a proprietary protocol instead of that?

This acts as a controller that attaches to a conventional PC floppy disk drive (which does not have internal controller electronics like a modern hard drive).

It's different than a USB floppy disk drive, which is more like a weird integrated ATAPI device on a USB-ATAPI bridge

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#14

Post by NegativeLatency »

kristopolous wrote: post #6
forinti wrote: post #3

AFAIK, 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 err…

Theres some open source firmware available for these I believe that makes them work with more computers: http://www.gotekemulator.com

Found it: https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/wiki

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#15

Post by wanderingjew »

bcoates wrote: post #12
Nextgrid wrote: post #4

Isn't there an USB FDD standard? Why are they using a proprietary protocol instead of that?

This acts as a controller that attaches to a conventional PC floppy disk drive (which does not have internal controller electronics like a modern hard drive). It's different than a USB floppy disk drive, which is more like a weird integrated ATAPI device on a USB-ATAPI bridge

For anyone buying this, please keep in mind USB-ATAPI floppy drives are especially broken in nearly all modern OSes.

I'm speaking from experience with ZIP drives, including the internal ATAPI and IDE versions. Support for Linux was dropped a while ago, but you can load that in as a Kernel module. I still haven't gotten that to work.

Current Win10 install kinda works, but the best success I've had is with an old 32-bit installation of WinXP. Even then, doing the things you'd like to do with a floppy drive (reading reliably, reading when inserted, decoupling the unmount/eject ((as opposed to the old way Mac handled it))) mechanism is difficult. Also, some USB->ATAPI bridges simply don't work with ATAPI floppy devices.

If you've ever wanted to solve a problem that no one else has attempted (because no one cares, at all) there's a project for you.

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#16

Post by Nextgrid »

reaperducer wrote: post #8

I 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.

Regardless of the support of standard USB floppy drives this one wouldn’t work anyway because it uses a custom protocol.

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#17

Post by mikepurvis »

For anyone else curious about the index hole thing, there's a diagram here:

http://electronicstechnician.tpub.com/14091/css/The-5-25-Inc...

This page discusses a hardware modification that can be done to allow two TEAC-55GFR drives to work together, where one is loaded with an unflipped disk and supplies the required index signal to the other drive:

http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi/FLIPPY.htm

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#18

Post by snvzz »

There's been a lot of open hardware floppy controller projects lately. Here's some I know.

Fluxengine (multi-format): http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/

Arduino-based : http://amiga.robsmithdev.co.uk/

USB meant specifically for Amiga floppies: https://github.com/jtsiomb/usbamigafloppy

DiskIO. IDE+Floppy for ECB bus: https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:ecb:di...

xt-fdc. Floppy controller for ISA bus: https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:isa:xt...

zfdcv1. Floppy controller for S100 bus: https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:s100:z...

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