FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller • Hacker News Board

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#41

Post by paulgerhardt » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 9:48 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #37

paulgerhardt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kryoflux was the state of the art in 2013 (and is pretty capable for non C64 disks) but their shady legal practices asserting copyright of ripped images[1] makes their images blacklisted by the Internet Archive. In 2019 a lot of people migrated to FluxEngine [2]. Though there are plenty of alternatives [3]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/buyj9f/co... [2] http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/index.htm…

> asserting copyright of ripped images I don't think there would be a legal basis here. If I sell a pen, I can't claim ownership of the things people write with it, no matter what EULA I make people sign. The same holds for a Xerox machine. And similarly it holds for a tool to copy bits or flux transitions.

Not quite. As I understand it, the hardware rips disks and encodes them in proprietary SPS flux image formats (.IPF, .STREAM, and .DRAFT) subject to a very weird license agreement.[1] SPS does not assert ownership of the encoded content but does assert that content encoded with their software can not be used for commercial purposes. I suspect this “bit coloring” is at the root of why the Internet Archive made the decision to no longer accept Kryoflux based images and why it is not a good candidate for archival purposes.

[1] https://www.kryoflux.com/download/LICENCE.txt

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#42

Post by toast0 » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #26

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 flippy disks. What a clever name! If most PC drives couldn't read these, which manufacturer drives did people use?

IBM pcs generally had double-sided drives. No need to flip, because the drive had heads for the top and bottom. Other computers varied, usually depending on when they introduced floppy drives (double sided is more complex, but better experience).

Note that the data orientation will be different on the bottom of a single sided disk written with the disk upside down than if written on a double sided drive.

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#43

Post by tracker1 » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #36

Is there a similar VHS reader anywhere? 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.

I don't know that there are any VHS devices that go straight to digital... Mostly it does come down to capture cards... if you can, use an SVHS Stereo of higher quality for the player, and svhs input... you'll get slightly higher quality.

Though it's been well over a decade since I've touched/used anything like this. I do have a friend that does some conversions as a business... he uses pro grade svhs player and it's slightly better quality, but far from ideal.

Similar for old super-8 videos, mostly comes down to playing and recording via webcam in a controlled environment. If you go completely black, the recording washes out, so want some light in the playback/recording, and then runs through some filters.

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#44

Post by tracker1 » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

wanderingjew wrote: post #15

bcoates wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-bi…

I did get a USB floppy drive a few years ago... don't even know for sure if/where I have it as I never actually used it... got it just in case I needed to get some data off for friends/family, but that use case never presented itself... I'd moved off of all floppy media by 2001.

It's wild when I hear/read about production systems still running with old floppy media.

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#45

Post by raginalix » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 10:17 PM UTC

snvzz wrote: post #18

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: htt…

I have built a Flux engine adapter and managed to get good dumps with it. It is easy to build and cheap. Gets a +1 from me.

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#46

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 10:23 PM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #40

WalterBright wrote: post #25

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 :-)

PCs still support for 5.25" discs, but the 3.5" disks are better (smaller, more durable, more data per disk, unless you're comparing 5.25" high density vs 3.5" double density. By the 90s, cd-rom was clearly the future, but a boot disk came in handy, so one floppy drive was enough for most people. 3.5" disks also had the 2.88 drives, and LS-120 drives with compatible form factors.

> PCs still support for 5.25" discs

Not for the last 10 years. Even though the cable fits, the BIOS does not recognize it.

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#47

Post by Girlang » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 10:50 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #7

Nextgrid wrote: post #4

Isn'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.

The notches on 5.25 don’t identify capacity

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#48

Post by simonblack » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 11:43 PM UTC

Most PC-style drives can't read the second side of "flippy" disks

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.

I made a cardboard template to mark those positions and used a hole-punch of this kind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leather_punch

to make the holes themselves. Note that for the index hole, you had to carefully punch a hole in the envelope only, not the actual magnetic media itself.

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#49

Post by rkagerer » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 11:50 PM UTC

The computer I use today still has 3.5" floppy drive.

Re: FC5025 USB 5.25” Floppy Controller

#50

Post by deviceside » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 12:29 AM UTC

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!

The stay-at-home order in our area is "until further notice" with no expiration date. We can't provide an estimated ship date.