Floppy emulator

[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

 

[Peter]

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

Why can't you use a real device?

 

[Ed]

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.

 

[chrisv]

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..

I don't get it. Don't you need a real floppy disk in this case?

 

[Arno Wagner]

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.

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

 

[Rod Speed]

Ed wrote

I don't get it.

No suprises there.

Don't you need a real floppy disk in this case?

Nope, not if the electronic emulation is good enough.

 

[Andy]

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

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.

 

[chrisv]

No suprises there.

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.

You mean cable the two devices directly togther, with the emulator
in-between?

 

[Peter]

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.

Such a big market! You will make a fortune!

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

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.

You mean cable the two devices directly
togther, with the emulator in-between?

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.

 

[J. Clarke]

1) Floppy drives are fading away.

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..

How will emulating a floppy drive accomplish this?

3)I have been asked if I can to do this by many customers of
mine.

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.

 

[Mike Redrobe]

How will emulating a floppy drive accomplish this?

Maybe he means something like a flashpath:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005QXW7/

 

[J. Clarke]

Maybe he means something like a flashpath:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005QXW7/

Interesting concept. Apparently flawed in the execution though.

 

[Mike Redrobe]

Interesting concept. Apparently flawed in the execution though.

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.

 

[J. Clarke]

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.

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.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Maybe he means something like a flashpath:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005QXW7/

Cool idea. Not a floppy emulator though, it needs special drivers.

Arno

 

[Mike Redrobe]

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.

It did have a DOS driver...

 

[J. Clarke]

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.

It did have a DOS driver...

Which helps you with a 68HC11 machine how?