Floppy disk drive emulators

[japlytic]

During a random category browse on eBay, I happened to find floppy disk drive emulators which save or read from a USB flash drive.
Some of them can have up to 99 or even 999 "disks" on a single USB flash drive plugged in which can be changed by up/down buttons - some of them do not have a numeric display.

I did some further research and found that there is a range of units which can cover just about all disk formats, and even found ST-506/412 (MFM/RLL), ESDI, older SCSI and possibly other interfaces for hard disk drive emulators as well.

These emulators are ideal for equipment such as industrial machinery of which the storage drive interface cannot easily be changed (if it's possible!).
Using a drive emulator would cost much less than upgrading or replacing the machinery.

Hopefully this addresses your worries about floppy drives (and other obsolete storage interfaces) in such equipment .

On my oscilloscope and logic analyser, I plan to replace the floppy drive with an emulator (and adapt it if necessary) and keep you posted.

[cheapie]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

You "happened" to find this because of what I said, didn't you?

Yes, I know about those emulators. They're just very very expensive... (and don't make noise)

[japlytic]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

Some are not as expensive as you may think.
My demonstration of one (and that in some cases, can be faster): http://youtu.be/G1DNgL3lYuc
A video of a buyer's guide to floppy drive emulators is also planned in the future.

[japlytic]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

A guide on what to consider in floppy drive emulators: http://youtu.be/c74KT60sQvY

[mariushm]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

There are emulators out there and proper ones are expensive because they do emulation properly, replicating even the latency of various motors and disk heads, sending eject or insert signals for models that supported those and so on.
The very expensive ones have huge rows of jumpers in the back to set lots of tweaks and interface options and make them support all kinds of connections (cables) and signal levels.

[Mrx3750]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

This raises an interesting question. What is the maximum transfer rate of the FDD controller? I'm sure floppy drives never came close, but these floppy emulators could.

[cheapie]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

This raises an interesting question. What is the maximum transfer rate of the FDD controller? I'm sure floppy drives never came close, but these floppy emulators could.

I think 500 Kb/sec, and controllers that supported ED could do 1 Mb/sec.

[goontron]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

I think 500 Kb/sec, and controllers that supported ED could do 1 Mb/sec.

WOW it will load that floppy in 1.22% seconds! roughly at least... now thats cool.

[ant3202]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

that seems cool, esp for some

[ratdude747]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

This raises an interesting question. What is the maximum transfer rate of the FDD controller? I'm sure floppy drives never came close, but these floppy emulators could.

I think 500 Kb/sec, and controllers that supported ED could do 1 Mb/sec.

WOW it will load that floppy in 1.22% seconds! roughly at least... now thats cool.

I doubt that... then why are Ls120 drives so fast at reading floppies? (IIRC it's since they use IDE, not the floppy controller?) or even some usb floppy drives?

[shadow]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

I found USB floppy drives no faster than a native floppy drive using the floppy controller.

[Mrx3750]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

I found USB floppy drives no faster than a native floppy drive using the floppy controller.

Well yeah because you're limited by the physical reading of the disc, and floppy discs can't exactly be spun at high speeds.

Remove those limitations and your next bottleneck is the data bus itself. LS 120's probably used multiple heads or something to read floppies faster.

[goontron]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

well this is what you can do with all those old FDD's
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBabh9SsWcg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW1uSa4cltU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDjlqtUR8ww
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgfPYetWWJw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3dU5u4xXaY

[cheapie]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

Well yeah because you're limited by the physical reading of the disc, and floppy discs can't exactly be spun at high speeds.

Remove those limitations and your next bottleneck is the data bus itself. LS 120's probably used multiple heads or something to read floppies faster.

I used to have a "2X" USB floppy drive that spun the disk at double speed.

[Elysarian]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

I stopped using floppies some time in the mid 90's when I got myself internet access (1993) and a CD writer (1997 or 1998)...

I have fond memories of headaches caused by unreadable disks BITD though - both 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 inch flavours (I may even still have some 8 inch ones in an attic somewhere too)...

If I had need for this kind of thing any more then an emulator is the way I'd go too (only thing I have that still has a floppy drive and sees any use is a synth/keyboard that accepts MIDI patch files via a 3 1/2 inch drive).

[abc184]

Re: Floppy disk drive emulators

Hi !

Here alternative floppy emulator:

http://www.floppydrive.eu/