- Open source floppy disk emulator software software#
- Open source floppy disk emulator software plus#
- Open source floppy disk emulator software zip#
- Open source floppy disk emulator software windows#
I just happened to get lucky with the combination of a suitably powerful microcontroller which needs _no modification_ to do it. Let’s be clear, there’s nothing new here people have been reading floppies using bodged-together microcontrollers before. Hello, author here… so *this* is where all my traffic has been coming from! (*cough*referrer links please*cough*) Or does the 1541 have to constantly read everything to feel its way around a disk?
The drive must stream/read the data until it finds the arbritrary position where the first sectors of tracks begin, then it can use the disk speed to pick up the first sector of the requested file. From there it’s relied upon for the speed of the drive to be *exact* so the host computer and disk controller can time when to start reading, and to use the directory data to know when to shift tracks and skip sectors to read fragmented files.Ī few formats, like Commodore 1541, don’t use the index hole at all. Soft sectored disks use the single index hole to keep track of where the first sector of each track begins. The controller steps out to track 10 then waits for the extra blip of the index hole, then counts 10 sector blips, then begins to read data.
Open source floppy disk emulator software software#
The software says “Read track 10, sector five.”. Thus it’s impossible for sector separation or identification data to become corrupted because there isn’t any.
Open source floppy disk emulator software plus#
They use a ring of holes to denote the sector boundaries, plus an extra index hole between two of the sector index holes. That’s the big point of hard sectored floppies. Posted in Retrocomputing Tagged floppy, libusb, PSoC, usb Post navigation We had to wonder if has thought about 8-inch floppies. This certainly is more user-friendly than the last method we looked at. comments that you really need a real drive to test your writing with so you don’t write things only you can read back. While writing is possible, it appears there is more work that needs to happen to make it reliable. All the heavy lifting occurs on the PC, which means it should be pretty easy to analyze and decode new formats. The firmware only measures the time between flux transitions and sends them to the attached PC. wants to change processors because of this, but if he does, he’ll miss the PSoC function blocks, we are guessing.
Open source floppy disk emulator software windows#
However, you will need a Windows box of some sort to build the Cypress firmware because the Cypress tools won’t work anywhere else.
The software uses libusb and is known to work on Linux and Windows with Cygwin. He’s also offered to entertain other formats if you are willing to loan him a disk.
The author,, is looking for Commodore 1541 and Apple CLV disks to borrow so he can get those working.
However, being open source, it could do more. It can also read and write Brother word processor disks. Currently, the firmware only supports read only access to IBM standard disks and Acorn DFS/ADFS disks. The device uses a $15 Cypress development board and just some wiring (along with a 3.5 or 5.25 floppy drive, of course). That is, except for Flux Engine, an open source USB floppy drive. While these do exist, they typically won’t read oddball formats. You might think you beat the system just by having a USB floppy drive.
Open source floppy disk emulator software zip#
Do you have a ZIP drive? Do you have a computer that it will work with? Floppies are problem too. Data on a variety of tapes and disks that were once common, is now trapped on media due to lack of hardware to read it. It is a bit of a paradox that we are storing more and more information digitally, yet every year more and more of it is becoming harder to access.