[HN Gopher] FC5025 USB 5.25" Floppy Controller
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FC5025 USB 5.25" Floppy Controller
Author : zaxcellent
Score : 100 points
Date : 2020-04-24 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.deviceside.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.deviceside.com)
| zaxcellent wrote:
| When I found this sight, I was uncertain if one could still buy
| this device or if the owner was even still active, but then I
| checked the front page: "March, 2020: Orders may be delayed due
| to the COVID-19 situation. Thank you for your patience and
| understanding." The previous news post was from 2017. I think the
| owner's commitment to this project is amazing. I think that that
| the owner had to explicitly call out delays due to COVID-19 is
| also noteworthy.
| devonstopps wrote:
| Interesting device. would be great if this supported odd formats
| like this one does: https://www.vesalia.de/e_catweaselmk4.htm
| reaperducer wrote:
| Did. That product, and its successor, are discontinued.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| 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
| dekhn wrote:
| I'm currently using a Floppy Emu on my Apple IIe- it maps disk
| files on an SD card to the Apple controller's wire protocol.
|
| My main complaint was that it doesn't sound like a disk drive
| (Apple drives had a very distinctive sound), but the creator also
| has a device that makes that sound if you want.
|
| My second complaint was that it's slightly slower than an actual
| disk drive (however, since my disk drives keep
| breaking/corrupting files, I can live with this).
|
| Finally, it seems to corrupt some of the data on transport (or
| somehow work differently than an actual floppy), so some programs
| crash or fail in a different way.
|
| That said I continue to think it's hilarious that the disk drive
| for my Apple has a far more powerful processor and more storage
| space than an Apple IIe ever did, and I just use it to act like a
| fake disk drive.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I'm using a FloppyEmu model B on a IIgs. I haven't used it
| extensively for writing, but I did find that Bank Street Writer
| II will not format or write to a DSK image properly.
|
| I'm really impressed w/ the FloppyEmu. The creator added WOZ
| disk image support fairly recently and I threw him some extra
| cash when I downloaded the new firmware, to show my
| appreciation for his continued development on the device.
| dekhn wrote:
| It's really quite amazing what a hobbyist can make these days
| (and sell on the internet).
|
| I would prefer a device that supported network storage, so I
| could just point it at my server which has thousands of disk
| images.
| bdowling wrote:
| > I would prefer a device that supported network storage
|
| You may be able to do this using a Wi-Fi enabled SD card
| with a floppy emulator.
| snvzz wrote:
| 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...
| Gracana wrote:
| A fairly recent one: https://applesaucefdc.com/
| raginalix wrote:
| 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.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| > _Arduino-based :http://amiga.robsmithdev.co.uk/ _
|
| I've built this - it works really well. Both reading and
| writing Amiga disks.
| bluedino wrote:
| If you want to reminisce about old floppy drives, and the other
| floppy formats that never made it, the 8-bit guy did a good video
| on old storage mediums:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvXXkB2jic0
| Jaruzel wrote:
| ...and destroyed some perfectly good floppy media while he was
| at it! _Grrr_
| rzzzt wrote:
| _crunch_
|
| The sleeves are usually contact welded shut on the sides, so
| if one wants to keep the discs working, one of the edges can
| be undone and the disc can be removed like a letter from an
| envelope. "Transplants" are also possible.
| winter_blue wrote:
| 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.
| tracker1 wrote:
| 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.
| reaperducer wrote:
| 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.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Regardless of the support of standard USB floppy drives this
| one wouldn't work anyway because it uses a custom protocol.
| exhilaration wrote:
| Pricing is here for the curious: http://shop.deviceside.com/
| ac29 wrote:
| As far as I know the state of the art is reading and writing the
| raw magnetic flux to/from a disk with something like this:
| http://softpres.org/glossary:kryoflux
|
| This method supports more or less any platform, and images can be
| made with copy protection in place (for emulators that support
| it), or copies to new disk media preserving the original copy
| protection.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| 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.html
|
| [3]
| https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Rescuing_Floppy_...
| amelius wrote:
| > 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.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| 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
| [deleted]
| davestephens wrote:
| I don't need one, but I want one. Knowing my dad he still has all
| of the software from our Amstrad 1640 stashed in the garage!
| WalterBright wrote:
| 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
| :-)
| duxup wrote:
| I always assumed the support was because for a long time PCs
| would boot from 3.5 disks but not CD-Roms and the 3.5 disks
| were pretty easy to take to another computer, format correctly,
| and then boot from if needed to load a new OS or recover from a
| hard disk issue.
| toast0 wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > PCs still support for 5.25" discs
|
| Not for the last 10 years. Even though the cable fits, the
| BIOS does not recognize it.
| forinti wrote:
| 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).
| kristopolous wrote:
| 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 errors
|
| You're going to get errors. Lots of errors! However, 80% or so
| of the time, most of the disk is still recoverable, but only if
| you use the right tools.
|
| It's going to be slow, real slow. A few minutes a disk with
| errors.
|
| Now that I think of it, you can probably swap the NeXT and
| thinkpad drives with a little effort. I bet there's a good
| arbitrage on eBay here if I'm right.
|
| There's systems that go the other way, sd card/usb disk to fake
| floppy but what I really want is usb to fake floppy. In this
| model the usb exposes itself as a configurable given capacity
| drive on both ends of the pipe, fake on both ends
|
| At the modern computer I copy over the files to the fake drive
| disk by disk and on the old computer I tap enter accordingly.
| Then someone can do a 20 disk install or whatever without a
| bunch of effort. It's not a hard device to make but i checked
| and i still don't see it
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| 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
| pronoiac wrote:
| You might check out the gnu ddrescue; it can use logs and
| allow repeated attempts with resuming.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Isn't there an USB FDD standard? Why are they using a proprietary
| protocol instead of that?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| 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.
| Girlang wrote:
| The notches on 5.25 don't identify capacity
| bcoates wrote:
| 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
| wanderingjew wrote:
| 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.
| tracker1 wrote:
| 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.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I think this might be a better fit for archiving software?
| snvzz wrote:
| >USB FDD
|
| Is grossly insufficient, unfortunately. It has minimal
| functionality.
|
| There's a lot of floppy drive types and custom floppy formats
| to deal with.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I think I encountered 51/4" 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?
| royjacobs wrote:
| Some Commodore drives (like the 1541) were single sided so
| you'd have to use the floppy disk approach.
| toast0 wrote:
| 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.
| core-questions wrote:
| I remember being prompted to flip over the disk on an Apple //e
| clone from a company called Datatrain we had back in the 80s.
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(page generated 2020-04-24 23:00 UTC)