Floppy drive emulator updates legacy computers

https://www.elektormagazine.com/news/fl ... -computers

http://www.ssd.gb.com/index.php/news-1/ ... y-emulator

Has anyone heard of it?

It basically replaces a lot of drives and uses FM, MFM, and MMFM in all floppy formats (3.5, 5.25 and 8 inch).

http://www.ssd.gb.com/index.php/product ... k-emulator

It sounds easy but I wonder how easy it is to implement it. I'm thinking it is at least a step.

It's new to me. Connecting to the floppy drive connector is a good idea for compatibility, but makes the implementation quite difficult. That'll be where the value is perhaps, in case a system uses non-standard disk formats.

Interesting choice of Compact Flash for the storage - is that inherently more reliable, or in some other way better, than an SD Card?

But I don't see any price - perhaps this is intended for volume sales to OEMs who are still producing floppy-based industrial systems?

I definitely like the idea. I hope SD card is coming.

This might sound silly, but an advantage floppy discs had over the small memory cards is that they were big enough to have a label with enough room to write, by hand, what's on it, the dates, etc..

I have a floppy emulator on my BBC. I tried to find a real 5 1/4 drive but they are hard to buy these days.

Some of these emulators are not general purpose. They only support a small subset of encodings and track configurations. Often they are sold as replacement drives for knitting machines or industrial equipment.

My impression is that in Beeb land the common solution is to have a new version of the filing system ROM which knows how to interact with some SD Card interface hardware, often connected to the user port (VIA) - that's what I now have. I think perhaps floppy emulators are the more popular solution in C64 land.

But I agree - the most likely application is in appliances. Synthesisers are an another example.

I have a VIA based MMC adaptor as well but I wanted to install the disk controller and use a standard DFS Rom so I got one of these

http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/

That's very nice!