[cctalk] Resurrecting old microcomputers

OK, probably the hardest part is the floppy disk, as the mechanics corrode over time more than chips. People have built electronics to connect to a floppy cable and emulate a drive electronically. Difficult to catch the timing on flux changes and digitize. More than I want to spend at this time. Couldn't somebody more clever than me develop something that would plug into a Western Digital floppy disk controller socket, catch the commands to the device directly? Probably need to be an FPGA, to actively monitor and catch the bus signals. Yes, and apple would have to have it's own, probably a card to plug into the bus. Although I think I have an apple ][ 3rd party card what uses a WD controller and standards shugart style drives. probably the disks are incompatible with those from the apple ][ card, which is why I then bought a 3rd party apple style card and disk (but did not do enough with any of them to remember details). IIRC there was one other early PC that did not use WD floppy controller chips. connect this wd emulator via USB to a modern tablet/desktop/smartphone where storage and heavy lifting would be done. With minimal changes to the original operating system, define floppy with at least 255 tracks of (?) at least 255 records of (?) 4096 bytes, effectively making a hard disk, and of course as fast as it can transfer data. can't do that with something grabbing signals off the floppy cable. the emulation would initially be storing track images. Later it could understand the floppy formats and actually store the data in PC files...shareable between Apple ][, Atari, TRS-80 (all flavors), etc, etc, and the modern PC. the WD emulator could emulate the original floppy controller also, so a computer could have both the original mechanical floppy and modern high volume storage. That would require a clip to wherever the floppy select lines were stored.