17 Oct
2007
17 Oct
'07
4:33 p.m.
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007, Andrew Lynch wrote:
There has been lots of talk about these universal
floppy controller devices
and I for one would LOVE to see one done but so far nobody has made one
work. The closest thing I have seen is either the external floppy drive and
compaticard combination or the parallel port Backpack external floppy drive
from Microsolutions. If anyone actually makes the universal floppy reader,
please put me down to buy one as well.
FWIW, I'm exploring the idea of a universal floppy controller with some
currently undisclosed people in the classic computers arena. I envision
the final product as a fully-populated naked board. It would carry an
FPGA, support up to four drives of any kind, and talk USB to the host
computer. From a software perspective, it look like ordinary PC floppy
drives, much like an external 3.5" drive. It also presents raw
character interfaces to each of the drives as well. User-mode programs
can read and write raw data to do things like copying entire disks. Disks
can be mounted by way of usermode filesystems. My current task is
locating free FPGA cores to implement the usual floppy controller chips.
This will allow the external 5.25" drive that some people here have been
clamoring for.
I'm also exploring the feasability of a PCI and/or PCIE floppy card. All
this would do is just provide regular PC-style floppy interfaces.
According to private discussions, this would be easy, but would not be
usuable with stock floppy drivers. This won't be a problem for modern
operating systems, we'll just create new drivers. It would present
problems for DOS programs that directly diddle with the interface.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
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