22 Oct
2006
22 Oct
'06
2:44 p.m.
At 02:17 PM 10/20/2006, Barry Watzman wrote:
I really believe that there is a relatively large
market for such a device
(USB to 5.25 (and possibly 8") interface). I'm thinking tens or hundreds of
thousands of units (not a significant market penetration in a world with
hundreds of millions of PCs in use and an additional 100 million sold
annually, but enough to make design and manufacture easily justifiable).
If you believe the above...
I personally don't care about a cat-weasel type
device that tries to capture
every flux transition on the disc. I don't care about hard sector formats
either (Heathkit, NorthStar) unless I can do them with no great extra
effort.
... then you and the hypothetical person who wants to read aging
floppies would also want it to "just work", so handling typical
errors in a smarter fashion would be a big feature of the
product, no?
I tend to like the sound of the Linux approach for the hobbyists,
too. A minimal open but custom PCI or ISA board would be great.
- John