Greaseweazle

[Chuck Guzis]

On 2/1/21 3:24 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

> Eric Schlaepfer built a version with buffering and 5" and 8" connectors.
> There is a fair amount of churn as what they want the hardware to be
> and the project is siloed because of their insistence on using farcebook
> for communications.

Early on, I built one with buffering and played with it (I already had
the parts in my hellbox), but I prefer to use a more capable MCU to to
my work (i.e. not an STM32F1, but STM32F407).  More memory, faster
clocks; I could probably do hard disks with it, by just adding the
differential buffers and writing some firmware.   Not a whole lot of
difference in cost, either--$10 for a 407 board with clock/calendar,
SDHC SDIO,etc.

There's also a similar implementation using a very inexpensive Cypress
PSOC 6 ARM card that mounts on a 3.5" floppy connector (no cable).

It's what I've been saying for years--just about any moderately capable
modern MCU can do the job.  After all the Gotek emulator uses a nearly
obsolescent STM32F107 or 105 MCU.  The "blue pill" STM32F103 is quite a
bit more capable.

Glad people finally tumbled to this.

--Chuck