PCI floppy controller

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 4/22/22 21:48, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Apr 2022, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
>> As another person with a desire to be able to read/write/create
>> disks of different sizes and formats I have found this interesting.
>> So the question, then....
>> How hard would it be to make a floppy disk interface using an Arduino
>> or even RasberryPi?  If you could do that the choices of interface
>> to a PC opens up quite a bit.  It would never be like having a floppy
>> hanging off the PC, but then none of the formats I am interested in
>> are grounded in the PC anyway and utilities would need to be written
>> to access them.
>> comments?
> 
> There are a LOT of possibilities.
> 
> At one point, one of my associates was playing around with various "PC 
> on a board" motherboards that were 5.25" floppy drive size. ("Quark" 
> 80186 equivalent of an Ampro Little Board)  He mounted it with spacers 
> on a 5.25" drive, in an external case.  It was a complete PC, that 
> looked like an externala drive.
> His primary purpose was to build dedicated PC industrial data 
> acquisition units.  (Elcompco made several data acquisition systems that 
> interfaced directly with banks of elevators) With trivial some software 
> on it, it could connect to a "real" PC and do disk I/O.
> 
> 
> I once saw an extremely similar commercial product being marketed for 
> Macintosh that was an "external 5.25" floppy drive that can read PC 
> diskettes".  It was an Ampro Little Board on a drive, with software for 
> letting the Macintosh access files on its disks.  They avoided 
> mentioning what was inside the box, and presented it as a Macintosh 
> special external drive.   (similar to the Macintosh version of Video 
> Toaster having an Amiga in the box)
> They added software to it to handle some CP/M formats.  I was amused 
> that among the formats that they supported were a format where I had 
> misspeled the format name (due to customer handwriting), and they copied 
> my mispelling, and they had a format that I had put into XenoCopy for a 
> friend to handle his on-off prototype machine that never went to market. 
> (a non-deliberate Mountweazel poach flag copyright trap)
> 
> 
> You could build a small box with a drive and either a from scratch 
> controller, or a 765 (or better yet, a WD 179x), that connects to PC.
> In that box, you could put almost anything that could work with the FDC 
> and communicate.
> 
> 
> But, as a first step, and "proof of concept" for an external box, why 
> not just start with a 5160 or 5170, running software and communicating 
> with your host PC?  Then, later, you could replace the 5160/5170 with a 
> more compact dedicated bespoke device.
> 
> 
> (OK, I'm still thinking in terms of the days when people were upgrading 
> PCs and throwing out the old ones, so that an XT cost NOTHING)
> 

Your right about all the available options.  Somewhere around here I
have a couple of P112 SBC's.  I wonder what the floppy controller in
that can do?  I am pretty sure it claimed compatibility with CP/M 8"
disks.  If so it can probably handle all various 5.25" formats as well.

Looks like I may have a number of things to play with while I spend
my summer stuck in the house.

bill