#Floppy disk emulator 5.25 software
The Lotharek HxC emulators, along with the software that is available, in my opinion allows for the most flexibility with a wide range of applications. There are many types of floppy drive formats and floppy drive types. Not all emulators will emulate all the various types of floppy drives. Here are some up front notes about floppy disk drive emulators that I think are important to note. Then you simply copy from one working floppy drive to the virtual floppy emulator.
If you have to copy files from floppy disks to the virtual floppy disk emulator, the emulator can be set as Drive 1, or Drive 2, or both. Once you have the particular type of format for your type of old floppy disk saved on the SD Card or USB stick then you simply plug the SD Card or USB stick into the emulator, and the process of reading and writing to the virtual floppy disk image is as easy as if it were a real floppy disk. By the way, there is a lot of open source software that can be used to create the virtual floppy disk image on the SD Card or the USB stick to begin with.
There are SD Card and USB versions in various cased and uncased types. Lotharek HxC floppy drive emulators come in a number of different versions. Some of the FDD emulator manufacturers are listed below. In my opinion, they have filled the gap between the old floppy drive legacy machines and the new solid state storage device machines. In response to those emails, and thank you for sending all those emails to me by-the-way below is FDD information that I think many engineers and end users will find very useful and some possible solutions to the old legacy floppy disk drives.Īpparently there are a few FDD hardware replacement solutions from companies called “floppy disk drive emulators” for the old floppy disk drives in legacy equipment. I think this device has potential to be a very popular eBay item. The unit will also need several hardware switches to emulate the various non-standard formats (i.e.: disk insert notification) adopted by early manufacturers. A second MCU should be used to interface the SD card to the memory buffer.ĭisk images can be stored in individual folders on the SD card and accessed incrementally. It should have a SD slot in the front with a LED or LCD display, up/down buttons and a soft eject/reinsert button, this way you can dial up the appropriate floppy image and then soft-insert it.īecause the FD drive interface uses control signals to physically step the motor and heads, the interface will need an MCU such as a Pic to act as a interpreter between the memory buffer (720k or 1.44k) and the interface. I would like to see a device in a 3.5″ form factor to fit in existing housings. Readers have been asking for quite some time if I have found out any more information on the FDD SDD interfaces. In fact the three floppy disk drive emulator devices shown below are designed for computers that do not have USB ports. No computer USB ports are required for operation.
The floppy disk drive emulators replace these old legacy floppy disk drives with a simple plug-and-play emulator device. Pictured above from right to left are old legacy 3 1/2, 5 1/4, and 8 inch floppy disk drives which have been installed in OEM computers.
This is follow up information to my first article on the subject: The Floppy Disk Drive Engineering Design Challenge SSD to FDD No USB port is required on the OEM computer for the floppy emulators to function. In other words, if the OEM computer has a standard 34 pin floppy disk drive cable, these devices are plug and play. These devices are not external USB floppy disk drives, but direct floppy disk drive replacements for internal original equipment manufacturers floppy disk drives. Updated information on the floppy disk drives hardware interfaces and FDD emulators to replace 3.5 inch, 5.25 inch, and 8 inch floppy disk drive units.
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