FluxEngine Floppy Disk imaging device

[fimbulvetr]

This looks like an interesting little tool:

 

http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/

 

It allows you to read and write any type of floppy disk, including 5.25" disks and weird exotic formats, using a USB connection. Still under development so only a limited number of systems are currently supported, but it can be built for $15 using 2 commodity parts.

[+FarmerPotato]

1 hour ago, fimbulvetr said:

This looks like an interesting little tool:

 

http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/

 

It allows you to read and write any type of floppy disk, including 5.25" disks and weird exotic formats, using a USB connection. Still under development so only a limited number of systems are currently supported, but it can be built for $15 using 2 commodity parts.

That's pretty neat.  Much simpler and uses the CPU you already have!

 

Lots of good links there--low-level floppy disk manuals from back in the day.

 

Especially the Floppy Disk Users Guide, compiled for Linux reference in 2001. You can still learn more about your beloved floppy! Here's a gem:

 

Quote

As a matter of fact, the tracks of a cylinder are not exactly over each other, but spatially interleaved. For that reason you can not read a floppy which was written in a dual head drive by flipping it in a single head drive (ev en if you could reverse the spin direction). At least 8" diskettes have that much room between tracks, that you can flip a double sided floppy around and use it twice that way. There may be a few bad sectors, but you can put 2.4 MB on one floppy that way. This does not work with a 51⁄4" floppy, though. You can use its first track, but that is it

 

It has very clear explanations of interleave and skew (think Mike Dodd's Hypercopy and the fast MDOS boot floppies made using DSDD controllers by tuning this.)

 

I finally know what hard- and soft-sectored mean. I have not seen one labeled as such since Apple ][ days in 1981.