• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

5.25 floppy on USB.

Hmmm, I guess I'll have to dig some of the old games up; One on One, Pyroto,... I only played them when I was working on SIMCGA; I found them boring.

How about OTHELLO on a green and characol gray checkerboard - 5.25 version, of course . . .
 
lol, well for example SimCity, tetris, pacman, space invaders, the newer game ZZT from 1991 also works on an 8088 (and it is in text mode). :)

Of course it is better to have an EGA or VGA card in your IBM PC instead of CGA, since EGA colors were a lot better. :) There are several 8 bit ISA VGA cards on ebay right now. My 5150 is in storage right now, but when I get it out again (or buy another, since technically it is my dad's 5150, he bought it in 1982 when I was 4), I plan on putting one of those VGA cards in it. :)

--Brian
 
I have to wonder wouldn't it be relatively simple nowadays to just program an Arduino (or similar device) with the proper supporting hardware to act as a controller/interface for a floppy drive? I mean all the documentation on how to control a floppy drive is available isn't it? For the sake of simplicity you could probably use a set of jumpers to designate the type of drive attached to the unit (360k, 720k, 1.2Mb, 1.44Mb, 2.88Mb, etc...), then it's just a matter of having the programming in the Arduino make the necessary changes to a series of variables (#sides, HiDensity y/n, #sectors, etc...), then initiate the read or write process (of course media detection for the specific drive type would have to be taken into account as well, to allow for reading 360k diskettes in 1.2Mb drives and 720K diskettes in 1.44Mb drives or 2.88Mb drives and of course 1.44Mb diskettes in 2.88Mb drives even). Of course I myself don't know enough about programming to undertake something of this magnitude I just thought it might be a relatively simple way to address the need for a way to connect floppy drives externally to newer computers.
 
Last edited:
[..]I'd actually like to find a way to hook up an 8" drive in a similar way. I'm thinking that with a microcontroller and a better understanding of how the floppies work, though, it should be very possible to create a usb-interfaced floppy controller that would work.[..]
When or if the Kryoflux folks get their write support working you could have that USB read/write floppy interface. It's based on an Olimex microcontroller (not sure if it's using ARM or AVR or what). Combine it with a DBIT interface and you have 8" support too. I have both interfaces but as I'm only (as of now, at least) interested in the reading part I'm only following the write support development out of the corner of my eye.

-Tor
 
lol, well for example SimCity, tetris, pacman, space invaders, the newer game ZZT from 1991 also works on an 8088 (and it is in text mode). :)

Of course it is better to have an EGA or VGA card in your IBM PC instead of CGA, since EGA colors were a lot better. :) There are several 8 bit ISA VGA cards on ebay right now. My 5150 is in storage right now, but when I get it out again (or buy another, since technically it is my dad's 5150, he bought it in 1982 when I was 4), I plan on putting one of those VGA cards in it. :)

--Brian

BTW - I have version of SPACE INVADERS done from the ground up in BASIC by a fellow from GB. You can even coax sound out of it. I compiled it with QB4.5 and its a lot of fun. Open source so if anyone would like it, let me know.
 
Back
Top