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Another floppy simulator

Chuck,

Just contact him - PM even. If he can, it may save you a lot of effort, so you can do all the other things you are doing so well.

At least he will have a " credible number " to try to shoot for.

Hey, I think $300 is high too, but for his market - that is a no brainer to keep production out the door for many businesses - anyone in production like me knows it is the bottom line - " how did we run the line last night ? " I did third shift it was "fun" [? - let us just say different !]

I am just the middle person here - I have no agendas - just fostering our vintage computer hobby !

Thanks for the reply ! [yea, I like exclamation points and quotes - lots of quotes ! - I have not mastered the emoticons and all that stuff - I am an oldtimer - as we call ourselves around here - " the OFBG " = the old fat bald guys ! Lot to learn in so many ways - too bad we only get one life to do it - got to clone ourselves like our spare hard drives.

All the best !

Frank
 
Chuck(G) said:
If anyone thinks this should be carried further and wants to work on this with me, I'll make the code available as well as the design. I can't see why this couldn't be rolled out for a fraction of the cost of comparable solutions.
Click to expand...

Giving this a bump. You guys here DO realize that this is the ultimate PC-compatible enthusiast's dream, don't you? FULL non-protected floppy emulation on a SD card for under $25? Chuck's looking for community support to turn this into a community project.. anyone with the skills up for it?

I don't have the hardware or software experience, but I can build one and do proto testing, and/or could contribute money to the project.
 
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I'll give a me too on what Mav said. I am a great solderer with plenty of circuit board assembly work behind me. Just let me know if I can be of help.
 
I also cannot help much with the code or the PCB design, but I can test prototypes.

Giving it some thought I think the following points might be worth considering:

It should be mountable in at least a 3.5" bay, with the SD card slot on the front and the interface connector on the back. My idea is that it becomes a drop in replacement for a 3.5" floppy drive.

I think the image selection should be handled through some sort of physical switch on the front. Maybe an 3 position LCD with a set of push button that allows us to specify the image number and use the extension as the marker for the image (ie blahblah.000 - blahblah.999). I am thinking you really don't need more than 1000 images since managing these would be a huge pain, and 1000 1.44mb images would fit nicely on a 2gb card.

Outside of these things I think Chuck's design is pretty good. I personally love the fact that I could simply manage my floppy images this way and get rid of the legacy (fail prone) drives.

MFM Emulation would be nice, but with the XT-IDE available I don't think it is all that necessary.
 
@lutiana: Bear in mind that this is a prototype built for functionality, proof-of-concept, and price point only. Full software interface and functionality, installation considerations, etc wasn't in the prototype design, and (I am assuming) why Chuck was looking for community support.

Also, I agree that an LCD and push-buttons might be nice, but uh... that would really drive up the price. And except in the case of a booter diskette, would be superfluous so long as the software interface was well-designed.
 
The cost of an LCD display adds $5-10 in parts, depending on the display. Rather than push-buttons, I'd go for another buck or two and use a rotary encoder to select an image.

Other suggestions welcome, however. Maybe I've overlooked something.
 
Maverick1978 said:
Bear in mind that this is a prototype built for functionality, proof-of-concept, and price point only.
Click to expand...

Yep, I got that. My suggestions are mostly design oriented and final product goal oriented. I think Chuck(G) has definitely proven that this is feasible and would work fine.

Maverick1978 said:
And except in the case of a booter diskette, would be superfluous so long as the software interface was well-designed.
Click to expand...

But this would require hooking the thing up to the PC's serial port and you would need an OS on the thing to begin with (either via a HDD or other floppy drive). This would also be problematic if you were installing something from multiple disks, you would have to exit the installer to switch disks, rather than simply flipping a switch or turning a dial.

I suggested a LCD though I realize now what I was actually thinking was some sort of 3 digit 7 segment display.
 
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Chuck(G) said:
The cost of an LCD display adds $5-10 in parts, depending on the display.
Click to expand...

Personally I'd be ok with the increase for nice clear readable display that shows the image number loaded, but I understand that we want to keep this as cheap as possible.

This one from Jameco is only $2.49, and this push switch is only $0.69 ea adding about $3.87 to the total. Would the ATMega162 or the PIC32 be able to drive the segmented display directly or would more parts be needed to do so?

Actually come to think of it, what is a reasonable number of images you think people will want to store on this thing? That would give us an idea on what kind of selection system we may need on it.

Chuck(G) said:
It selects the appropriate drive emulation based on the image size.
Click to expand...

So if I have a 1.44mb image and a 360k image on the card with the BIOS is expecting a 1.44mb drive and I select the 360kb image what happens? What about the reverse (BIOS Expects a 360kb drive and I select the 1.44mb image)?
 
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Well, there is this display and you can't beat the price--interface can be 4 wire (total of 7), so not too bad.

The "auto-size" might not be a good idea--it behaves exactly as changing a floppy drive would behave. The data rate changes automatically, as does the number of cylinders. Consider the way a 1.44M drive works--you can insert DD or HD media in it and the only thing that changes is the data rate. I'll admit that this could be a problem if you are using this thing with, say, a 5150 or 5160 that has no high data rate support. But the situation would be no different than sticking a high-density 5.25" in a 360K drive and controller.

Note that we do not support formatting--the data is taken from the file and encoded directly, with sector layout synthesized according to standard DOS formats. So there's no issue with the controller telling the drive what it expects--it can't.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Note that we do not support formatting
Click to expand...

Understandable. With it being image based there would be no need to do so, just have a blank image.

I don't think we need a full on LCD like that, though I admit it is very cool and it is a great price. I have my doubts about integrating something into the design that may or may not be available at a later date.
 
Well, the interface is a standard KS0066 interface, so even if an exact dimensionally-correct display isn't available, there are plenty of others with the same family of controller.
 
oh, that looks awesome, Chuck! i would buy a kit. could be extremely handy for my 8088 and 286 systems. good work, seriously. that board looks almost too simple, very tight design.
 
Mike, in its present form it could be a kit, but using DIP ICs means that there's actually too much there! I could get rid of the SRAM and the latch chips, essentially leaving the µC and the buffer and the TO-92 voltage regulator, if I went to a SMT package. But kit builders don't handle SMT very well, particularly the fine-pitch (0.5mm) packages.

A lot to think about...
 
Just checking in, Chuck... Anything new on this front? Are you still contemplating a redesign, or are you happy with things as they are? I'd love to hear that some community people have jumped on-board, but I think that's doubtful. Too many of us without design/software experience :(
 
I haven't done much with this lately. I'm still torn about those folks who want to build it themselves (use DIP) or want it pre-built (use SMT).

What do you think?
 
What if you used something like this screwed to a 3.5" PCB in 6 locations to provide 2 mounting holes on each side and 2 on the front for a drive bay face-plate from www.frontpanelexpress.com. You could add some board mounted RA LEDs, push buttons, SD card slot, etc to the front. Alternatively you could use a pre-assembled bay kit from somewhere like crystalfontz and keep the SD card internally. Just be able to select the image you want from a nice LCD.

Dunno.
 
I don't feel comfortable using a PCB for mechanical support. OTOH, securing it to a U-shaped piece of metal to fit in a bay might be practical--you'd need some nylon standoffs and maybe a single screw to stabilize the board.

Small LCDs are very cheap now, so that's definitely a possibility. You'd want buttons for write-protect, image selection (how many is enough?). The faceplate would be the awkward part.

It's always the little things that get ya.
 
I think that in order to be successful on the community/kit front, it would need to be DIY. SMT, for most people, is impractical, which is unfortunate. So if you went SMT, it would almost require that there be someone to solder it together (at least the main chip).

I think that I'm a relatively good example: I could do through-hole with little trouble, but I've never done SMT and would have trouble with it if the pitch was too small to hand-solder. (Unlike many, I have the equipment to do SMT, but haven't had the time to really dive into it.)

For this particular project... if you went to a PIC32 and JTAG...I'd certainly be willing to try. Though I guess that means picking up a $20 tube of solder paste to put that SMD rework station to use :)

So far as the buttons or rotary switch or whatever... I'm ambivalent about that. To me, it would be redundant to the software, and I would probably just use the software anyway. I mean, if we put on a 1gb SD card, that's going to hold what? 500 or so floppy images, EASILY? Who would want to press a button or turn a switch that many times? (I'm assuming it to be ) Far easier to program the software to use long file names and pick it from a menu, even if that's just to switch floppy images.
 
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