I finally assembled all the pieces I needed to get an 8" Shugart talking to my iMac. It includes DBit's FDADAP and FDDC, and Device Side Data's FC5025 adapter. What's that you say? Video or it didn't happen? Fair enough:
That would be a sight to behold, for sure. Hooking it up to an adapter that writes (Catweasel, etc) would enable that. The FC5025 is read-only, which suits my needs fine... plus it plugs in via USB.
Interesting, since the FC5025 page claims it is not designed for / supposed to work with 8 inch drives. Thanks!
Now all I need to do is find a 8 inch drive in my neck of the woods...
Yeah, exactly so. The DBit FDADAP adapter basically makes the 50-pin Shugart connection appear as a 34-pin 5-1/4" interface, so the FC5025 doesn't know what it's actually talking to. But I've also successfully hooked the FC5025 to a 3-1/2" drive and read 720KB and 1.4MB disks. All I had to do was write the driver software. ;-)