The USB-to-1541 interface is really no different than the parport-to-1541 interfaces, other than they use different hardware-level drivers to talk to the C= 1541.
All of the later CBM floppy drives are (as mentioned) "intelligent peripherals". They are nothing short of computerized appliances, controlled via the CBM IEC serial buss. Your average C= 1541 has the equivalent compute power of a VIC-20.. but dedicated to floppy drive control and access. It may, in fact, be possible - with custom ROMs - to use the 1541 for other formats. But it's telling that no one, so far as I know, has ever managed to create software to 'tween the various 5-1/4" floppy formats, using the 1541 transport & hardware. On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 8:43 PM, Cameron Kaiser <spec...@floodgap.com> wrote: > > A fellow has made up a nice adapter to read and write Commodore disks on > > a PC via USB using a 1541 drive. > > > > The thing that jumped out at me is that this is a 5 1/4" drive that > > reads and writes via USB. Anyone want to comment on whether the > > floppies it accesses would be useful other than on the C64? > > Could one do say 360K floppies via this hardware for other than the > > Commodore? At least part of the work is done to do more than just > > archival like Catweasel, et. al. do, in that it can also write. > > The X*1541 cables (this would be an xum1541) still talk to the drives at a > relatively high level, since the 1541/71/81 family are all intelligent > peripherals. So: > > For the 1541, which is strictly Commodore GCR, no. > > For the 1571, which can do a variety of MFM formats, maybe, but I'm not > aware that OpenCBM supports that. On the other hand, since it's MFM, you > could easily just use something else. > > -- > ------------------------------------ personal: > http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- > Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * > ckai...@floodgap.com > -- Diamonds are forever. > ------------------------------------------------------ >