Similarly, he could buy a cheap external USB 3.5" drive. Write content to
that drive on the modern machine, and read those floppies on the older
machines. The readily avaailable one have firmware that only supports
720K, 1.4M, and [sometimes] NEC-style "mode 3".
On Wed, 17 May 2023, Tony Duell wrote:
I have one but AFAIK it only supports 1.4M. A format that few of my
other machines support.
Have they stopped making ones that include 720K?
That's something that almost all of your MFM machines could be coerced
into handling.
I get the implication that he is considering USB flux-transition devices
that could be coerced into acting as a general purpose floppy controller.
I am not adequately familiar with them.
Last time that I tried to research it, I found that there had once been an
external drive in which the USB and controller werenot integrated with the
drive electronics, so that it could easily get a different drive
connected. It is, of course, not available anywhere.
I also saw a datasheet for a chip that was a USB floppy controller! It
also does not seem to be available.
But, that seems to now be the direction that flux transition devices are
heading!
EXACTLY! I was told that was the best solution for this sort of thing.
Are there any downsides to doing it that way?
If I do go that route, what are the options? I have no knowledge of
them and thus no preference for one over another
As I said at the start I am clueless about this. I really need
somebody to talk me through it, what to get, what to build, what to
download etc.
In the earlier days of the flux transition devices, I found it frustrating
that many people talking about them would list "formats that it can
handle", but fail to differentiate, and maybe not even know, the
difference between creating an image that could be used for re-creating a
copy, VS producing a collection of sectors, VS understanding the file
systems to be able to extract files. As you know, my work in the 1980s
and 1990s was in parsing alien file systems, and transferring files with
simple INT13h sector reading.
From what I've heard, there has been substantial progress on the flux
transition devices, with decoding the track to sectors, and even support
of some file systems!
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
