The USB Floppys have a extremly cut down controller which is missing ability for low level access. So the answer is no. My Acer TM312T has a external parallel port Disc drive, and it can read and write Coupé Discs, only because the BIOS. It would be possible to make a USB Floppy which can use SAM discs, but not in a standard way. And it would also need new drivers.
2011/4/5 <war...@wdlee.co.uk> > Just as a side issue, with regards to Sim Coupe... (sorry for the quick > change of topic!) > > This is probably a daft question, as I think I've read about the issue > elsewhere, so forgive me... but is there no way to read/write to external > USB floppy drives? Just thinking of my own case, and others are probably > similar, where I use my laptop 99.9% of the time these days (and of course > modern laptops don't have a built-in floppy drive. > > Not to mention, there are increasingly fewer desktop systems that include > floppy drives these days anyway, so even people using desktops are > increasingly likely to find it easier using external plug-in drives. > > Is it a complete impossibility? ;-) > > Quoting Simon Owen <simon.o...@simcoupe.org>: > > >> On 4 Apr 2011, at 16:02, Simon Cooke wrote: >> >> If SimCoupe uses rdtsc without setting the CPU thread affinity, there are >>> issues on some systems where it loses track when the thread is scheduled >>> onto another CPU core. Usually a bios update can fix this, or switching to >>> use QueryPerformanceCounter. >>> >> >> It did use QPC, but only for sub-system profiling within the emulator. >> That was becoming increasingly meaningless with multi-core systems, so I >> stripped it out a couple of months back! Knowing the running speed and the >> framerate should be more than enough for most users. >> >> I remember taking special care of the issue in my floppy driver, where >> even kernel QPC could use up using different timestamps on some systems. >> There were fix utilities available to forcibly sync them, and I believe >> modern systems should use more reliable time sources. Nasty stuff though! >> >> Si >> >> >> > > >
