(a bit offtopic, sorry..)
I noticed that most newer motherboards lack floppy drive connector. most will simply buy USB floppy, but I presume that cannot work for 3" drives?
Probably not! Even if you manage to replace the 3.5" drive in a USB floppy unit with a 3" drive, the protocol used for USB floppy drives would limit you to standard 9-sector +3 format only.
My main PC no longer has a floppy controller either, after I upgraded it last year. I do still have a mini-ITX second PC that does include one, and even supports 2 drives on the same controller (also rare now). Do you have an old space PC you could use instead?
Longer term there will be a move towards low-level USB floppy boards like KryoFlux and DiscFerret, which are a lot more flexible in what they can read and write. The software is still fairly basic and the hardware isn't exactly cheap, but both should improve.
perhaps there's a niche for a USB attached floppy controller for anyone who needs low level control of the FDC but not down to the actual drive signals level like the expensive units.
I expect it would be a very small niche though :)
Probably a DIY schematic...
You'd have to write a new driver for it, and it wouldn't work with any of the existing floppy tools. We need something that adds a floppy controller at the normal I/O locations, so it's picked up as normal. I'm not sure if you can do that with a PCI device, but even then it's probably beyond a homebrew project!
You'd have to write a new driver for it, and it wouldn't work with any of the existing floppy tools. We need something that adds a floppy controller at the normal I/O locations, so it's picked up as normal. I'm not sure if you can do that with a PCI device, but even then it's probably beyond a homebrew project!
It then becomes expensive and pointless really, especially as that'd basically restrict it to desktops only.
The point would be to have a driver library that presented an interface that emulators and disk utilities could use instead of looking for a floppy disk controller.
Indeed, I have a few old motherboards in reserve with various CPUs and chipsets for these sort of jobs. i486, pentium 233, amd k6, etc.
A lot of people don't have old junk still lying around though :)
(then again, you only need to make disks if you have old sinclair [strike]junk[/strike] valuable old computers too... so maybe it's not that big an issue) :-)
Comments
My main PC no longer has a floppy controller either, after I upgraded it last year. I do still have a mini-ITX second PC that does include one, and even supports 2 drives on the same controller (also rare now). Do you have an old space PC you could use instead?
Longer term there will be a move towards low-level USB floppy boards like KryoFlux and DiscFerret, which are a lot more flexible in what they can read and write. The software is still fairly basic and the hardware isn't exactly cheap, but both should improve.
I expect it would be a very small niche though :)
Probably a DIY schematic...
It then becomes expensive and pointless really, especially as that'd basically restrict it to desktops only.
The point would be to have a driver library that presented an interface that emulators and disk utilities could use instead of looking for a floppy disk controller.
I use a old Pentium 166MMX to read 3" disks.
Indeed, I have a few old motherboards in reserve with various CPUs and chipsets for these sort of jobs. i486, pentium 233, amd k6, etc.
A lot of people don't have old junk still lying around though :)
(then again, you only need to make disks if you have old sinclair [strike]junk[/strike] valuable old computers too... so maybe it's not that big an issue) :-)