New Smaller HxC SD Card Floppy Emulator Preorder

[Darrin]

Please dont missunderstand me, every new hardware gadget i see released for the Amiga is a really great thing. But i simply dont see the point of paying 60 UKP for this new sd interface, when you can get an ide to sd interface for less than 10 UKP. I know it is not the same because it connects as a floppy drive, but then ide interfaces on any amiga, are cheaper and more versatile.
Perhaps i am not getting it. Could someone please explain the great benefit for the Amiga, other than a cool gadget?
Please be kind, as i am genuinely intrigued.

Because as you mention, this isn't designed to use a SD card as a hard drive, but to do away with the need for old 3.5" floppy disks and use ADF images as if they were floppy disks instead.

This is why I'm such a big fan of the Minimig, because I can use ADF copies of my old, degrading floppy disks or look online for an ADF for a floppy that has already failed.

Anyone who owns a real Amiga and has faced repeated read errors from floppy disks will appreciate this little gadget.

I'm very tempted to order a couple for my "real" Amigas.

Those $10 SD card IDE devices can't do what this does and never will.

[Darrin]

According to the specification sheet the HxC Floppy Emulator doesn't support writing for Amiga disks. With this in mind I could see a use for this for my other computers and maybe for installing things from floppy images onto hard drive on Amiga. Other than that...

I thought it was the USB one that connects to a PC that doesn't allow the write function...

From the spec sheet:

Here are the main features of the SDCard HxC Floppy Emulator:

Hardware/software specifications:

- 40Mhz PIC18F4525/PIC18F4620 based.

- Read/Write support:
Track mode based floppy emulator (Full track pre-encoded in the image file)
>Read support: Most of existing formats (FM/MFM/Amiga track...) supported. Custom tracks supported.
>Write support: ISO MFM 256/512/1024Bytes sector write supported.


Whereas this is the USB one which is NOT the device being offered on eBay:

Here are the main features of the USB HxC Floppy Emulator:

Hardware specification:

- Read only Floppy emulator (SD,DD,HD & ED mode)
- USB 1.1 device interface (based on the FTDI FT245.).

[Darrin]

now as updated description says: Write support not available on Amiga computers!

Doh!  Well that stops me odering then.

Cheers.