Amiga floppy project

[kamiga]

Thought everyone might like to know that I'm building a small hardware device that sits in between a Windows PC and a regular amiga external floppy drive.  Essentially an external USB amiga floppy drive controller.

Attach the device to a PC via USB, run some custom softwarewithin Windows, stick a disk into the floppy drive, and after some time the software spits out an .ADF.  Useful for archiving and emulator reasons with non-copy-protected stuff.  I'm not adverse to adding support for other formats in the future, once I have stable working version.

This project is ongoing, and is certainly not finished. I've made significant progress on the project, and what needs done now is to automate the entire process.  Right now, I can grab a single track at a time.  I have
to add drive-control routines to cause the drive to step, change heads, etc.

This project is loosely based on Marco Veneri's 1997 Amiga Floppy Reader(afr) which uses a 555-timer IC.  The hardware(and firmware) is entirely my own creation.  The current version of the software is a modified version of Veneri's original C source.

Hardware is made up of a Parallax SX microcontroller, Ramtron FRAM, and a Parallax implementation of an FTDI USB chip.

High-level overview

Amiga floppy project blog

I also put an image of it up in the image gallery here, but I'm not sure when it will be available.

Thanks.

[kamiga]

xeron wrote:
Would it be possible, with appropriate drivers, to attach this device to an AmigaOne via USB, and have it act like a standard Amiga drive?

IE place an Amiga disk in the drive, and it pops up on Workbench?

Well, assuming there was driver support for AmigaOne(there isn't), perhaps.  But my device is really designed for track by track transfer of data to the USB host.  So there'd have to be some level of conversion taking place there.

I will say that I'm designing the unit to be fairly OS independent.  There are restrictions on driver support for the FTDI USB chip, but it does support Windows, Mac 8/9/OSX, and Linux.  The interaction between the PC host and the device is very very very simple.  One letter commands.  You could even use hyperterminal, procomm, etc to communicate with it.

I've just recently thought about Java(PC code is now straight C), but that brings a host of issues to the table that I'm just not ready to think about.

[kamiga]

Oliver wrote:
Hi,

Cool project.  What are your intentions for it in the longrun?

I don't know!

My main current goal is to archive my amiga floppy collection.  I have about 2000 disks +/- from over the years, and I want to archive them.  At least the non-copy-protected ones.... Assuming they are still intact.  That's really been my impetus in building it.  I also wanted to learn and play with microcontrollers and general electronics, so it's sort of the journey, not really the destination.

I think it would be fun to integrate it into UAE, where one can access their floppy collection directly from a PC running the emulator.  That's really down the road, and I just simply don't know what's possible.  Certainly once you convert the disks to .ADF's, it's easy enough to load them.

I think as time passes on, amiga external drives will become more and more rare, so support for modified PC drives will become important.

This is really designed as a free open source DIY project, and once I get a stable fully-working version of it, I'm going to let the community decide where it goes.  Honestly, I'm not sure if this will ever be practical to build.  Like I suppose most hobby projects, buying a finished product might always be the quickest, fastest, most cost-effective method......

Although I will say that I really like the fact that it's USB.  Very modern, current, and fits in with products that are shipping today.  Cards and parallel port devices are soooo 90's

I guess some sort of advanced disk recovery routines would be a prudent feature down the road......

[kamiga]

Let's see.  By trade, I do networking stuff. Cisco routers, switches, firewalls, wireless.  I'm an ethernet junky.

I have been programming forever, mostly self-taught, started young with BASIC on the TI-99/4A, TRS-80, graduated to C on the Amiga, and now do C/C++ stuff, java, limited html, some assembly(windows disassembly, and now SX microcontrollers), etc.  I'm just about to finish up a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science.

Regarding electronics, I have forever played with those Radio Shack kits, built little hobby projects, tore apart pieces of equipment, a little HAM radio stuff thrown in for good measure.  I have zero real training in electronics, so this has been a challenge for me.  I've read a couple books and absorbed what I could.

I've always been a hacker of one sort or another, taking apart stuff to see how ticks, modifying executable code so programs work the way I want them to, porting software, etc.

This project has really been rewarding to me.  It's nice to say, "Hey, I need something that does X" --- and then be able to produce it, instead of waiting for a company to sell it.  Parallax, the company that produces the SX microcontroller that my project is based on, is really a superb company.  $100 kit gets you developing with everything you need including cables, power supplies, eval board, chips, software, etc.  Their support is top notch --- which you generally don't need because their user forums have some smart people participating.

Another thing that is challenging is that it's 2006.  Most of the original commodore developers have forgot how this stuff works, books go out of print, and just general real detailed expertise is hard to come by.  I would imagine I'm one of perhaps six people who are reachable online who understand this down to the lowest levels.  Certainly the catweasel guy, and softpres guys....