Floppy emulator

[alenppc]

 I have just finished reading this whole thread... I must admit that this project looks awesome. :-)

I have a few questions though.

1) How do you interface the card with different computers? For instance, the connector pinout of the floppy interface is slightly different on the PC and Amiga for example. How does the card know which kind of a computer it is connected to? Is this all selectable through software, or is there a jumper of some kind?

2) For the buffer, I guess you just use a 4 MB simm, right? what if you haven't got a 4 MB simm, would the interface work with (e.g.) an 8 MB one? Also are there any limitations on the type of SIMMs you can use (FPM/EDO/Buffered...)?


3) A question for alexh: you mentioned a "default boot image (dual-format) coded for the Amiga/ST". How can you create a single image that is bootable on both Amiga and the ST?? :-? That doesn't sound right...

[alenppc]

alexh wrote:

Where have you been for the last 18 years?

There were 10's of games with DualFormat disks and 100's of Magazine coverdisks.

Lethal Xcess,
Monster Business,
Starglider 2,
Stunt Car Racer,
Bionic Commando,
3D-Pool,
Carrier Command,
Indiana Jones,
Zero Magazine,
ST-Amiga Format Magazine
"The One For 16-bit games" Magazine
etc. etc.

Rick Dangerous II is Tri-Format supporting Atari-ST, Amiga and PC on one disk!

The technique I *think* was discovered and utilised mainly by "Rob Northen Computing" but it may have been simultaneously developed elsewhere.

I admit I never ever heard of this feature before. :-o But how is it possible? The file systems are completely incompatible, so how do you create a multi-filesystem disk?? And if you use a non-dos encoding for the Amiga, then surely the bootblock won't be read by any other machine... non-dos disks are not supported on MS-DOS and I would suspect Atari either (but not sure about this one).

[alenppc]

JJ wrote:
Small games that three different versions fit on one disk.  They would be non-dos disks so the filesystem does not matter as they would be cutom and handled by the bootloader

As I wrote above "And if you use a non-dos encoding for the Amiga, then surely the bootblock won't be read by any other machine... non-dos disks are not supported on MS-DOS and I would suspect Atari either (but not sure about this one)."  ;-)

Well, I will definitely have to look into this...