Floppy emulator

[Darrin]

This is the first I've heard about this project (I must have had my head burried in the sand) and it sounds great.  You can mark me down as a potential customer.  I certainly wouldn't mind 2 units for my A2000, 2 for my A3000 (which has some really iffy drives that keep "forgetting" they have floppies inserted) and one in a formfactor that allows it to fit into a 5.25" drive bay for use as DF1 with an A1200 tower.

Great work.   :-)

[Darrin]

tnt23 wrote:
The PCB is more or less exactly the size of a real FDD. The mounting holes, unfortunately, do not match. The whole thing will fit into 5.25" bay, only the LCD and the buttons will be hard to use The LCD is 48mm tall, probably it can be desoldered from the PCB and hacked into 5.25" bay plastic panel along with buttons. (if that plastic panel is wide enough)

Thanks for that info.  We're all used to having "ugly hacks" hanging out of our Amigas.  A few tie-wraps, some duct tape and a little extra wiring and it will look perfect.   :-D

[Darrin]

tnt23 wrote:The LCD and buttons are mostly for convenient browsing through flash card contents, like this:
http://milliways.chance.ru/~tnt23/pics/misc/IMG_0246.JPG

Different buttons mapping and alternative GUI is possible, although somewhat time consuming to build.

That picture looks great.  How is the LCD attached to the card?  I'm wondering if the screen itself can be mounted in various places while the drive itself is stashed inside the Amiga's casing and then linked via a long cable.

For an A1200, a small hole could be drilled up from the underside and the screen mounted either directly above the power/drive lights or on the "grill" behind the lights.  On big box amigas, in could be mounted onto a flat plastic cover over the drive bay (and similar for towered Amigas).

Attaching the buttons via wire to connectors on the mobo would help too, or at least having additional headers by the buttons to run optional extended buttons would help.  

[Darrin]

tnt23 wrote:
@arnljot

A separate board for LCD and buttons certainly can be designed. Mounting holes will definitely be moved to right places in the future, this will require components and routing rearrangements to be made.

I think that if you build it that way then it will help to keep the costs down as one design will fit all needs.  The same boards can be subsituted into all model Amigas with either a custom faceplate or holes added as required (or a simple box and PSU for an external drive).

If you do any sort of production run then please let me know.   :-)

[Darrin]

alexh wrote:
I still feel there is a commercial opportunity here.

If the board was made so that it was the same size as a floppy disk drive, with the screw holes in the right places so that it could fit internally, with the controller button in the same place as the eject button it would be great.

Well I'd certainly buy at least one for my A1200T, my A3000 and my A2000.  My A3000 drives definately have problems "remembering" that they actually have a disk inserted at times.