Floppy emulator

[easy_john]

I act in a role of a tester of the floppy emulator 'megadrive' from tnt23.
I confirm, that work goes by accelerated tempo, for last month tnt23 has let out about seven versions of updatings, and some times it was necessary to solder some contacts.
By the current moment the basic modes work on a1200, and correctly works with dos diskettes. Gradually the same comes to life the rest.

That represents megadrive at me (tnt23 will probably do on another, it that has made with it)

On controller board: floppy and power connector, SD cardreader, IDE connector (megadrive is able to read images and from SD, and from IDE  hard drives, or CF on CF2IDE adapter), speaker (emulates a sound of the disk drive)

I have transferred the display and buttons on a separate board, for convenience of management. It looks here so:

As on pad I plan to transfer led of ide/sd/floppy activity.

Possibly later I shall place it inside of any old gamepad or something similar.

The board is located inside of the case, pad remains outside, it is not required changes of the case.

For storage or movemen pad it is easily disconnected, the cable can be hidden inside of the case.


Screenshots during work:

[easy_john]

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?

Connector on PC and Amiga identical, the difference in signals was processed in software.
At this time there is a menu item to switch. but it may changed many times to the release.

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...)?
At this time Megadrive use only about 2.5 MB ram, so any simm that more 3MB are okay.

[easy_john]

For the people willing to use it in big box Amigas, it's a simple matter of move the display and buttons to a front panel, maybe in a 5 1/4" fascia.

Now it is a problem.
The height of the display is more than height 5.25 drive bay.
Now we argue with tnt23 on how should look his "megadrive".
It suggests to do its built in, and to do holes in Amiga case.
I approve, that it is necessary to do so, that the device would be possible to add and to remove simply, without changes of the case, i.e. to be only used floppy slot (for card reader) and eject button hole (to connect external pad).

[easy_john]

It work very well to me.
Read all dos and non dos from .adf images.
Write to .mfm images (save games, temp files, etc)
Work good in my 600/1200, and with 4000 (only in external box at this time).