Floppy troubles - the final solution?

[kolla]

I have a whole bunch of amigas that I from time to time like to fiddle with, just for the heck of it :-)

Lately though, I've been struggling with floppies. It is not the floppies that is the problem, but the drives - despite cleaning efforts and despite having a couple of kylwalda controllers, and catweasels (1 amiga and 2 PC), I now struggle to find working floppy drives, both amiga and PC drives. This would not be so bad if it wasnt for the fact that amiga machines _need_ them in order to bootstrap installation.

I know I can plug the harddrives into PCs and install them from UAE, but it isnt really convenient. What I really miss is a floppy drive emulator using memory card, that can replace the floppy drives. I know people have been working on such projects, but did anything ever materialize into something ... buyable?

Ideally it should ofcourse be able to emulate all 4 drives in one go :-)

[don27dog]

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=106

[amigaksi]

If you have a PC with a parallel port >1MB/second like Toshiba 4060CDT/4080XCDT, Compaq Armada, Dell Optiplex, etc., you can try this out:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320314504459

It simulates any of the drives-- DF0:, DF1:, DF2:, or DF3:.

Currently, you can only select two of the four drives, but I may update the software soon to support all four drives simultaneously (if there's enough use for that feature).

Can you give example of some software that needs 3 or 4 drives simultaneously?  Perhaps, I can get it for testing.

[darksun9210]

got any you tube footage of it working?

[amigaksi]

No, I have not played around with making YouTube videos.  But I think some other people have made videos or wrote their success stories about it.  Here's one link:

http://www.stone-oakvalley-studios.com/wordp_blog/?page_id=159


If you need some utility to measure your parallel port speed, let me know as that could be the only thing that can stop it from working properly.  You'll have problems with USB->Parallel port converters as these don't allow real-time signal changes (at exact intervals) at the bandwidth required.  At least this was the case with earlier USB->parallel converters.