Pc fdd

[trekiej]

Hello.
I saw on cloanto web site that someone could use two PC FDD to read Amiga disks.
I copies the contents to the second drive and is read only.
Has anyone used this before?

Also, it talks about using a parallel port FDD an has a link.
Again, has anyone used this before?

Before I close, can Cross Dos access a PC FDD from emulation to read/write 1.44 MB disks?

[spirantho]

There's very little point in messing around with two PC floppies these days - just use a KryoFlux (or a Catweasel if you can find one). You'll get better results, and it's a lot more convenient.
Parallel ports will not work with Amiga disks - the disk controllers are on the device, and they can't read Amiga floppies at all.
CrossDOS will happily read 1.44MB floppies, or you can use PC-Task with its own handler. Not terribly fast, but it works!

[freqmax]

Asfaik, a fast pulse timer on the Parallell port can be used to read floppies, including Amiga ones. But you have to do serious bitbanging.

Connect floppy RD to parallell port STROBE and then count the number of nanoseconds between pulses edges. Which will translate into MFM coding wich translates to bytes..

[Jope]

Hello.
I saw on cloanto web site that someone could use two PC FDD to read Amiga disks.

Indeed.

I copies the contents to the second drive

This is not how it works. Instead it starts both drives, starts reading from one drive that has a formatted PC disk in it, then in the middle of the read, it switches the select to the second drive that has your Amiga disk in it and the PC controller is fooled and it gets the track's contents out after several revolutions of the disk.

and is read only.

Indeed.

Has anyone used this before?

Yes. You need an older motherboard. Around the early 2000s the floppy controllers stopped supporting second drives. If your BIOS setup can configure two drives, there is a chance that the select signals for two drives are also present on the motherboard.

Before I close, can Cross Dos access a PC FDD from emulation to read/write 1.44 MB disks?

What are you trying to do? Run Cross Dos inside WinUAE? No point in that. There are easier ways of getting data inside the emulated Amiga, such as adding a PC directory as a hard drive.

Unless you happen to have an old PC motherboard and two floppy drives available, don't waste any time or money trying to hunt down a suitable setup. Like Spirantho said, get a Kryoflux instead and you will get reliable results.

[trekiej]

@Jope
I just want to access a PC FDD with Amiga/UAE.

[Matt_H]

UAE can only handle real floppies with a Catweasel.

[trekiej]

Back to square one.

[freqmax]

Write a driver and make use of the parallell port "_STROBE" signal.

[trekiej]

I am going to get my PC manual this weekend and see if I can get back into c or c++.
The link on Cloanto site uses a 555 cmos timer.
edit:
http://afr.back2roots.org/

[fishy_fiz]

The 2 drive method works fine. I made adf images of quite a few amiga floppies this way. Somewhat cheaper than a Catweasel/Kyroflux too, although not as flexible.

If you just want to use a pcs floppy drive through UAE though why not just mount it as a harddrive/removable media?

[trekiej]

Sounds good.