Re: USB 5.25" floppy drives

Been wanting one for years, and it's been discussed here before. By all means I'd like to see one developed, ideally one that could be built by a user from plans or for which a kit was available.

Because I do not see this as a "quantity one" project, I'd prefer that you use modern parts available in quantity. There are off-the-shelf single chip USB to floppy ICs; they were intended primarily for 3.5" drives but their design is sufficiently flexible to support a 5.25" drive, although the design would be more complex (and would require external firmware .... which at least some of them can support).

What I really would like to see is a USB to {all mode} floppy interface board; with 3 connectors, 8" (YES, 8-INCH), 5.25" (possibly two separate connectors for 360k and 1.2MB) and 3.5" (I know that, in theory, a single 34-pin connector could handle all 3.5" and 5.25" drives, but it might be easier to use separate connectors (or it might not make much of a difference)).

A piece of this that you are missing is the software to run on the PC that this thing plugs into. In a perfect world, it would allow arbitrary track/sector access and even formatting, but would also support DOS file transfer when using 8" SSSD CP/M media and 3.5" PC formats. For 5.25", it would be ideal to have some kind of table driven (thus easily modifiable) 5.25" CP/M format support that would then permit file transfer.


David Knoll wrote:
I've just had an idea about connecting 5.25" floppy drives to USB, may or may not have been done before. It's been suggested to adapt a 3.5" USB drive but ones where a 34-pin connector exists are rare. However, I have in my collection a 1772 (1770 compatible) FDC and a couple of PICs with USB slave functionality. (Also got a couple of NEC 765s but that would need more external components.) The PIC should be fast enough (it can go up to 48MHz).

Replies along the lines of "yeah, great idea!" or "no, that won't work because of x/y/z" would be welcome.

David
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