Adding floppy disk support to CircuitPython, step 1…

We are adding floppy disk support to CircuitPython, here is step 1 (video), want more, sign up for the Python on Hardware newsletter, goes out in the am 🙂 💾 💾 💾 🦂 🐇 ☠️ I’m the the guest editor this week! SIGN UP HERE! https://www.adafruitdaily.com/

If there’s one thing we believe in strongly here at Adafruit it is that if you have an embedded interpreted language running on your microcontroller, it’s super important that you can access floppy drives from it. Sure, sure, you could use a micro SD card, but microSD cards can get lost easily compared to a chonky 3.5″. So we’re starting to look at how to get a floppy drive up and running. The good news is you can use 5V power and it seems to be ok with 3V logic levels. We’ve got the idc cabling wired up right we think, because we can now turn on the motor and see index pulses coming out at around 5Hz. This Samsung SFD-321B datasheet has been really helpful in interfacing, and so far our code is in Arduino since we’re comfy with that for hardware noodling. We’ll publish it as a cross-platform-usable open source hardware so folks can keep on spinnin’.


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1 Comment

  1. Do please try and get it working with a 5+1/2” floppy as well.

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