Floppy Disk archiver and emulator, prototype is in!
We had a quest to do some floppy projects back in 2022 but our eyes were bigger than our BOM – many components we designed into this floppy interface board were not available… but now we’re back and it’s time to make the bestest floppy archiver/writer/emulator(?) – video.
First is the power supply – we need both 5V and 12V. We tried sourcing split 5/12V supplies but were not successful. so instead we can have a 12V power plug and a 5V ~3A buck converter based on the TPS563201. We’ve also got a TPS259540 12V OVP chip to make sure the 12V power supply doesn’t get swapped with a 15V by accident. USB C can be used when no 12V is needed.
An RP2040 does all the heavy lifting for floppy interfacing. There’s a 16M onboard flash plus an optional MicroSD card, so you can save raw disk flux dumps or 1:1 images. We tossed a 1.3″ color TFT that might be useful for status updates. Also, we’d like to enable the ability to do off-line archiving – no computer is needed, and a display is essential.
Right now, we only have standard 34-pin IDC and 26-pin ‘laptop’ floppy pinouts. But we might look at adding disk ][ as well, since we got some Apple disk reading working. Since we have some silksreen room – the PCB is floppy disk sized but tbh we don’t need that much space – we added some adorable floppsy bunny art.
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This seems amazing. I would be very interested in purchasing as I have a bunch of 5.25 disks I’d like to read. Any idea if this will be produced for sale?
I would also be interested if adafruit creates a 5.25/3.5 combo drive itself as having a source of those that isn’t untested dying units from eBay would be amazing.
This seems amazing. I would be very interested in purchasing as I have a bunch of 5.25 disks I’d like to read. Any idea if this will be produced for sale?
I would also be interested if adafruit creates a 5.25/3.5 combo drive itself as having a source of those that isn’t untested dying units from eBay would be amazing.
This is awesome. I’d buy one for sure. And I am pretty sure there would be interest among the retro community.
I second Alan’s comment. I can use this immediately.