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Could you make a simulated floppy disk which worked in existing physical drives, but contained flash (and thus lots of more storage, potentially more reliable,

by rdl 11y ago

Could you make a simulated floppy disk which worked in existing physical drives, but contained flash (and thus lots of more storage, potentially more reliable, etc.)? I know there are floppy DRIVE emulators like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_hardware_emulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_hardware_emulator but I want to emulate the DISK. There are also of course software solutions to this in a lot of cases, too, especially if you can virtualize, but sometimes hardware is needed.

pjc50 11y ago
It's almost certainly doable, although detecting the head position is going to be a hassle. But you can't increase the capacity much, because you're limited to N sectors and M tracks.
- rdl 11y ago
  Yeah, but you can have a huge library of virtual floppies and load those based on external selector or something else.
- jzwinck 11y ago
  I'm not sure you need to detect the head position, because in the end you need to deliver the appropriate signal at the same location, so it'd be simpler to just have a linear array of 80 "heads" in the "disk" and let the drive head read from whichever one it likes. Then you would only need to track the spindle position. Head-to-head coupling works in the real world, as anyone who has used a cassette tape adapter in their car stereo knows. I don't know how much "horizontal" tolerance you would need in terms of emitting the signal from the "disk"; if different drives have their heads not quite on center it could present some difficulty (whereas with real disks it would not matter--they could position the head anywhere within the shutter aperture). Miniaturization would be another challenge--unless you're willing to have a ribbon cable coming out the front of the drive, you'll need to cram some batteries inside what is quite a thin space. Perhaps harvest some energy from the spindle (it would almost certainly be enough if you manage to find or create a thin enough generator). The last piece of the product puzzle might be to add Bluetooth...if for no other reason than being able to get data out as soon as it is written.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Something similar has been done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath Problem is that FlashPath doesn't work like a normal floppy.

by rdl 11y ago

pjc50 11y ago

It's almost certainly doable, although detecting the head position is going to be a hassle. But you can't increase the capacity much, because you're limited to N sectors and M tracks.

rdl 11y ago
Yeah, but you can have a huge library of virtual floppies and load those based on external selector or something else.
jzwinck 11y ago
I'm not sure you need to detect the head position, because in the end you need to deliver the appropriate signal at the same location, so it'd be simpler to just have a linear array of 80 "heads" in the "disk" and let the drive head read from whichever one it likes. Then you would only need to track the spindle position. Head-to-head coupling works in the real world, as anyone who has used a cassette tape adapter in their car stereo knows. I don't know how much "horizontal" tolerance you would need in terms of emitting the signal from the "disk"; if different drives have their heads not quite on center it could present some difficulty (whereas with real disks it would not matter--they could position the head anywhere within the shutter aperture). Miniaturization would be another challenge--unless you're willing to have a ribbon cable coming out the front of the drive, you'll need to cram some batteries inside what is quite a thin space. Perhaps harvest some energy from the spindle (it would almost certainly be enough if you manage to find or create a thin enough generator). The last piece of the product puzzle might be to add Bluetooth...if for no other reason than being able to get data out as soon as it is written.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

Something similar has been done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath Problem is that FlashPath doesn't work like a normal floppy.