6 ms·

There's probably a way to fit an SD card or flash drive in a floppy emulator? I'm curious now. Is that a 386 PC? Does it boot off of a small hard drive?

Sakos 5y ago
There are adapters that let you use SD cards in place of floppy or IDE drive.
- genewitch 5y ago
  compactflash is nearly pin compatible with ATA, i had several laptops repurposed as home routers with CF cards on little adapters. I could probably dig one out and take a picture. edit: shoot, i think i meant IDE, not ATA
  - mnd999 5y ago
    Yep, my Amiga 1200 does exactly this. It’s very tempting to put it on the internet.
  - rvense 5y ago
    ATA and IDE is the same thing. Usually CF cards will just work on adapters.
- ApolIllo 5y ago
  Do they support hotplugging? afaik traditional floppies do and could be essential to workflows if you can avoid the costly reboot time.
Keyframe 5y ago
GoTek being most popular, yes.
reaperducer 5y ago
There are adapters to use flash cards in real 3½" floppy drives. I had a nice metal one made by Sony years ago. Flash card slides in one side, and there's a place for a button cell to power it. Then you just stick the whole thing into the floppy drive like a regular disk.
- Macha 5y ago
  How many OS assumptions does it break to have a massively oversized capacity on a floppy drive? Or is it just using 1.44mb of a multi-GB SD card?
  - kjs3 5y ago
    Often, these present as multiple floppy sized chunks for exactly the reason you cite. I don't know about the Sony described, but the Gotek I have has a little front panel that let's you select a numerical floppy unit that presents as a: or whatever.
  - xxpor 5y ago
    Neutron star density
  - snek_case 5y ago
    I'm assuming if it's a floppy emulator it just has floppy density, but you can emulate an IDE hard drive as well.
    - Macha 5y ago
      Oh, I may have been misunderstanding the parent comment but it sounded like they were saying it was an adapter that let you put flash memory devices of some sort into a regular floppy drive.
      - Brian_K_White 5y ago
        There are exactly such devices.
    - jaclaz 5y ago
      No, it is not a ATA/IDE (nor SATA) device, it is intended as a "direct replacement" for floppy drives (on embroidering machines, music instruments, CNC and similar), so it uses the 34 floppy connection (on PC-like hardware). There is - besides Gotek - an alternative which is open source and (if one wants to) DIY, the HxC, a few different possibilities: http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/index.html http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/index.html

Sakos 5y ago

There are adapters that let you use SD cards in place of floppy or IDE drive.

genewitch 5y ago
compactflash is nearly pin compatible with ATA, i had several laptops repurposed as home routers with CF cards on little adapters. I could probably dig one out and take a picture. edit: shoot, i think i meant IDE, not ATA
- mnd999 5y ago
  Yep, my Amiga 1200 does exactly this. It’s very tempting to put it on the internet.
- rvense 5y ago
  ATA and IDE is the same thing. Usually CF cards will just work on adapters.
ApolIllo 5y ago
Do they support hotplugging? afaik traditional floppies do and could be essential to workflows if you can avoid the costly reboot time.

Keyframe 5y ago

GoTek being most popular, yes.

reaperducer 5y ago

There are adapters to use flash cards in real 3½" floppy drives. I had a nice metal one made by Sony years ago. Flash card slides in one side, and there's a place for a button cell to power it. Then you just stick the whole thing into the floppy drive like a regular disk.

Macha 5y ago
How many OS assumptions does it break to have a massively oversized capacity on a floppy drive? Or is it just using 1.44mb of a multi-GB SD card?
- kjs3 5y ago
  Often, these present as multiple floppy sized chunks for exactly the reason you cite. I don't know about the Sony described, but the Gotek I have has a little front panel that let's you select a numerical floppy unit that presents as a: or whatever.
- xxpor 5y ago
  Neutron star density
- snek_case 5y ago
  I'm assuming if it's a floppy emulator it just has floppy density, but you can emulate an IDE hard drive as well.
  - Macha 5y ago
    Oh, I may have been misunderstanding the parent comment but it sounded like they were saying it was an adapter that let you put flash memory devices of some sort into a regular floppy drive.
    - Brian_K_White 5y ago
      There are exactly such devices.
  - jaclaz 5y ago
    No, it is not a ATA/IDE (nor SATA) device, it is intended as a "direct replacement" for floppy drives (on embroidering machines, music instruments, CNC and similar), so it uses the 34 floppy connection (on PC-like hardware). There is - besides Gotek - an alternative which is open source and (if one wants to) DIY, the HxC, a few different possibilities: http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/index.html http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/index.html