USB Floppy Adapter v1.0

As per my previous posts, I have been working on a USB adapter to read and write Amiga floppy disks from a PC using a USB cable and a regular PC floppy disk drive.

• Read standard Amiga 880k disks to ADF image files (approx 40 seconds)

• Random access to Amiga 880k disks without the need to make a full image

• Write ADF image files to standard DD disks (approx 60 seconds)

• 100% open source. Firmware upgradeable via USB

The feature set of the standard firmware is deliberately simple to make is very easy to read and write the majority of (non-protected disks). The primary goal was the ability to write an ADF file to disk and use it in an original unmodified Amiga.

CAN IT DO X?

If it’s not listed above, probably not. Yet.

It is expected that the firmware can be enhanced in the future to handle additional disk formats and functionality, but many of the more complex requirements may be better served by more advanced tools. For now I am focusing on the simple functionality that most people can benefit from.

CAN I BUY ONE?

I will be beta testing first. If all goes well, I hope to be able to sell them in the new year. I don’t want to sell you one until I’m confident it will work!

THE TECHNICAL DETAILS

This is a simple adapter board that plugs into a 3.5″ PC floppy drive on one side, and a PC on the other side. It presents 880kB of standard mass storage to the PC, which can be read or written by the PC using standard tools (such as DD). Writes must be of full 5,632 byte tracks, you will most likely want to write a full ADF image anyway.

BETA TESTERS

I am looking for people who have some technical experience with Amiga floppy disks to test this device. If you understand the above, and would like one of these boards to test, please comment below. Priority will go to people in the UK, and those willing to test the device, and help debug any problems that arise. I have 10 ready to send out immediately. You will need:

• 3.5″ PC floppy drive
• USB B Cable (the big square one)
• 4-pin jumper wire for power to the drive

HACKING

All the hardware and software is open source. Go crazy. There is an unsupported second firmware that can provide full raw access to the disk. It’s open source and totally unsupported, so if you’re a programmer, it can probably do anything you want it to. Since it’s STM32 based, you could likely also port other tools to it.

THANKS

Thank you to everyone who has already assisted and showed their support for this project.