DOS ain't dead

Other hardware floppy emulators - using USB sticks on ebay (Announce)

posted by Arjay, 08.05.2010, 16:43
(edited by Arjay on 08.05.2010, 17:24)

I also spotted some other cheaper hardware based floppy emulators on ebay:

Specifications:

* USB socket to insert USB pen drive
* 4-pin floppy socket for voltage supply
* 34-pin socket for standard floppy drive cable
* Diagnostics RED LED: Busy
* Diagnostics GREEN LED: Power
* Voltage supply: 5 V DC, 4-pin-voltage supply socket for 3.5 inch drive


Sellers reply to a question asked by a ebay user:
Hi, is there anything special required by the pen drive (formatting / capacity / speed etc)?
Hello, USB sticks can only format into 720k or 1.44mb even you have a large (e.g. 1gb) USB stick. Speed is like normal floppy when work as floppy. Thank you

IMHO, HxC looks better, is more flexible etc. Still always nice to have various options. For most of my own needs though I prefer having more space though, e.g. The MMC card I was using to develop on was 32Mb which was fine for my development needs. Indeed it cost about 8pence (100pence = 1GBP) and I was using/ dual booting from a built SD card reader so it worked out quite cheap as a removable PC hard drive It was however corrupted on another PC with a different reader. I just need to get round to fixing/replacing it now - not a problem as I brought a lots to use as removable "harddisks" !!

Speaking of which I have also used SD card adapters to use even MiniSD and MicroSD as DOS drives. The downside with the later is MicroSD cards are so small not in size but physically !! I can't see me losing my old full height drives anytime soon but the fact that a MicroSD fits onto the coins shown in this photo next to full height drives makes me worry about losing them easily. Still I would have much preferred dropping a MicroSD drive onto my foot vs the very heavy full height drive I did many years ago.... I certainly knew where that drive landed that is for sure ! :)

Complete thread:

• FYI: DEATH (again, after cca 30 years) - DOS386, 07.05.2010, 05:07 (Announce)
  • HxC SD card floppy emulator / Virtual Floppy Drive / Flopper - Arjay, 07.05.2010, 17:27
    • DEATH / HxC SD card floppy emulator / Virtual Floppy Drive - DOS386, 08.05.2010, 07:02
      • DEATH / HxC SD card floppy emulator / Virtual Floppy Drive - Arjay, 08.05.2010, 13:18
        • Other hardware floppy emulators - using USB sticks on ebay - Arjay, 08.05.2010, 16:43
        • DEATH / HxC SD card floppy emulator / Virtual Floppy Drive - DOS386, 13.05.2010, 03:51
  • FYI: DEATH (again, after cca 30 years) - Rugxulo, 08.05.2010, 13:35
    • FYI: DEATH (again, after cca 30 years) - Arjay, 08.05.2010, 13:55
  • floppyem.sys - config.sys Floppy Emulator device driver - Arjay, 08.05.2010, 18:03
    • floppyem.sys - config.sys Floppy Emulator device driver - rr, 08.05.2010, 21:12
      • floppyem.sys - config.sys Floppy Emulator device driver - Arjay, 09.05.2010, 00:39
  • FDD emulator - Vehudis, 09.05.2010, 08:46
    • FDD emulators - fakedisk (read-only) + DF-IFS (read/write) - Arjay, 09.05.2010, 12:27
  • FYI: DEATH (again, after cca 30 years) - roytam, 09.05.2010, 09:48