Chances are 50/50, I would say. For example, the usual PC BIOS nowerdays
doesn't really differ between card readers and USB pen drives.
My older PowerMac running OS9 does, however. It refuses to show any SD/CF volumes,
but works fine with any pen drive (both were FAT-formatted). While On OSX, both appear on the desktop..
So I think it really depends on the model of the USB floppy emulator.
Or more specifically, the firmware it is running on.

Edit: Found a page with some interesting photo (shows Gotek and SD/CF-to-USB pen drive)
https://pixelnostalgie.de/2017/05/tutorial-go … loppy-emulator/

Sorry. I meant specifically USB-floppy emulators like this one:

I think any USB will do, though you definitely won't need a large nor fast SD/MicroSD card for the job, as the emulator emulates the size (1.44MB) and also the speed (300 rpm) in order to behave like a real FDD. The emulator aspect is completely transparent to the attached system, so the system sees and reads as if it's a real floppy disk.

Just you'll have to use the formatters provided by the emulator in order to get the USB partitioned in a way the emulator can choose and recognize, though it's possible that you won't be able to use it elsewhere without special tools. A while ago I got myself a similar emulator capable of formatting up to 1000 images in one drive, but I still haven't figured out how to use the tools correctly, though the drive I formatted with the provided tools did get properly recognized by the emulator.

sure about the speed? Imho the speed is only limited by the floppy bus

Phreeze wrote:

sure about the speed? Imho the speed is only limited by the floppy bus

The commonly used 1.44MB floppy drive seek at 300rpm, while the Japanese 1.2MB floppy drives (requires Floppy 3 Mode) seek at 360rpm. The two speeds aren't compatible. If the emulator emits sectors at the wrong speed, the system won't be able to read or write contents correctly.

I use one usb multi card reader and it work flawlessly with my gotek floppy emulator.

The Gotek floppy emulator has worked with pretty much everything I've thrown at it. It's a very compatible piece of hardware. If you've prepared any USB media (whether it's an adapter or flash drive) with the Gotek floppy utility, it'll handle pretty much anything. Just don't be surprised that it runs precisely as slow as a floppy drive normally does. It has to 😀

It's too bad that we can't just drop files onto a FAT32 partition though. An LCD readout with the file names would be nice. But then again, there is something to be said about the simplicity of numerically indexed entries.

Maybe a newer version will allow us to "tag" each entry with a name that can be displayed on an LCD.