emosun wrote:why not a usb floppy drive?
I've got a Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3 and an Amstrad CPC 6128. Both have a 765 floppy disk controller connected to a 3 inch floppy disk, but can be converted or use an external 3.5 inch floppy.
The "standard" format for a ZX Spectrum +3 is one side, 40 tracks (starting at 0) and nine 512 byte sectors starting at 0xC0 (instead of being sector 0, sector 1... they are sector 0xC0, 0xC1...), not to mention "special" formats used in games that have bigger sector size or missing sectors.
Floppy USB drives only support standard PC formats, usually 2 sides, 80 tracks and nine or eighteen 512 byte sectors starting at 0 (and even some chinese drives support 18 sectors only), so they won't create floppies usable on those computers. (Note that some boot PC games used also protections based on sector size, missing sectors ant those things)
I compiled a list of PCI multi I/O cards that had floppy disk controllers, but I haven't seen one of those.
With floppy controller:
- GIGABYTE GA-107
- GIGABYTE GA-108
- SUNIX 5249P
- TYAN S1363-004
- TYAN S1366 […]
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With floppy controller:
- GIGABYTE GA-107
- GIGABYTE GA-108
- SUNIX 5249P
- TYAN S1363-004
- TYAN S1366
May have a floppy controller, but not sure:
- Gigabyte GA-410
I hope that this controllers use the same ports as integrated floppy controllers, and that they support strange formats. Have anyone tried one of those?
I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...
I'm selling some stuff!