[sdiy] Flash Drive with Floppy Interface?

[Magnus Danielson]

From: Scott Gravenhorst <music.maker at gte.net>
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Flash Drive with Floppy Interface?
Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:52:05 -0700
Message-ID: <200706042152.l54Lq4XQ026257 at linux7.lan>

> ASSI <Stromeko at Compuserve.DE> wrote:
> >Hi list,
> >
> >is anybody aware of a Flash Drive that has a standard (PC/MFM) Floppy 
> >Interface?  I'd like to retrofit the 3 1/2" drives in my synths 
> >(notably the K5000 and the WAVE) before they go the way of the Dodo.  
> >I'd prefer SD/MMC cards as the storage medium as I have a good number 
> >of (not too big) cards of that format.  There would need to be a way to 
> >switch between a number of floppy images on the card (without involving 
> >a computer connection) and to preferrably direct any formatting 
> >commands to a new image rather than killing off the one that happens to 
> >be switched in.
> 
> Really interesting request, I'm interested too.  Perhaps an FPGA or CPLD project? 
> uProcessor?  It doesn't seem that speed is a requirement, just compatibility with the
> bus signals.  What would be very cool is if it could be made more or less universal
> so that not only would it work to replace a diskette drive in a synth, but in other
> equipment as well.  Heh, a USB port on it so you could put a set of images on a stick...

The classical floppy interface is really simple. It should not be too hard to
understand which track the controler wants you to be. On each track you "play
out" the sectors cyclicly with the encoding and you decode the sector being
written.

It would be hard to make one which is truely generic, but is one restrict
oneself to fairly modern and standard formats it should be possible to do.

Cheers,
Magnus