Arduino-based 800k floppy pc-interface

[Andrew]

Hello all,

browsing the internet I have found a few projects for creating a pc-interface in order to read a 800k disk (low level magnetic flux transitions). A couple of them are arduino based but are targeted towards amiga disks (e.g. https://github.com/RobSmithDev/ArduinoFloppyDiskReader). Do you believe that the hardware is able to read 800k disks? I have some programming experience for arduinos as well as basic electronic skills to build the interface. Is there a specific reason that arduino interfaces will not play well with 800k disks? The other solutions use special boards such as the CY8CKIT-059 which I cannot find locally.

Thanks

 

[Gorgonops]

The Greaseweazle might be a better bet, it supposedly works with "standard" SCP flux images which gives you several options for decoding 800k data. The "Blue Pill" ARM board it uses is very cheap and widely available. (You can buy a few plus a programmer off Amazon for $15-ish.)

 

[Andrew]

Thanks for your reply however, cost is not the issue. It is the shipping delays I am worried about. I am still waiting for my scsisd which I ordered about a month ago (france->greece).

Arduino boards are all around...

 

[cheesestraws]

There's no particular reason it couldn't, on the hardware level, as far as I know; the question is to what extent you'll have to muck about with the firmware to get it to do so.  Note especially that the site only talks about FM and MFM encodings, and Mac 800k floppies use GCR, so you're going to have to do some serious work there.  Note also that the 800k GCR format appears to be more than a little insane, as per a BMOW blog post, so I'm not sure this is a project I would want to undertake personally...