MegaFDC – a Mega2560 floppy drive controller

- Hardware

In other words, finding a more creative use for the Arduino Mega than a neon clock: to be able to read and write all sorts of old data storage media and send’em over USB, blending old technology with new.
Originally inspired by the ArduinoFDC project, I have decided to try a different approach: instead of using the Arduino to talk to a floppy drive directly, why not leave the hard … [more]

Using 8-inch diskette drives with a PC

- Hardware

I have once stumbled upon an interesting article from 2018 published on retrocmp.de, discussing about provisions on connecting an 8″ floppy disk drive to a PC. You know, those huge “boat anchors” that accept flexible disks just four inches shy of an LP record, in exchange of a couple of hundred kilobytes data storage. That sort of type.… [more]