Floppy Drives

I notice the floppy drive configuration is still there in the !Boot>Configure. Is it possible to connect one please, perhaps via USB?

I don’t choose to use such ancient (!) technology these days but occasionally I am asked to ‘crack’ the last of the 8-bit software on tape for posterity for the various archives in cyberspace.

My tried and trusted method is to transfer software from tape to the 3.5" drive on the Electron then to the 3.5" on the Iyonix, and thence to the internet.

Would be nice if I could do it on the Raspberry Pi or Beagleboard.

thanks
Chris.

You certainly can’t read Acorn format Floppies on a USB Drive (IIRC the problem is they are hard wired to only read a different sector size)
As for DOS format discs I can’t recall anyone saying it works or not but given the often repeated point above then maybe it does! If I have time on Monday I’ll try and read a DOS format disc!

USB floppy drives are set up to only handle formats with the following physical format:

MFM, 300 rpm, 512 bytes/sector, 18 sectors/track, 80 tracks/side, 2 sides.

This actually means that some IBM PC-compatible high density formats won’t work (the DMF formats had 21 sectors/track, and one had 82 tracks/side), in addition to Acorn ADFS F (1024 bytes/sector, 10 sectors/track (so, equivalent to 20 sectors/track at 512 bytes/sector)), and no double density formats will work.

As for DOS format discs I can’t recall anyone saying it works or not but given the often repeated point above then maybe it does!

It is fairly well known that USB floppy drives work only with DOS style discs (possibly specifically FAT?). If you plug such a drive into a PC and listen, it pre-loads data and the drive lamp blinks like a harddisc.

However… DOS floppies on RISC OS – doesn’t work. Keeps reporting drive empty.
Caveat – this is with my drive. I think USB floppy drives are like USB WiFi dongles. A hundred little things that do the same thing…slightly differently.

Looks like the Iyo will have to remain in service for a while yet then :)

Thanks for the replies.

It’s not tied to FAT, just to the DOS sector format. (The same drives work just fine on Macs, reading HFS floppies.)

The windows version of Virtual Acorn will read Acorn Format floppy discs (but only using a standard internal floppy disc drive – not a USB drive).