Emulator

I mean a emulator must emulate ALL functions from the emulated system. Missing floppy support is bad. Why not real floppy support and floppy images?

Micky

Floppy images? https://www.marutan.net/rpcemuspoon/manual/#adf

And where is the real floppy support in RPCEmu?

Micky

People working for free on software that you can download for free usually choose to work on areas that they are interested in. If someone were willing to pay for development of real floppy support for obsolete old hardware (actual £k, not a token amount), it could probably be done for the two people who want it! Rather more cost-effective to buy a Greaseweazle and then work with floppy images.

Proper USB support, i.e. direct access to a USB stick, including FileCore, would be much more important to me. Floppy support would be nice but pretty useless for most people. We go around in circles. Modern computers that run RPCEmu with usable performance no longer have a floppy drive. It requires an “old style controller”, USB floppys are limited in hardware and cannot do that. If you have a computer that meets the requirements, create an image using the available tools. This also protects the Floppydisk. ;-)

I know what you mean.

RiscOS with real Greaseweazel support. Like WinUAE.

Greazeweasel

Micky

And where is the real floppy support in RPCEmu?

Emulated by the emulator in the form of floppy images.

The real Acorn’s have real floppy’s I think. Not emulated one. Is it so hard to code the function with real floppy support into the RiscOS program code?

Micky

Is it so hard to code the function with real floppy support into the RiscOS program code

What you need to understand is that the disc format used by Acorn kit (the BBC micro before the ARM stuff) uses functionality of the hardware controller that the newer, (PC centric) disc hardware does not support.

Greaseweazel is an experimental setup to mimic the functionality of the old drive controller hardware. It is not a simple software switch.
Altering the emulator code will not magically put the drive control into a mode that matches the old hardware.

The real Acorn’s have real floppy’s I think. Not emulated one.

Real Acorns don’t have emulated CPUs either, but here we are, with an emulator emulating an entire machine.

Yes, you are right. But it is possible. See VirtualPC-DL.

Micky

But it is possible. See VirtualPC-DL.

Sure, it is possible for the right hardware (i.e. not modern PCs or Macs). But I think you’re seeing that there is zero interest from developers to add it to RPCEmu.

Is it so hard to code the function with real floppy support

The original Acorn hardware had floppy drives, correct. But the original Acorn hardware is between twenty five and thirty five years old.

I think you’re seeing that there is zero interest from developers to add it to RPCEmu.

Quick straw poll for anybody reading this that uses an emulator…

…how many of you even have a floppy disc drive fitted (and I mean fitted, not USB)?

…come to think of it, how many of you have an optical drive?

Once upon a time, one or the other of these would have been essential. That old laptop with Windows 98SE that I had, it had both in a really weird slim stacked format.

These days? It’s a bit of a bummer not to have an optical drive, but USB ones are common and cheap so the space in the laptop can be used for something else, like more battery.

Desktop machines probably still come with some sort of optical, but I’d be surprised if there was a floppy, or even legacy I/O like the parallel port.

To answer the poll for myself:

• The old XP box had both. I removed the floppy as I never used it and wanted the space for a second SATA drive.

• The EeePC has neither.

• And the little Android portable that I got last year (magazine freebie) also has neither.

People, on the whole, just don’t use floppies these days. I mean, try finding a pack of 3.5" discs on Amazon, for instance.

zero interest from developers

Another thing to remember is that on board low level floppy controllers and USB drives are very different things. It’s also possible that nobody is interested not only because there’s very little call for it, but they also don’t want to field calls from people whose drives won’t read Acorn discs (for fundamental technical reasons that can’t be kludged around).

If you really need a disc with an emulator, find a machine that can read it, make an image of it, and use that with the emulator. Given their age and lack of availablity, you should probably spin the physical media as little as possible.

how many of you even have a floppy disc drive fitted (and I mean fitted, not USB)?

Me, yeah I can fire up a 2007-era PC with proper floppy if it were needed. The need does not arise.

how many of you have an optical drive?

Not in my latest desktop, but that’s only been for the last year. Old one still available, and does get used for making occasional CD-Rs.

nobody is interested not only because there’s very little call for it

And mainly because they have more interesting projects to work on.

And mainly because they have more interesting projects to work on.

Repeating myself, again – I recommend that people only work on stuff they are interested in doing, unless they get paid enough to distract them from what they want to do and over to what someone else wants them to do.
Once started, a commitment should be seen through to a defined end. Then back to the interesting stuff.

I recommend that people only work on stuff they are interested in doing, unless they get paid enough to distract them from what they want to do and over to what someone else wants them to do.

Steve for president!!!! +++++++++++++++++100000 :)

@ Micky

Is it so hard to code the function with real floppy support

Why don’t you learn how to add such code by yourself? If you are so motivated, it will be a great journey to learn coding and doing things you seems to enjoy.

@ Rick’s poll

…how many of you even have a floppy disc drive fitted (and I mean fitted, not USB)?

I have a computer rack full of fully working original Acorn and most of them since their original release on the market. So, yes I have floppies and I use the original machines for those and to archive. That includes my Amigas, my Atari STs, my PPC based workstations and even ALL the 8 bit systems I still own and use for fun, included Acorn 8-bit.

However, I no longer use floppies, because they are delicate and can die quickly, so I have imaged most of my original floppies using a bunch of tools (included greaseweazel, but not only, ’cause given I work in cyber security I have a bunch of forensic tools) and now I use images with Floppy Simulators on the original Acorns and with RPCEmu if I really need to.

…come to think of it, how many of you have an optical drive?

I have optical for all my Acorns, YES included the A310 (there was a unit from Cumana) and I posses the Acorn M.E.U which add CDROM to my A5K as well, and obviously DVD on all my RiscPCs. The Pis use USB based DVDs if I need to, so I have opticals also on modern RISC OS and obviously my Iyonix too.

I also have optical for Amiga and Atari Falcon and obviously the only PC from back in the day I own, an AMD 586 133, which is stored in my storage TBH, but yes it had the multi-media extensions as they were called back then.

On modern machines I just have a USB 3.2 BluRay unit in case of need, but I haven’t used it in a long time.

If you search this site you will find William has a go at making a USB Acorn floppy – but sadly dropped it.

With RiscOS for Raspberry Pi USB floppy works. But without formatting and no Acorn formats. But better then nothing.

Micky

Acorn floppy

Micky

find William has a go at making a USB Acorn floppy – but sadly dropped it

And it’s all gone… [Edit: the stuff that William was working on to interface a floppy via USB to RISC OS]

No it hasn’t, Colin didn’t quote the entire URL, it’s “.html” not “.h”.

This works: https://cowlark.com/fluxengine/

There is also this for Raspberry Pi, if it can be of help (but it looks like another project to image floppies more than use them live)

https://github.com/picosonic/bbc-fdc

I wonder if the powers to be could use his email address – to contact William – if he is still with us?

I wonder if the powers to be could use his email address – to contact William

“We will not send you unsolicited e-mail messages using the e-mail address you supply”

Stuart’s top tip – don’t just dump stuff on a Google Drive.

Why floppy images and not also floppy drive support in RPCEmu

1) I’ve not used PCs with a hardware floppy controller for over a decade
2) Any physical floppy drive support would require writing fairly low level hardware code on windows and linux
3) When I’ve needed to get things on and off floppies for emulators, I’ve converted back and forward to images, first with !ADFImager on a RiscPC, now with a greaseweasle on PC
4) It appears to have a potential userbase of one
5) I can’t be arsed.