I have made progress on the Amiga USB Floppy project (see original post) with an original Amiga FDD plugged in and basic control done. That is control only, I have not read anything yet. I will upload the code to GitHub and post about it. I wanted to take small steps rather than rush, and as time allows. Now the next bit of reading the data, the plan was to start with an Arduino, expecting that it will not be fast enough, a possible upgrade to a Raspberry Pi or Pic 32MX depending on a few factors.
However I was contacted a week or so ago by Rob, who had created an Amiga FDD reader using an Arduino. I thought I would have a read through ( http://amiga.robsmithdev.co.uk ). At the same time it got posted on one of the Facebook Amiga pages and another project cropped up by another Nick ( nickslabor.niteto.de ) which using a Teensy 3.2 connects directly to a PC FDD and can kick out ADF files, via USB.
So two projects doing almost what I had planned. Thus before I progress my work I am taking time out, will re-read these two projects and rethink what I am doing. Although I wanted to use an Amiga FDD and just plug in, using a PC FDD does have advantages so what I might do is combine all the work from these and mine to advance it further. So the plan, and when I hope to do it by:
- Re-evaluate my work and the others (end July 2017);
- Document work I have done so far, even if I do not plan to move it forward (end August 2017);
- Pick the best solution as a starting point (Keith, Rob, Nick, mine);
- Read FDD to ADF;
- Write ADF to FDD
- Read/write other formats (file and disk);
- Allow connection to Amiga FDD
- Allow connection to PC FDD
I would still like to be able to plug this in via USB to my MacBook and have it show as a floppy disk drive. But first things first.
