Usb Floppy Drives

[christo930]

Does anyone know if their is any software available that can work with USB floppy drives for the purpose of reading non-pc formats? As I understand it, the limitation is in the controller, not the drive. There is a controller that you can buy and stick in your computer (catwiesel) to read/write other formats using a standard disk drive. So since a usb drive isn't connected to the standard pc controller, would it be able to read/write non standard formats like Amiga and Mac and Atari st? It would be really nice if I could make backups of my Amiga and ST disks. If there is no software available now, is it even possible? If not, why?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Squirrel61]

As far as I know (without looking up actual information), a USB floppy drive exists of a pc-like controller and a USB interface, usually in one chip. So if it isn't possible with an internal drive, it probably also isn't possible with a USB drive.

The only way I know to read alien formats like the Amiga's 880/1760 kb or the original Mac's 800 kb floppies is by the native machines or by a specially designed drive interface for the pc, since the standard pc floppydrive controller doesn't allow reading of these formats.

You don't need a special drive however, both the Amiga and the Mac used industry-standard drives with only a slight modification.

As far as I know, the Atari ST floppies can be read by any pc, since they use the same format (720/1440 kb). You might specify a different sector count, but I remember that I did it long ago on a pc with unmodded hardware.