Real Floppy and AO486

[NightShadowPT]

Hi,

Is the AO486 core compatible with the use of a real USB floppy drive?

[Caldor]

I have not tried it yet, but should be possible on the Linux side to setup a symlink that links to the USB floppy drive, and make the symlink a floppy image file. Like floppy.img. Then mount it as a floppy image in the AO486 core and it should be able to access whatever disk is in the USB floppy drive.

[Mr. Encyclopedia]

That's a wild idea. There are cartridge dumpers like the Joey Junior that mount the cartridge's contents as a USB drive. Adding support to pull the ROM and save file off a cartridge like that would be a straightforward solution to people who say they want to play their actual game cartridges on MiSTer.

[flynnsbit]

It is possible but it doesn't work right. mounts fine, reads the floppy disk but when you read from it something weird happens like it runs out of a buffer somewhere and just stalls when copying. Caldors steps are correct but it has been more than a year since I did it. Create an empty USB_FLOPPY.img file, symlink the read drive into it, then mount in the core. If I remember corrctly "ln -s" from /media/floppy to the .img. In the core it would mount and interact but would eventually fail. I gave up because it is just another media that you really should be using a digital version with anyway. Floppies are so prone to failure that it's just a gimmick for something like mister.

on the mister side, I could cat the contents of the /media/floppy first into the .img file and everything would work perfectly, doing it hot with a symlink only allowed for partial reading, etc. Like I said, it almost felt like a buffer was filling up somewhere.

[NightShadowPT]

It is possible but it doesn't work right. mounts fine, reads the floppy disk but when you read from it something weird happens like it runs out of a buffer somewhere and just stalls when copying. Caldors steps are correct but it has been more than a year since I did it. Create an empty USB_FLOPPY.img file, symlink the read drive into it, then mount in the core. If I remember corrctly "ln -s" from /media/floppy to the .img. In the core it would mount and interact but would eventually fail. I gave up because it is just another media that you really should be using a digital version with anyway. Floppies are so prone to failure that it's just a gimmick for something like mister.

on the mister side, I could cat the contents of the /media/floppy first into the .img file and everything would work perfectly, doing it hot with a symlink only allowed for partial reading, etc. Like I said, it almost felt like a buffer was filling up somewhere.

That's quite interesting...
When you say it stalls, do you mean when reading the floppy? Or when writing?

Seems like the basics do make it work are in place, maybe just a few adjustments will make it possible.

Regarding floppies as a media, I agree they are not to be trusted, but:

a) I still have a lot of original games on Floppy that I would like to be able to play using the MiSTer
b) I would like to recover some of my save games from floppy and get it into AO486 (yes, I know I have other options for this)
c) The sound of the floppy drive working plays a huge role in my nostalgia. It just makes it feel more real.
d) It will make the AO486 core feel a lot more like original hardware (problems and all)

With this being said, making it work is beyond my technical skills, so I need to keep my fingers crossed this topic will interest a dev enough for it to address it and get floppies working.

Thanks

[flynnsbit]

It is possible but it doesn't work right. mounts fine, reads the floppy disk but when you read from it something weird happens like it runs out of a buffer somewhere and just stalls when copying. Caldors steps are correct but it has been more than a year since I did it. Create an empty USB_FLOPPY.img file, symlink the read drive into it, then mount in the core. If I remember corrctly "ln -s" from /media/floppy to the .img. In the core it would mount and interact but would eventually fail. I gave up because it is just another media that you really should be using a digital version with anyway. Floppies are so prone to failure that it's just a gimmick for something like mister.

on the mister side, I could cat the contents of the /media/floppy first into the .img file and everything would work perfectly, doing it hot with a symlink only allowed for partial reading, etc. Like I said, it almost felt like a buffer was filling up somewhere.

That's quite interesting...
When you say it stalls, do you mean when reading the floppy? Or when writing?

Seems like the basics do make it work are in place, maybe just a few adjustments will make it possible.

Regarding floppies as a media, I agree they are not to be trusted, but:

a) I still have a lot of original games on Floppy that I would like to be able to play using the MiSTer
b) I would like to recover some of my save games from floppy and get it into AO486 (yes, I know I have other options for this)
c) The sound of the floppy drive working plays a huge role in my nostalgia. It just makes it feel more real.
d) It will make the AO486 core feel a lot more like original hardware (problems and all)

With this being said, making it work is beyond my technical skills, so I need to keep my fingers crossed this topic will interest a dev enough for it to address it and get floppies working.



Thanks

Yeah, Don't get me wrong, I was excited to see it do "something" with my disks. you can interact with the disk, you can run dir, as soon as you start copying files or run programs it will get to a certain point and just sit there forever with the drive clicking away. I had to reboot the core to get it back. These are known good floppies. It really is easy to test for yourself if you know the linux side at all. Mine is just one of those cheap USB drives from amazon. I didn't go beyond testing a few different disks.

[NightShadowPT]

Yeah, Don't get me wrong, I was excited to see it do "something" with my disks. you can interact with the disk, you can run dir, as soon as you start copying files or run programs it will get to a certain point and just sit there forever with the drive clicking away. I had to reboot the core to get it back. These are known good floppies. It really is easy to test for yourself if you know the linux side at all. Mine is just one of those cheap USB drives from amazon. I didn't go beyond testing a few different disks.

Not at all.

I appreciate you sharing your feedback. Really helps.

Thanks again.

Take care

[Malor]

Remember that all floppies are wearing out, so running from them means you're gradually wrecking them, and there aren't new ones being made.

My suggestion would be to use DD in Linux to copy each of your original floppies to an image file, run from the images, and carefully preserve the originals. That puts the least wear possible on a limited resource.

If they're significantly copy-protected, however, that would probably make things much more difficult.

[NightShadowPT]

Remember that all floppies are wearing out, so running from them means you're gradually wrecking them, and there aren't new ones being made.

My suggestion would be to use DD in Linux to copy each of your original floppies to an image file, run from the images, and carefully preserve the originals. That puts the least wear possible on a limited resource.

If they're significantly copy-protected, however, that would probably make things much more difficult.

Yeah, that's a probably a good idea. Wouldn't solve the nostalgia part, but at least the data would be kept safe.

I would probably copy my originals and run them from the copies anyway

[Caldor]

I suspect the problem is the drive controller in the core does not know what the real drive is doing, and there probably ought to be a more two way communication for the core to see it fully as a floppy drive, but using the symlink method it expects to use it as a file and not having to rely on possible wait signals and whatever a drive might do with floppies and other analog media like that.

The whole floppy DrawBridge project probably has the solution as it managed to make it possible to connect an Amiga floppy drive using a USB adapter to a PC or Raspberry Pi and allow emulators to use the floppy fully. I am pretty sure I saw a post by the DrawBridge developer showing interest in trying to make it work with the MiSTer but its been a long time since I noticed any updates regarding it.

[kathleen]

@Caldor,
Maybe this video ? : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S1kkOexjyg

[jca]

Slightly OT but interesting:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62749310

[Caldor]

@Caldor,
Maybe this video ? : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S1kkOexjyg

Oh yeah, I already liked that video, so I must have seen it. There is a thread about this somewhere as well. I think its in the general forums. It was back in April though. I guess it might be a while before it gets anywhere. I guess the problem is he has to learn FPGA. That is quite a big step from software development even if its low level hardware based development like the Draw Bridge stuff.

[friendly.joe]

Ah, this is very interesting! It would be great if generic floppy drives (not cheap USB drives!) could be connected with a "proper" usb floppy controller adapter like "Greaseweazle".