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Hardware device to convert SD card to 5.25 floppy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

N

neutrino78x

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 8, 2009
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Silicon Valley
Hey guys and girls, if you haven't heard of this, you will be pleasantly surprised!!!

Some guy in Poland makes a device that will take an SD card (a type of solid state memory card), and allow a PC to access it as if it were a 5.25 inch floppy!!!!!

He makes these things himself, so if you buy one, you have to wait for him to make it.

Here is the link:

SD to 5.25 floppy converter

Here is a version without the case (so you could mount it inside the PC I guess...personally I think the version with the case is better):

Version without the case

He has some of them that he already built up on eBay, if you click buy it now the price is the same as from his web site.

Uncased version on ebay

Cased version on ebay

The other thing you should know is that a power supply is not included; if you get the cased version, you need to get your own AC to DC converter that will take AC power from the wall and give you a 5 VDC molex connector.

Like this for example:

120 VAC to 5 VDC adapter on amazon

So, I thought you guys would like it :)

--Brian
 
btw I forgot to add, the device attaches to your PC using a floppy interface. So you would need a floppy controller with an external drive input. :)
 
neutrino78x said:
btw I forgot to add, the device attaches to your PC using a floppy interface. So you would need a floppy controller with an external drive input. :)
Click to expand...

FWIW, you can buy a 4 GB Ultra SD card from Amazon for under $20 and an IDE SD card adapter off the net for under $10. Unless your really into 5.25 floppies . . .
 
The beauty of this device is that it will work with virtually any device that supports a floppy drive: TRS-80's, PC's, Amiga's, Atari ST's, even keyboards. Videos are available at the website. I've been watching this project for quite awhile - the only thing keeping me from purchasing one is that I want more than one so they can become a permanent part of the machine! :)
 
I'm sure I've read about (other) SD floppy emulator interfaces being mentioned here on this forum before?
 
Just to clarify, CF to IDE is a different thing. That is for replacing the hard drive. This device emulates a floppy. In other words you can press a button to change to other floppies etc. I didn't know there were a lot of other ones. :)
 
Not talking about a CF adapter. I'm talking about:

DiskFerret
HxC-2001
CatWeasel
...and our very own Chuck[G]'s design

.. and others

The guy that sells the one you linked posted here a couple months back trying to sell some. Personally I'm not sure why you would buy that one over an open project that's cheaper, offers more functionality, and community supported. All of the above links came from this forum over the span of many years turned up by typing 'disk emulator' in the search box.
 
eeguru said:
DiskFerret
Chuck G Floppy Emulator Design
Click to expand...

These two, while very cool, appear to be just designs, not something you can buy. :)

HxC-2001
Click to expand...

This appears to be the same project as the one I originally linked. :)

CatWeasel
Click to expand...

So far this and the one I originally linked are the only solid state to floppy adapters I know of which can be bought as assembled products! :)

Personally I'm not sure why you would buy that one over an open project that's cheaper, offers more functionality, and community supported.
Click to expand...

Because the guy in Poland is selling them all assembled and in a nice case, so just hook it up to power and an external floppy port on the PC and you're golden. That's worth the money. Even the one without the case is worth the money...I wonder if it would be easily set up so the display and the buttons appear in a half height drive slot, that would be cool! :)

--Brian
 
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Maverick1978 said:
I've been watching this project for quite awhile - the only thing keeping me from purchasing one is that I want more than one so they can become a permanent part of the machine! :)
Click to expand...

I agree, it is pretty cool! I'm not sure if I would want the external one more, or the internal one. Like I say in the other post, I wonder if there would be an easy way to mount the display and the buttons in a half height drive slot in the 5150 PC. :)

--Brian
 
Actually that catwesel appears to be different from a floppy emulator. We're talking about a device that allows you to access a solid state card the same way you would a floppy drive. So basically there is those two breadboard designs, and there is the HxC2001, the latter being, apparently, the only one you can buy already assembled. :)

--Brian
 
eeguru said:
You can buy the DiscFerret assembled or bare here.
Click to expand...

okay so that makes 2 such products, that one and the one I linked in my first post! :p ;-)

Although, I think diskferret belongs in the other thread I had, where you are accessing an older floppy drive using a modern PC. This thread is about accessing a solid state card using the floppy port on an old PC. So, this is a way to replace the functionality of floppy disks on old PCs like the IBM 5150 and the Apple ][.

So we're back to the one I originally referenced being the only one you can buy.

Perhaps you are thinking to yourself "why would I want such a device?". Well, for example, if you have a "booter" game that wants to be loaded on a floppy by itself. You just have to create an image file of that floppy, put it on an SD card with the software provided with these devices, then put the SD card into this device and boot the PC off the SD card. You could have all of your booter games on a single SD card. You just press the buttons on the device to select the booter game you want, and then reboot the PC. So you don't have to worry about those booter disks wearing out etc.

See this list of booter games for the IBM PC on wikipedia. You should be able to fit all of those on a common 10 GB SD card.

Ah man, maybe this crowd is too "serious" a crowd to be interested in such a device lol. ;-) Well I grew up on the IBM PC and Apple ][, I used to program in BASIC on an IBM PC when I was like 10 years old, and I played games on it too. :) At least one other user on here thinks it is a useful product! ;-)

--Brian
 
neutrino78x said:
So basically there is those two breadboard designs, and there is the HxC2001, the latter being, apparently, the only one you can buy already assembled. :)
--Brian
Click to expand...
Well, there have been commercial units out there for years for the CNC and knitting machine folks, but firmware support for vintage non-PC formats has been iffy. For example here's one supposedly made in Germany that looks suspiciously like a number of Chinese versions; note that support for CP/M, Rainbow etc. is in the 'preliminary' stage. ISTR that there's also another one made in Italy and one or two others that I can't put my finger on at the moment.

No one's saying it isn't useful; many of us have been using various SD card floppy emulators for Commodore, Atari, Radio Shack etc. for years; one of the ones for a C64 even emulates the characteristic head-banging rat-a-tat sound of a 1541 disk drive ;-)

But couldn't you just put images of those booter games into a virtual disk drive on your PC's hard disk?

Why don't you order one and let us know how well it actually works?
 
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MikeS said:
But couldn't you just put images of those booter games into a virtual disk drive on your PC's hard disk?
Click to expand...

You sure could, but like somebody says on YouTube, you could never emulate those quintessential aspects of the 5150 hardware: the clicky keyboard (although a company called unicomp bought the keyboard business from IBM, including the factory in Kentucky where they were made), the exact sound of the internal speaker, etc. Plus some of those games don't work well under emulation, in terms of speed, even if you "slow down" the emulation. You can get close, but not necessarily the same as it would be under an actual 8088.

Observe all the awesome old games this dude has on his IBM XT 5160. ;-) (these are not booter games, but if you're young enough that you used an IBM PC to play games, you probably remember many of these lol)

Why don't you order one and let us know how well it actually works?
Click to expand...

I will at some point. Pretty broke these days. :-(

--Brian
 
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