|
|
|
|
|
by philpem
2630 days ago
|
|
Sorry, quite correct. Apparently I can't even remember my own domain name! It'll do exactly what a Kryoflux can do, including flux-transition-level read and write. (I'm not sure if the Kryoflux can write). The big differences are that it has a complete Shugart drive interface which matches what floppy drive datasheets advise -- so it's fully open-collector, with the right type of gates. This also makes it very flexible -- it's been used to read ST506 MFM/RLL drives and decode the resulting output. It's been connected to NEC 8-inch drives with non-Shugart interfaces. Its only major problem was that it was expensive - about $150 per unit. You could probably get that down a lot by using a more appropriate FPGA. If I did it again, I'd probably use a Lattice MachXO and the Yosys/Nextpnr toolkit, and possibly an STM32 microcontroller. Practically speaking if you didn't need Winchester support, you could probably use the STM32's timer and PWM peripherals with DMA reload, leaving a single-chip solution with a bit of LSTTL for the drive interface. |
|