Convert a Floppy drive to a flash drive

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MrAl
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Post by MrAl »

Hi there,

I dont know if this is financially viable for you, but you could
get perhaps an older used PC with a USB port, write a program
to read the USB mini disk, write the info out to the RS232 port,
thus sending it to the CNC machines RS232 input.
The old PC would act as the USB host and RS232 transmitter.
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moldmaker
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Post by moldmaker »

I was just hoping that there was a way of
making a flash drive think it was a floppy
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philba
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Post by philba »

sort of close...
http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Floppy-Inter ... B00005T3Q1

I didn't look very far to find this. maybe there is a CF or SD variant...

By the way, the interface isn't very high speed not that complicated. It probably isn't hard an engineering problem. However, who would waste their time on that???
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MrAl
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Post by MrAl »

Hi,

Very interesting find Philba. Could make some use out of a floppy
drive again. Now a USB to floppy disk would be nice too.
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moldmaker
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Post by moldmaker »

I have seen something like that too
but I wasent shure it would work
because I cant install the driver in
the machine
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kheston
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Post by kheston »

Post a picture of the floppy drive connections. Perhaps someone will recognize them.

It would help to know whether the hardware is running a common OS (like dos) in the background or if the software you're using is the OS.

If the software itself is controlling the floppy drive directly (no system calls) and you have no source code, you may need to have a microcontroller in between the floppy cable and your flash reader that translates the drive controller calls (big job).

Another option might be to use a floppy disk adapter. I have one that came with an old Olympus digital camera. Look on eBay for an Olympus FlashPath MAFP-1U. Good luck!
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philba
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Post by philba »

MrAl wrote:Hi,

Very interesting find Philba. Could make some use out of a floppy
drive again. Now a USB to floppy disk would be nice too.
As to the engineering of a USB to FDD interface device, it's a little complex because the device would need to be a USB hub. On the FDD connector side, the signals are not very high speed (it was designed in the 70's) so just about any fast uC would suffice. It would emulate a FAT16 filesystem and translate that into head/cylinder/sector operations.

The reality is that few are trying to mother hen along ancient HW like the OP so there is little demand for such a product.

By the way, Moldmaker, have you checked the manufacturer of the product? They might have a product to bring your machine forward. The use of a floppy drive was heading towards obsolete even 7 years ago.
moldmaker
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Post by moldmaker »

The company that builds the machines
does have other options like eathernet cards
but that requires a new prosessor board.
big bucks.
its not worth the investment on a 7+ year old
machine.
SETEC_Astronomy
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Post by SETEC_Astronomy »

moldmaker wrote:I have seen something like that too
but I wasent shure it would work
because I cant install the driver in
the machine
Since the floppy drive thinks it's reading a normal disk and the computer already handles the floppy drive no drivers are needed for your machine. It should work out of the box.

Edit: To speed things along more I would buy a USB memory stick reader/writer to write the files to the memory stick from the computer generating the files and then plug the stick into the adapter and insert it into your milling machine. Using the floppy converter to write to the memory stick would be time consuming.
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MrAl
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Post by MrAl »

Hi moldmaker,

Did you think about using a computer to send the info via the
rs232 port?
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haklesup
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Post by haklesup »

its not worth the investment on a 7+ year old machine.
How true, Even a brand new P4 2.8GHZ with XP goes for <$200 on bargain websites. Not state of the art but miles ahead of the present model and likely has bios that can boot from mass storage on USB.

A low bar to pass under indeed.
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