UFE
UFE is an SD/MMC floppy drive emulator for old computers. It connects to the floppy drive port of the host computer and behaves like a real floppy drive, except that the data comes from the SD/MMC card instead of real media. It is the successor to TFE, my previous floppy emulator project.
Latest Update: UFE now supports the Amiga 1200! See below for new pictures.
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- UFE Rev A2 Homebrew PCB Top Side
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- UFE Rev A2 Installed on Amiga 500 (Cover On)
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- UFE Rev A2 Installed on Amiga 500 (Cover Off)
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- UFE Rev A2 In Operation on A500
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- UFE Rev A2 User Interface on A500
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- UFE A500 Keyboard Daughterboard Homebrew PCB
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- UFE Rev A1 Installed on Amiga 1200 (Cover On)
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- UFE Rev A1 Installed on Amiga 1200 (Cover Off)
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- UFE Rev A1 In Operation on A1200
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- UFE Rev A1 User Interface on A1200
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- UFE A1200 Keyboard Daughterboard Homebrew PCB
Motivation
A number of SD/MMC floppy emulator projects existed around the time I started working on UFE. These worked well, but there were limitations. The most notable limitation was poor support for the Amiga computers, including lack of write support. In addition, the user interfaces of the existing floppy emulators were not practical. They were either based on a small LCD screen and a few buttons, or they had external connections such as joystick and video ports. Generally, major case modding was necessary.
The underlying philosophy behind the UFE design is that it should support a just few computers, but it should support them as well as possible. The host computer’s keyboard should be used for controlling the floppy emulator. The video output should be overlaid on top of the host computer’s video output. Read and write operations must be fully supported. All these features make UFE an ideal drop-in replacement for a real floppy drive.
Addendum: The statements made in this “Motivation” section simply represent -my own- views of the floppy emulator situation at the time I started this project. Specifically, it has been brought to my attention that the claims regarding “practicality” and “major case modding” may be exaggerations… It is up to you to decide.
Video
The video above shows UFE in operation, including write support. Sorry about the quality, the resolution is low and there are sync issues between audio and both feeds, but it should still give a good idea of how UFE works. Here is what happens in the video, in a nutshell:
- The SD card contains a couple of images: XCopy.ADF and State of the Art.ADF (demo by Spaceballs).
- XCopy.ADF is mounted into DF0. Amiga boots from it.
- Once XCopy loads, State of the Art.ADF is mounted into DF0 and XCopy.ADF is mounted into DF1, with write-protect off.
- Using XCopy, contents of DF0 are copied over onto DF1.
- Once copy operation is over and the red LED turns off, the XCopy.ADF on the SD Card has been overwritten with contents of State of the Art.ADF.
- Amiga is cold rebooted.
- Xcopy.ADF (now containing State of the Art demo) is mounted into DF0.
- Amiga boots into the demo.
Capture setup: A520 modulator and 4-channel BT878 capture card.
Features
- Read/Write access for Commodore AMIGA, Atari ST and Amstrad CPC computers.
- On-board support for ADF, DSK, ST and MSA images. No conversion on PC necessary.
- Standard IDC 34-pin floppy connector.
- Can emulate two floppy drives.
- Video overlay user interface: 72 columns by 30 lines text mode.
- Allows use of host system keyboard to control user interface.
- Buzzer for emulating head stepping ticks.
- Can co-exist with other floppy drives on the same bus (not tested).
- Full FAT32 support (incl. long file names and directories) for the SD Card. SDHC support.
- Firmware updates can be made through SD Card.
- Completely solderless installation.
- PIC32 MCU @80Mhz, 16Mb SDRAM. Double-sided PCB.
Remarks
- Other computers with WD1772 or UPD765 controllers may work, but have not been tested.
- Video output is disabled when floppy emulation is active.
- SD Card must be formatted with FAT32 file-system with a minimum cluster (allocation unit) size of 8192 bytes.
- Host keyboard control currently only available on Amiga 500 and Amiga 1200 computers (support for more computers are planned).
- Write support for DSK, ST and MSA images not implemented yet (to be added in future firmware versions).
- Copy-protected Extended DSK images are not fully-supported.
- Mounting an image (MFM-conversion) takes around 3 seconds on average (depending on SD card speed and image size/type). Optimizations in future firmware are expected to reduce loading time.
How to Use
Pressing the activation key combo (e.g. Left Alt-Left Amiga-Right Amiga) activates the UFE user interface. Key events are directed to UFE so that images can be mounted and settings can be modified. Arrow/Enter keys are used to navigate the menus. The host system does not receive any keyboard events while the UI is active (until the user selects “Continue” from the UFE main menu).
While the UFE UI is active, floppy emulation is disabled. Emulated drives behave as if they are empty. When floppy emulation is active, the yellow LED indicates ongoing floppy activity (drive motor(s) on), and the red LED indicates there is updated data in UFE memory not yet written to the SD card. After floppy write operations, the user must wait until the red LED goes off before removing the SD card.
Installation
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- UFE Rev A2 A500 All Connections
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- UFE Rev A2 A500 Video and Keyboard Connections
UFE Rev A2 board has the following connectors:
- Power: Standard 4-pin floppy power connector. 12V pin is the one closer to the side border of the board.
- Floppy IF: Standard 34-pin floppy interface connector.
- Keyboard: 6-pin connector to keyboard daughterboard.
- Video: 8-pin connector to a wiring harness that connects to Red, Green, Blue and Composite Sync points on the host system mainboard.
The A500 Keyboard Daughterboard is designed to plug into the keyboard connector on the A500 motherboard. The connector from the keyboard plugs into the keyboard daughterboard.
Similarly, the edge connector on the A1200 Keyboard Daughterboard is designed to plug into the keyboard connector on the A1200 motherboard (after removing the white plastic lock). The ribbon from the keyboard connects to the keyboard daughterboard.
FAQ (as of July 2010)
What’s the current status of the UFE?
Hardware and software is operational. I plan to organize a beta stage with a small group of select users soon.
Will it be possible to purchase the UFE?
A suitable company or person needs to be found to handle production and sales.
Do you have any plans to release detailed technical information (firmware sources, PCB layout)?
Not right now, but this may change.
Do you have any plans to add support for other host computers / image formats?
Yes, but only if they comply with the basic requirements for the current UFE hardware (RGB video output and standard floppy interface).
Schematics
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- UFE Rev A2 Schematics Sheet 1
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- UFE Rev A2 Schematics Sheet 2
Background
The development progress of the UFE and its predecessors are thoroughly documented in my main blog (posts tagged UFE). But here is a brief summary, anyway:
The first floppy emulator project I’ve worked on is the TFE. It was quite successful in its own right, but it had a number of shortcomings that I’ve described in detail above. These issues prompted me to look for different design ideas. I first designed a piece of hardware similar to the current UFE, in that it also used PIC32 MCU and SDRAM, but had a color TFT touch-screen LCD for user interface and USB input instead of SD card. Unfortunately, this hardware never saw the light of day, as I got sidetracked by other projects.
After a while, I realized that it could be nice to have video overlay and host keyboard controls for the floppy emulator user interface, making it much more practical to use, especially for computers with drives built-in. I extended the original TFE design to accommodate the changes required, resulting in the TFE+. The core of TFE+ was almost the same as the original TFE, but it used an overclocked ATmega644 instead. After some experimentation with the TFE+ design, it became clear that it was too weak to be able to support write operations on Amiga computers. So I took the best features of the TFE+ design and the original PIC32-based design, and created the UFE as a result.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks go to Ozkano, LW3D, and Alcofribas.
Page History
Aug 09, 2010: A1200 support (w/ pictures) added, acknowledgments added, minor changes.
Jul 10, 2010: Initial publication.
Disclaimer
This information here is provided AS IS without any express or implied warranties. While every effort has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this text, the author assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. I will not be held responsible for any damages or costs which might occur as a result of anything related to projects described or referred to on this page. You are not allowed to use information contained in these pages for commercial purposes without my written authorization.
Retromaster's Electronics Projects 
dIGIMAN said
DMS Support would be perfekt 🙂
retromaster said
DMS support is possible. It looks like compression is done on a per-track basis so it is not a big deal. Implementing write-support needs to be carefully considered with compressed image formats such as DMS, though.
megachur said
Great project !
Something comes to my mind after reading this article :
Why not connecting vidéo of this UFE on the RGB output signal ? I mean : Amiga, Amstrad, Atari St have the same output to “péritel” RGB PAL or NTSC signal… Making an universal cable peritel female peritel male can be easier than cabling on the mainboard directly !?
Maybe what I say don’t work, I don’t know.
TIA for your answer/explanation !
P.S : I hope to see your great project released soon !!! Congratulations for this great works !
retromaster said
megachur, thank you for your kind words and suggestion.
However, I find that your idea is not viable, for a few reasons… First of all, the Peritel (SCART) interface is used only in Europe, as far as I know. In the US they do not use this kind of interface. Secondly, I wanted to design UFE so that all the cabling necessary would remain in the case of the host computer… Making a SCART cable output would mean that the cable would need to come out of the case somehow, which is what I wanted to avoid in the first place. Anyway, cabling into the motherboard is not difficult at all, you just need to attach five hooks in the right places, that’s all.
Vincent ( aka Tiki ) said
Hello,
It’s a great project. I hope I’ll buy it in a near futur. Do you plan to build some units for selling ?
I think lot of people would be interresting by that.
Thanks
Vincent
retromaster said
Vincent, I am glad you like this project.
Like I implied in the FAQ, I am not able to manufacture and sell units myself. That said, at the moment there is at least one individual who is interested in helping me commercialize this project. So, if things materialize in the near future, it may be possible for people to buy UFE.
Alexh said
Nice project. Seems a little bit over complicated wiring in the video and keyboard.
I suggested a long time ago a usage model which would require only two connections, the floppy disk cable and the eject button.
On power-on the floppy disk emulator presents a platform specific ‘default disk’. This is a menu program which runs on the host computer and so has access to the screen, keyboard and mouse with no additional wiring.
The floppy disk emulator presents the SD contents (which is displayed with the menu program) by being presented as sectors on default-boot disk. Disk image selection is sent back to the floppy disk emulator from the host by a series of writes.
Disks can be queued and once running they can be cycled through using the eject button which is wired to the emulator.
Pressing and holding the eject button for ‘n’ seconds makes the floppy disk emulator empty the queue and return to the default disk image.
The only down side is that a different ‘default disk’ image must be written for each platform. But with a well documented simple API the retro communities with jump at the task. Before you know it there will be animated screen shots of each disk image and cool things like that.
Brian said
Hi,
Great project. I am bulding svideo and component output boards for all Amigas and it would be simple of me to include a header on the board to feed the video output from your emulator so it will clean up the rats nest of wires a bit. If you are using a 2GB SD card i dont see the need for using compressed DMS images. I really believe that people will use ADF’s mostly and of course IPF images would be the way to go so as to play protected images. If you are looking for someone to test and even give a hand building these i volunteer myself.
Here is info on my latest project…
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=52671
retromaster said
Alexh,
The way you described seems very similar to the way the HxC emulator’s host control feature. works You may want to check that project out.
Frankly, I see many problems with this approach:
1. I don’t see the point in waiting for software (your ‘default disk’) to load just to simply change the disk inserted. Retro-computers and floppy disks are slow.
2. Imagine you realize that you need another disk in the ‘disk cycle’, and perhaps you are working or right in the middle of a game… You would just need to start over (reboot, reload, etc.). You may lose your progress.
3. In your UI suggestion, once the disk image control program (the default disk) is gone, there is no indication of which disk in the cycle is inserted. I can imagine many situations where you are not able to find out which disk image in the cycle is inserted. You can easily overwrite a disk by accident. You cannot control write-protect settings, etc.
Instead, in UFE, you could simply press Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga, activate the UI, and change the disk in a matter of seconds. I do not want the users to “plan ahead” how they will use the floppy emulator. UFE responds instantly. Far more practical, in my opinion.
So, I would like to thank you for your suggestion, but the way the user interface works is one of the central ideas behind the UFE design and it is not going to change.
-RM
retromaster said
Brian,
Your project seems nice, and I guess it is useful especially for people living in the US (no SCART). If you would like to add a UFE video header, you can find the pinout in the schematics…
DMS image support is not really high priority, but I guess it would eventually be added to the firmware, there is a lot of space remaining in the flash. IPF support would also be nice, but the last time I checked, only a pre-compiled binary library on the PC was available. Has the situation changed? I think that there is a good possibility that the UFE hardware can implement variable-bit-rate, read-only IPF support, if the file format documentation were available.
I also thank you for your offer to help in testing and building UFE units, I will definitely keep in it mind.
-RM
Chris said
I would like to see an Amiga 1200 mod that works with indivision
RetroTurk said
I think this is the one of the best floppy emulator … Congrulations Tolga…
please release it as soon as possible. There are lots of new retro projects to check 🙂
Alexh said
Retromaster,
I believe it was my complaining to HxC that got them to try to implement these features 🙂
Problems 1 you describe may or may not be a problem. Loading a txt based menu would take under a few seconds. The DIR structure (depending on how many images are on the SD card) is another story. How many KB could it be?
Problem 3, not sure about that one. I must never have come across that scenario. If you are playing games and you need to change disks you just cycle through until you find the right one? Usually they just say “Insert Disk B” until it recognises it. If you are in Workbench or any other application where you are likely to be saving you will be able to see the contents or label of the disk.
Problem 2 I agree is real. But don’t you agree it is unlikely? I think most users would be happy to ‘plan ahead’ when playing games. Especially if all the disk images are grouped by sub directories containing all disk images for that game. In Workbench etc. you could have an application to select disks at any time. But I agree it would be very frustrating if you missed one and had to start again.
Interesting project. Wish you all the best in finding a commercial sponsor. Perhaps AmigaKit would help you out?
J.ram64 said
hello,
Would U concider building UFE 4 A1200?
or does it work allready?
…………..
NikosGR said
Excellent! I will definitely buy one when it comes to! Will there be a version for A1200?
retromaster said
@the people asking about A1200: The current UFE mainboard works with an A1200 with no problem. The missing thing is a keyboard daughterboard for the A1200 so that the A1200 keyboard can be used to control UFE. This is one of the high-priority items in my list.
@Alexh: We can debate this on and on… But it is essentially a design decision, I’ve thought about this, weighed the pros and cons and came up with this solution… It is one of the defining features of UFE for me so I am not willing to make any changes here. Thanks for your suggestion anyway, I appreciate the feedback.
Master of Orion said
Hi,
Nice project. I’d recommend contacting Amigakit for the mass production.
BR
Ema said
Hi guys!
I will surely buy one when available!
…Maybe with the Indivision ECS!
Trip6 said
When and where can I buy these? I would like a few depending on price.
desiv said
Great looking project.
I have to admit, I think I prefer the current design to what alexh suggests.
It might be a bit overly complicated, but as it as overly complicated for YOU, and you’ve done all the work, I appreciate it.
The only issue I see is that it won’t work with the 1200 easily because of the keyboard interface. But I see you mention that is a possibility.
Also, the video connections seem a bit awkward, however I have one of Amigamaniac’s Amiga-s-video adapters and his also has a header for “other” input. If it is “live” while plugged into the Amiga (It wasn’t designed to be, but I’m not sure he disabled it), I should be able to plug it straight into there fairly cleanly.
The 2nd floppy is interesting, but I wonder about compatibility with real external devices.
Specifically for me (small minority here, I agree), I have an A-Max on my A500 which steals df1:. Hopefully they would co exist.
I’m very impressed with the design!!! I’ve looked at some of the other options, but write support is a must for me..
Then again, I wish I’d known before I bought 500 blank sealed in plastic DSDD floppies. 🙂
desiv
retromaster said
@trip6: I cannot say when or where UFE will be available for purchase, I’ll announce it here when there is a development in that area.
@Desiv: Installation of the video is not difficult, the hooks simplify this greatly and make it reversible. For the 1200, I am already working on a keyboard daughterboard design.
Trip6 said
If you could make them vailable through Amigakit or Vesalia, they would get more exposure as well as those two companies help with tech support too…
Moe said
Question about the feature noted above: “Completely solderless installation.”
What does that entail? Solder glue or similar?
Your PCB work is very professional looking. Do you have pictures of your setup that creates these works of art?
Moe said
Ah, it must mean that installing the UFE in the Amiga one doesn’t need to solder any items, but the board and components on the board are soldered 🙂
retromaster said
Yes 🙂
Thank you 🙂 I do not have the pictures of the equipment, but only a list, here, but I guess you’ve already seen that. To be honest, that page is a little out of date, the next time I make a board I intend to update the board pictures and some of the information there.
Terug naar Amiga said
[…] Floppy Emulator), maar daarmee kun je niks wegschrijven (lees: saven). Een nieuwe variant is de UFE, maar die is nog in ontwikkeling. Dus vooralsnog zit er niks anders op dan een Amiga 1200 met […]
Emulating an Amiga floppy drive - Hack a Day said
[…] Ultimate Floppy Emulator is a wicked display of hardware mastery. It is the culmination of several design stages aimed at […]
Pyrofer said
Hi, As the maker of the 1541-III-DTV (An SD Floppy emulator for the C64!) I REALLY appreciate this project.
It’s amazing. I love it.
I may just have to build one myself. Great work, keep it up!
Josiah said
I’d definitely buy at least one if the price is right.
Tyler Thomson said
Any plans to support the trash80? I have a TRS80 Model 4 just sitting there because I have no boot discs for it.
Abby said
But will it play “Daisy” on when you run Guru Music like a real Amiga’s floppy drive? Just wondering if the sound effects were that realistic.
retromaster said
@Tyler Thomson: Sorry, no plans for the TRS80 atm. Partly because I do not have one 🙂
@Abby: I am afraid the sound effects are not that realistic 🙂 I think you may recognize the music, but that’s about it. The piezo was mainly intended as a track stepping indicator, nothing more… That said, perhaps I might put a real speaker on a newer hardware revision and actually play samples for more authentic results.
Chain-Q said
I absolutely love this project. The first floppy emulator i’d drop into all my Miggys (half dozen+) without hesitation. Keep it up, and please make it into a final product, available to us, mortals. 🙂 Also, please consider support for the A1200 and boxed Amigas (2k/3k/4k) too! (I’ll be the first to buy it, i promise.:)
Ahmet Kermen said
Congratulations!!!
very nice job and a really great project.
walk said
SOLD! Where do I get one?
digix said
Finally a floppy emulator for Amiga with write support. My 2 A2000’s are waiting for something like this, they are not being used at all now.
Chupathingy said
Holy hell! Man, this couldn’t have come at a better time! My floppies are currently failing left and right, within the past two weeks I’ve had two copies of Workbench konk out on me. Will this work on an Amiga 1000?
retromaster said
It should, but it hasn’t been tested.
Chupathingy said
@retromaster – I’d be glad to be a guinea pig for you.
Hey, do you live anywhere near Chicago? There’s gonna be a Commodore convention in Lombard on September 18 and it’d be a perfect place to show it off!
retromaster said
Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind for the beta stage.
Actually, I live more than five thousand miles away, in Istanbul, Turkey 🙂
Chupathingy said
retromaster said
Sure.
Marijan said
I think this is a good idea just to be proposed for control over the keyboard is a separate button with three functions like rolling the mouse button, I think it would be much simpler and more functional, since this version and could be used with any Amiga, if you can send a sketch of my ideas, a lot of success in completing the project
Marijan from Croatia
retromaster said
Well, I designed it this way to avoid any extra buttons, which you would have to mount somewhere on the case anyway. I am also already working on a A1200 keyboard daughterboard. Both daughterboards should allow UFE to be used with any Amiga in existence.
Thanks for the feedback anyway,
-RM
Marijan said
Thank you for your prompt reply, if necessary can be beta tester, I wrote a review in a computer magazine VIDI in croatia about HxC Floppy Drive Emulator,
thanks again
Marijan
Leonardo said
Hello Retromaster.. I’m an Amiga fan and I love your project..
Please, it would be a privilege for me to be part of your group of Beta tester..
Best Regards.
Leonardo.
A500Man said
Hello Retromaster,
a really cool project. I have watched the solutions for A500 an SD, but none hat write support. That`s a big plus! If you still need betatesters, you can count on me!
CU,
A500Man
desiv said
Just a weird thought…
It can only see what the Amiga floppy controller can recognize??
What I’m wondering is, how big a floppy could you emulate?
Could you create some type of large floppy image that could be used as a hard disk sort of????
My guess is maybe not, but I know some Amigas can support at least high density floppies???
Not required.. I love this project either way..
desiv
Shambler said
Hi There!
I’ve been watching my Amiga’s drive dying slowly over the last few months (to great pain!) and think your project would be perfect!
Would love to be a beta tester if there’s any places left!
I have two A500s (different revisions) and a A1200
Sam
retromaster said
@Desiv: Unfortunately, the size of the floppy that can be emulated is limited by the size of the SDRAM on board (which is just 16MB). Even if this limitation were not in place, a device driver would still be needed on the Amiga side to recognize the floppy (with a lot of tracks, much more than 80) as a hard disk. It is an interesting thought, though.
desiv said
As I recall, I was not unhappy with OS work once I got my 2nd floppy drive. (This was probably 1.3)..
So I would think that even 4M or above would be quite a bit for an Amiga OS boot floppy. Even 3.0 came on 6 800K floppies that weren’t compressed (I think?), and had stuff you wouldn’t need, so you could fit the whole basic OS in 4M or so.. Now, more is better, but it does sound interesing….
Either way, you’re product looks great…
desiv
Miro Karkus said
Hi!
I have only simple idea:
Why do not create UFE for Commodore 8-bit computers, for drive C1581?
This is 3,5″ 800k DSDD drive, very similar to Amiga’s FDD.
It can be really good solution.
Cheers,
Miro
retromaster said
Although the floppy drive itself is quite similar, the interface to C64 is completely different (1541/1571/1581 all have 6502 on board + RAM/ROM). There are some existing project that you may want to check out: 1541Ultimate, MMC2IEC, etc.
calamatta said
If you wish i can be one of your beta tester. I’m currently trying to use my A500 with in my recoding studio as a retro synth.
best wishes and good job.
MSXRulez said
HI, amazing project. and will be helpfull once my drives start dying on me.
But why leave out another great classic with crappy drives? the MSX.
or has some 1 already tried it on 1?
greetings from The NEtherlands
retromaster said
I think the UFE mainboard would work with the MSX computers (with standard floppy interfaces) but designing the keyboard daughterboard could be quite a problem, since there is quite bit of variety in different MSX computers.
Godstalker said
I would buy this.
However, one thing that might make it easier to use (i’m coming from an ST perspective here) – rather than using the host keyboard to control, how about adding a scroll/click thumbwheel to the edge of the board next to the card slot for control, so you click in to get the interface up, and scroll up/down for selection. Something like this would do the trick: Edge Thumbwheel Encoder (Datasheet here)
Would make installation a bit simpler and there’s be less specificty to the platform.
-GS
Edoardo said
Can i use this floppy emulator on a old keyboard generalmusic wx2 ? the original floppy disk are formatted with n atari partition of 1.6Mb
retromaster said
Unfortunately not in its current form, since the user interface requires a RGB monitor.
Marcus said
Wow. Great product. I really hopes this will go to serial production. I will definite buy this one…
sven said
I would be interested in buying at least one of these. I haven about 5 amiga’s 500 with broken drives and about 50% of my floppies have errors by now 😦
Danny said
I’d like to build this project for my A500, is it possible to download the PIC software from your site? Thanks, Danny
retromaster said
No, sorry. Please see the FAQ section.
AmigaMOD said
Hi,
first of all i must say, that u r doin a great job on this emulator. I found this little peace of hardware while i was searching for solutions to replace the amiga floppy drive. Currently i am building a laptop based on the a300 (aka 600) and i need to save room as much as possible. So is it possible to purchase a board from u? I think i also need a keyboard interface, but u have already one developed for the a1200 which is nearly the same for the a600 (except 3 lines).
Trip6 said
When will UFE be avaialable? Have you found someone to produce it? Maybe Indidual Computers can help – http://www.jschoenfeld.com/ or brain innovations – http://www.jbrain.com/ or amigakit – http://www.amigakit.com/ or Gideon – http://www.1541ultimate.net/content/index.php . I really want some of these \ need some of these.
retromaster said
I am still evaluating different options. It is proceeding rather slowly (due to factors outside of me), and I cannot give a definite answer, sorry. You will know when/if UFE becomes available.
EvilCensor said
Interesting project, there are bound to be numerous Amiga users who would be interested in this (for a reasonable price, myself for one) – keep up the good work and don’t lose heart.
the_sleeping_dog said
I would be interested in buying at least two of these emulators, so i can build one in my A600 and A1200.. I will be checking out this site regulary and hope that it is possible to buy them in the near future.. Keep up the good work.
Greetings
steveke77 said
Very nice project. I hope it will be available in the future.
Steve
Robert said
Congratulation for the nice project.
I hope it will be available in the future, because I would be interested in buying one of them.
Cheers
Robert
Berry said
This is perfect! When do you think we can purchase this masterpiece of hardware/software?
It will definitely be a very good add-on for my to be customised Amiga 1200.
JetSetSkippy said
Fantastic project. Thanks for sharing.
All the best.
Trip6 said
You should talk to Jim Brain at Brain Innovations to see if you two can bring this to market… I really want to see this thing produced… http://www.go4retro.com/ is Jim Brain’s site…
Not really 8-bit but still the feeling of the past… | 8-bit living… said
[…] Retromaster’s Electronics Projects UFE – Demo video This entry was posted in Amiga 1200 and tagged 1200, Amiga. Bookmark the permalink. ← Thank you… the MSSIAH has arrived! Let’s kickstart the Channel Z! → […]
bolt said
I would buy this! Please please please make it available! (and send me an email when it is?)
Romppainen said
I really hope this will make it to the markets some day, I believe there would be notable demand for this kind of device, especially among Amiga users, as ability to handle original image files instead of forced converting to custom ones would be a big advantage compared to other drive emulators currently available.
silverdr said
Yes, I can only add my voice to the chorus. Please let us (somehow) buy it. And while working on the production / distribution (I think potentially good options like Jens or Jim were already suggested) please consider one more thing:
I wouldn’t bother much with making a harddrive size storage out of it. There are other options, which are fully compatible with existing hardware and software. Actually all of my Amigas run on some form of flash storage for some time. Being it IDE or SCSI connected. I don’t see a real point in making that kind of storage available over floppy connector.
What I would be highly appreciating though – would be the ability to replace the 1.76 MiB drives in my Amigas. The original ones are extremely rare these days and I have only two working left. I believe adding the “HD” support is a natural extension path of this project. What do you think?
With congratulations and best wishes,
silverdr
P. S. Did I mention I can’t wait to get one? 😉
Strobestar said
Just plain awesome! I’ve just begun to mod my Amiga.. Kitted it up with a CF card HD replacement, started playing with that.. and now I’m finding my Workbench disks, other floppies (&/or the drive) is dying! Aaargh! Getting REAL tired of seeing the words “Read Error”.. can’t see any real point to purchasing replacement floppy drives if the DSDD diskettes are becoming extinct too.
This idea is just BRILLIANT! Keep moving ahead with this, never give up, make it happen! And we ALL can continue to enjoy our awesome Amigas for hopefully decades to come! 🙂
Add me to the eager customer list! Can’t wait!
Tuomas Nieminen said
This sounds really good.. eagerly waiting for ability to purchase this
Martin Kluth said
Wow, what a cool Idea. I have some keyboards and sampler working with floppies only and now I can add a MC card. I did not think of doing so, just before I have seen this project, however.
Time to get the old keyboards out of the basement!
Berry said
Google *knows* other multiplatform floppy emulators to use virtual floppies stored on a SD card. Those products are already in production and proven technology.
retromaster said
There is no need to even *ask* google. There are already links to those emulators all around my blog.
Emulatore floppy per Amiga « Blog said
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