DiskBuddy64 is a minimal adapter that can interface a Commodore 1541(II) floppy disk drive to your PC via USB in order to read from and write on disks. It uses its own fast loader to minimize the transfer times. The DiskBuddy64 is controlled via a command line interface or a graphical front end written in Python.
This is not my project. This is an open source project that i used to build out these adapters. It started as a desire for one adapter, but i could not find one, so i bought enough parts to make a batch.
Software and instructions are found here, along with license: https://oshwlab.com/wagiminator/c64-diskbuddy64
Greaseweazle allows versatile floppy drive control over USB. By extracting the raw flux transitions from a drive, any (eg. copy-protected) disk format can be captured and analyzed - PC, Amiga, Amstrad, PDP-11, musical instruments, industrial equipment, and more. The Greaseweazle also supports writing to floppy disks, from a range of image file formats including those commonly used for online preservation (ADF, IPF, DSK, IMG, HFE, etc).
Reads and writes 3", 3.5", 5.25", 8" disks (with suitable drive and cable). Buffered outputs, for communicating with older 5.25" and 8" disk drives. Integrated power connector for directly powering most 3.5" disk drives. Write-enable jumper can be removed for safer preservation of precious vintage disks. Supports flippy-modded 5.25" drives. Supports Disk-Change detection as used by Rob Smith's integration into the WinUAE Amiga emulator. 3 user-definable outputs (eg. 8" interface REDWC signal). 100% factory tested, and tested again by me before shipping.
We at Bitbinders have been developing professional hardware and software solutions since 1982. Our founder had a very long love affair with Commodore computers (and a shorter fling with Atari's!) He founded BitBinders decades ago and mostly did programming to enhance his main career as an engineer and later as an manufacturing executive. There were many developments but perhaps two of the more interesting included some pretty fancy linear programming for foundries and early-90's machine vision for controlling welders. Non-main career commercial successes included "RadBench", a Visual Basic add-on licensed and published by the Crescent Division of Progress Software. His "second career" is now focused on BitBinders retro-computing products, grown from a true passion for retro-computing.
The really interesting thing is that they sell replicas of the Commodore 1581 3.5" floppy drive that are 100% compatible. They sell a couple of variants (one and two drive units) and are engineered with future upgrades and repairs in mind. They're pretty expensive but they're re-implementations using modern components. They also sell replacement power supplies for Commodore computers.
ArduinoFDC is a sketch that implements a floppy disk controller. It works with Arduino Uno, Leonardo, Nano, Pro Mini, Micro and Mega.
ArduinoFDC consists of three parts:
ArduinoFDC works with double density (DD) as well as high density (HD) disk drives. It can read, write and format 5.25" DD (360KB), 5.25" HD (1.2MB), 3.5" DD (720KB) and 3.5" HD (1.44MB) disks.
The NeoFloppy is an non-mechanical / solid-state media format optimized for handling, transport, storage, archive and subsequent use. It is only using the mechanical specification of the 3,5" FDD to a specific extent. Namely: Drive mechanisms (except the head since the drive only needs to vertically contact pins behind the shutter) and the media dimensions.
A company that sells NOS (new old stock) floppy disks and floppy drives. Mostly 3.5", some 5.25" and even 8". Still sealed and recycled disks. Can transfer stuff from floppy disks en masse as a service. They also buy lots of floppies.
Win 7/8/10, and Linux/i386/AMD64 kernel driver and development library to control serial CBM devices, such as the Commodore 1541 disk drive, connected to the PC's parallel port via a XM1541 or XA1541 cable. Fast disk copier included. Successor of cbm4linux. Also supports the XU1541 and the XUM1541 devices (a.k.a. "ZoomFloppy").
OpenCBM provides an interface to the Commodore IEC bus at the level of simple TALK and LISTEN commands, similar to the one provided by the Commodore kernel routines. Additionally, some higher and lower level bus control is available as well, allowing for full control of the bus.
The CBM serial devices are connected to the PC either to the parallel port via an XM1541 or XA1541 cable and, optionally, an XP1541 or XP1571 add-on cable. Alternatively, more modern USB cable solutions like XU1541 or XUM1541 (a.k.a. ZoomFloppy) are supported.
Any Linux, FreeBSD or MacOS X variant that support libusb-1.0 should be supported. Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X have been explicitly tested.
Official documentation: https://opencbm.trikaliotis.net/
A boot floppy image that can be used for booting weird or recalcitrant machines from other devices, such as CD-ROMs.