Add ability to select PC floppy drive so you can read ADF files from PC Floppy

I would like to add the abliity to select the PC floppy drive as the AMIGA drive in the config section so I can put a ADF file on a regular PC floppy, that way it uses the real floppy disk to read and write the ADF file too simulating "Kind of" the Amiga floppy drive.

I know it's not practical but hey I have aPC that I run Amiga Forever on and it has a real PC 1.44 meg floppy drive and I can put a ADF file on it and it would give that feeling of a real Amiga!!


I don't how to edit and compile the code, and I think it would be easy to add to the source and distribute with all Newer distros....

I grew up with the Amiga 500 so I kind of miss it a lot, wish commodore had pushed it more instead we are left with a PC or MAC no other hardware.

What do other think of this, is it stupid??

Thanks!!!

[Matt_H]

You could approximate this effect by setting the virtual floppy drive to use A:\file.adf. Not sure how disk swapping would work, but if you want to run a single-disk game I think that would do it.

I think a more practical/exciting future option would be to use a Catweasel/Kyroflux/etc. as a real, native floppy drive (DF0: ) instead of an adf file.

[Anakirob]

But you CAN put an ADF onto a HD floppy and use it from within UAE as the above post states. No need to go messing with the UAE source code for that.

I agree that support for the floppy drive controllers Matt_H mentioned using real Amiga floppies would be great. Even though I don't use floppies if I can avoid it I respect that many Amiga users, real or emulated, like the experience of running games from original floppies.

[honx]

i guess, without catweasel or similar this couldn't work by hardware.
as far as i know pc drives are not able to read or write amiga disks.
floppy access needs a secondary floppy controller like catweasel.
i assume, without catweasel this would be a pointless undertaking.
furthermore most pcs (like mine) don't even have any floppy drive.

but:
in combination with catweasel, full catweasel support and integration,
this would definitely be a nice and of course a very important feature!
if future is bright, it brings usb based catweasel with integrated drive!
and it brings a winuae being able to boot directly from this hardware!

[mark_k]

Originally Posted by Matt_H

You could approximate this effect by setting the virtual floppy drive to use A:\file.adf.

That would work, kind of. It would even be possible to arrange the ADF file so the data of each Amiga track is on the corresponding track of the PC floppy, meaning that head movement sounds could be approximately correct. (You'd miss out on sounds of seek to track 0, since the PC drive head wouldn't move then.)

But emulation would keep pausing waiting for data to be read from the PC floppy drive. Until all tracks are in the Windows disk cache when there would be no floppy drive head movement.

[Toni Wilen]

It lacks option "practically impossible".

It can't work. Required pauses would make emulation unusable.

[mark_k]

Not really the same, but it should be possible to use a real floppy drive for sounds. Either a real/native one, or more feasible for most PCs these days a USB floppy drive.

You'd issue seek commands to the floppy drive (USB floppy drives do support that according to the UFI spec) whenever the emulated Amiga moves the head. It might not be perfect though, since you don't know in advance which head the Amiga program is stepping to.