Support for real time floppy disk access

[catphish]

Does WinUAE support using a real drive in real-time as a floppy disk drive, or can one only use disk images?

If only the latter, does it access the image in real-time, or does it pre-convert the whole image to a virtual magnetic disk? If it's realtime, then it would probably not be a huge modification to achieve what I want.

My goal is to boot a game in an emulator from a real floppy disk (ADF format, USB mass storage presentation).


Thanks!

[thomas]

Originally Posted by catphish

ADF format, USB mass storage presentation

There is no such thing. PC floppy controllers are stuck to PC floppy format (720K or 1440K). They cannot access Amiga floppies (880K). You need custom controllers (non-mass storage) to read Amiga floppy disks.

There is direct access to Catweasel controllers in WinUAE for example. But you cannot boot from them.

[superfrog]

I think what catphish is asking is, when the emulator is accessing an ADF image, does it access it directly from the storage medium in real time as it being used by the virtual Amiga, or does the emulator load the entire ADF into RAM and only read/write the image using the copy in RAM?

It sounds to me like you are wanting to write out an ADF to a standard PC floppy disk and then use it from WinUAE while it is mounted in a USB floppy drive. Is that correct?

[Toni Wilen]

This has been asked previously.

It is not possible because when emulator requests data from the drive, you don't get the data immediately but it has long delay and during that delay emulator must pause or trackloader would time out.. This is why disk images are pre-loaded at disk insert time.

[catphish]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

It is not possible because when emulator requests data from the drive, you don't get the data immediately but it has long delay and during that delay emulator must pause or trackloader would time out.. This is why disk images are pre-loaded at disk insert time.

Thank you, I hadn't considered that this delay would be so problematic, but this makes sense. My drive is fast, but clearly not as fast as a real Amiga which streams the track as it is read.

[catphish]

Originally Posted by superfrog

It sounds to me like you are wanting to write out an ADF to a standard PC floppy disk and then use it from WinUAE while it is mounted in a USB floppy drive. Is that correct?

I suppose with mass storage the physical underlying disk format doesn't matter to the emulator, only the timing matters, but in my case, I am using real Amiga disks. My USB floppy drive knows how to read them.

[catphish]

Originally Posted by thomas

There is no such thing.

I have one in my hand

Originally Posted by thomas

There is direct access to Catweasel controllers in WinUAE for example. But you cannot boot from them.

This is interesting. My floppy drive can stream raw magnetic data too, so I may investigate integrating it this way instead in the future if WinUAE already has the framework to support this. I wonder why it can't boot this way. Obviously this approach requires more development work.

[lesta_smsc]

@catphish - just wondering how to assemble your hardware. Currently got a Greaseweazle set up (@kaffer project) which works great but always nice to have other options available.

I can see the code but not exactly sure whether you're using one of those USB FDD or PC floppy with SMT interface?

As a curious question, would there be any scope in making USB FDD read/write Amiga disks by somehow flashing the drive firmware? Eg https://www.amazon.co.uk/Floppy-Exte.../dp/B00SWQ4G86

Also some preconfigured adaptors with onboard flash which if could be modified would be even more interesting! eg https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?m...2F193164648049

[Misclegend]

it would be fantastic a usb floppy drive where you can use real amiga floppies
in winuae

but Tony said is not possible for the delay of the data

what about creating a PCIE or USB floppy controller for winuae where you can connect a floppy drive then use amiga disks?

is this possible?

[Tomislav]

Arduino Amiga Floppy Disk Reader/Writer (go to 5:55)

[ Show youtube player ]

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Tomislav

Arduino Amiga Floppy Disk Reader/Writer (go to 5:55)

[ Show youtube player ]

looks like very unofficial WinUAE build - not sure if Toni was involved in this - but it looks quite tempting to be honest - last stand of real HW seem to be in danger...

[Ponki1986]

[ Show youtube player ]