Patches and discussion for Ensoniq VFX family

On 19 May 2012, at 14:47, Bob S. wrote:

But it isn't an ad, nor do I have a vested interest.

My interest in this is simply because, well, floppy drives fail, and so do floppies! - and I've been looking into a less failure-prone, and generally less outdated, replacement. This floppy drive emulator seems to fit the bill - but until recently, it was only available as a separate PCB, possibly with an enclosure, but in a form factor completely different from an actual floppy drive. And they work Ensoniq keyboards - at least in an EPS, as can be seen in this video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM2o0W5Y0pI> ... which also shows how the old version has to be fitted significantly differently than the floppy drive it replaces, and may leave cables visible, or even require modifications to the case of the device.

But recently, they've started making them in a floppy drive _shape_ as well as functionality - which means they've now become a viable replacement option even for people like me who want to leave the keyboard (in my case) as unchanged as possible.

Have a look at my posts on the forum for the floppy drive emulator <http://torlus.com/floppy/forum/search.php?author_id=676&sr=posts> – I'm simply a (potential) user interested in a particular feature .. the shape / form factor of the device.

I just thought that having an option for replacing a floppy drive with something that is hopefully less likely to break (among other things because it has no moving parts) and at the same time also offers more storage (so no physical floppy shuffling required any more) might be useful - especially at a not too unreasonable price point: From http://route66studios.com/drives.html the cost of a replacement floppy drive is US$72 (ca €57; this emulator costs €111 (ca US$141). Add in the cost of storage (SD cards are dirt cheap, whereas DS/DD floppies are hard to find as well as expensive) and the ease of backing things up (just copy all the floppy images from the SD card to a computer - SD card readers, too, are easily and inexpensively available) and this emulator is a viable option. Still not a no-brainer by any means, but still.

In my investigation, in fact, I have come across another floppy drive emulator – http://embeddedsw.net/EMUFDD_Floppy_Hardware_Emulator_Home.html ;– where I asked whether it would support emulating Ensoniq -format floppies, and was told that it would ... but that one costs €450 (ca US$575). Still, that one keeps the floppy image in non-volatile FRAM memory, instead of SD cards it uses a USB port, and it seems you can load a floppy image and then disconnect the USB storage device and just keep the floppy image that you have in the device's memory.

So no, I have no vested interest, I'm not advertising, and I'm not in any way connected to the people making these things. I just thought they might be useful and/or interesting to other people on this list.

Best wishes,

// Christian