Message
Re: [emax] Regarding Floppy Drives
2014-02-06 by geektech207@...
Coming from 2014 PC land, yeah, they're proprietary. Back then there was a standard set by Shugart which was the original floppy standard. Over time the PC market bastardized this standard, and that's why you/we/me tend to view these old drives as proprietary and difficult to work with. Not to say that Ensoniq and Emu drives didn't have some quirks, but they were usually just slight modifications of the Shugart standard. This happens with Amiga / Atari drives as well.
So just because a modern PC drive has the same number of pins, a similar form factor, and looks like "well, that should work if I toss it in", doesn't make Emu drives all that non-standard. They weren't that oddball back in the early '80s.
Technically, the biggest difference is that modern drives don't provide a RDY signal and are hard wired to be DS1 instead of DS0. Depending on the brand (Ensoniq, Amiga, Emu) there are differences like BUSY being on pin 4, or Diskchange signals, etc.
If you're railing against the "replacement floppy drives are expensive" thing, then either you've got to go the slim floppy route Jammie, et al. talks about, the HxC route, or invest some time into understanding the differences between modern PC drives and the drive standards back in the vintage days and then find appropriate drives to mod yourself. Or you can just bite the bullet and buy one from Route66 or whomever.
This stuff isn't insurmountable. Other people have already done most of the hard lifting, you've just got to look into it a little.