If you’ve ever wanted a Floppy Emu, but lacked the time or soldering skills to build one yourself, you’re in luck! I’ve put two Floppy Emus up for sale on eBay. These were hand-built using the leftover parts from my original prototype, and when they’re gone, they’re gone!
Want one? You can find the eBay listings here: Auction 1, Auction 2
Note: Floppy Emu has been updated. This video and text describe an earlier version.
Floppy Emu is a prototype floppy disk drive emulator for classic Macintosh computers, using an SD memory card and custom hardware to mimic a 400K or 800K 3.5 inch disk drive and floppy disk. It plugs into the Mac’s external or internal floppy connector, and behaves exactly like a real disk drive, requiring no special software on the Mac. Disk image files are stored on the SD card from a PC, and then read and written by Floppy Emu during the normal operation of the Macintosh, with each image file appearing to the Mac as a different floppy disk. You can boot from the emulated floppy, or boot from another drive and use the emulated floppy as a second disk.
What You Will Need
- A high-speed class 10 SD or SDHC card
- A PC or Mac capable of writing files to the SD card
- A collection of Mac disk image files in .dsk format
Optional
- An extension cable so Floppy Emu can be moved to a convenient location, such as this one
Compatibility
This is experimental hardware, so expect some bugs. Floppy Emu is designed for classic Macs that support a 400K or 800K internal or external floppy drive. It does not emulate the 1.4MB Superdrive, nor can it use 1.4MB disk images. I’ve successfully tested Floppy Emu with a Mac Plus and a Mac 512Ke. Another person has confirmed it also works with the Mac SE. I’ve had one report that it does not work with the Mac 128K or Mac II. Compatibility with other systems is untested. The full source code and hardware specs are available here on the BMOW site, so if you’re a programmer, you can help improve the software and extend compatibility to more Mac models.
FAQ
- Can I boot from an emulated floppy? Yes you can!
- Does this require a special driver or INIT on the Mac? No, nothing special is required.
- What size disk image files are supported? 400K or 800K disk images in .dsk format.
- What if I don’t have a high-speed class 10 SD card? Reading will work fine, but writing may fail.
- Can I format the emulated floppy, or use it as a destination for disk copy programs? No. Floppy Emu only supports “normal” sector-by-sector writing, such as copying files in the Finder, or saving data from within a program.
- Can I emulate multiple floppies at once? Floppy Emu can store as many disk image files as your SD card will hold, but only one can be “inserted” in the drive at any given time.
- Can I save Mac files to the emulated floppy, then put the SD card in my PC to read them back? Yes. Your files will be inside the .dsk disk image. A software-based Mac emulator or Mac disk image tool can extract individual files from the image.