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Floppy Emu, Large and In Charge
After months of procrastination, I finally assembled the Floppy Emu board and began work on the firmware modifications this week. So far, so good! Despite being out of practice with soldering, the...
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In-System CPLD Programming Using XSVF Files
Floppy Emu has both a microcontroller and a CPLD working in tandem, and both must be programmed in order for the emulator to function. However, I don’t want to require two separate external...
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Finally!
The new Floppy Emu prototype is up and running at last! Today I was able to boot a Mac Plus from the new emulator board for the first time. It’s still rough around the edges, but it works. Copy a...
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Build Your Own Floppy Emu
Over the past several months, many people have written to me about the Macintosh Floppy Emu, asking if they could buy one, or when the project would be finished. Since I haven’t made any progress on...
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Floppy Emu Disk Menu
I finally got around to building a proper floppy disk image selection menu. Instead of loading a hard-coded rfloppy.dsk disk image file from the SD card, Floppy Emu now scans the SD card for all files...
View Article400K Floppy Support
I’ve added 400K floppy support to Floppy Emu, so now you can boot up System 1.1. The fix took all of fives minutes, so why didn’t I do this ages ago? Grab the latest Floppy Emu file archive for the new...
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Floppy Emu Disk Emulator For Vintage Macs – Now For Sale
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...
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Fixing 30 Year Old Apple ROM Bugs
After nearly a year of inactivity, I’ve started work on Floppy Emu again! One of my first priorities was compatibility with Macs that have a 400K floppy drive – the original Mac 128K, and the Mac 512K...
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1.4 MB High Density Floppy Emulation
WOOOOO! Floppy Emu’s last big goal has been reached, and 1.4 MB disk emulation is now working! The photo shows a Mac Classic, booted into System 7.0 from a 1.4 MB high-density disk image. Combined...
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Getting Ready to Sell
I’m almost ready to start selling Floppy Emu hardware! My plan is to offer two options: a fully assembled and tested unit, and a “DIY kit” containing the PCB board, LCD, and DB-19 connector. These are...
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New Floppy Emu Boards and Supply Noise
I finally got the new Floppy Emu revision 1.1 boards! Rev 1.1 has a few minor tweaks to prepare for selling assembled hardware. I built four of them with a soldering mini-marathon, and three of them...
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Manufacturing is Hard
There’s a big difference between building one of something, and making a repeatable process to build 10 of them, or 100. Unfortunately I’m learning that the hard way while I try to get some more...
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Floppy Emu – Ready For Sale
The Floppy Emu Macintosh Disk Emulator is finally available for sale! Get one now for $89. Each one is hand-assembled, programmed, and tested by me. After more than two years in development, and two...
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Floppy Emu Back in Stock
Macintosh Floppy Emu is back in stock. The elves have been working overtime to build more of these. Get yours today before they sell out again! Floppy Emu is a prototype floppy disk drive emulator for...
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Macintosh DiskCopy 4.2 Floppy Image Converter
Here’s a quick-and-dirty utility I whipped up called DiskCopy2Dsk. A few people asked how to create raw .dsk floppy images to use with Floppy Emu. The hardware supports both DiskCopy 4.2 and raw .dsk...
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Selling the Floppy Emu
It’s been about a month since I began selling my Floppy Emu disk emulator for vintage Macs, and it’s time for a progress report. It’s been a real learning experience with the hardware, as well as on...
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LCD Contrast Adjustment in Firmware
Floppy Emu uses a generic LCD that’s a clone of the display in the Nokia 5110 phone. It’s a nice little bitmapped display with a good range of configuration options, including the ability to set the...
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Board Revision 1.2
Introducing Floppy Emu version 1.2: it’s blue, because blue makes it go faster! Buy yours now from the Floppy Emu product page. Version 1.2 is a minor update that cleans up a few details. You may have...
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Emulating the Apple HD20
The Apple Hard Disk 20 (HD20) was an external 20 MB hard drive for the Macintosh, introduced in 1985. This was during the earliest days of the Mac’s history, before the introduction of SCSI support,...
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Supply Chain Snafu
Where and how do you find the parts needed to build your hardware? Selling Floppy Emu on a small scale has introduced me to the difficulties of managing a supply chain, and I’ve discovered it’s more...
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