> Curious to see if there is a way to maybe make a box with
> an Arduino or even a Pi that could access the disks drives
> directly.
So, a couple of thoughts on keeping the drives and replacing the
electronics, and still being able to connect the result to real
hardware:
1. The basic interface to a floppy drive has almost always been pretty
unfiltered -- drive select, motor on, step in, step out, index mark
detect, track zero detect, maybe write protect, read data, write data.
The data is analog in the sense that the signal consists of level
transitions from high to low or v/v, and the information is encoded in
the timing. The details (e.g. logic levels) may vary, but conceptually
it'd be difficult to have it look very different.
2. A fairly wide variety of devices have been built that interact with
this sort of interface. Examples include the DiscFerret, Greaseweazle,
Kryoflux, and probably a hundred others. For MFM hard drives, there's
Dave Gesswein's MFM Emulator. Given modern technology, it's not very
hard to do this. The DiscFerret uses a PIC, so it can't be _too_ hard,
right? :) The trickier bit seems to be writing the software to convert
flux timings into bits, as that's the area in which the offerings are
limited.
3. To my mind, one of the more interesting implementations is the MFM
Emulator, which uses the Beaglebone Black's Programmable Realtime Units
to do the timing-sensitive stuff.
De