Floppy Drive
karbonus
Posts: 11
Hello!
I am wanting to connect a PC IDE floppy drive to a Basic Stamp 2. How many I/O pins do I need? If I need more then 15, I would be happy to use a P/40. Anyways, how would I connect it. And then how would I read a specified byte from a specified sector off the disk? How would I write to disk? How would I determine if the disk is write-protected?
Thank you for your time.
Brandon
I am wanting to connect a PC IDE floppy drive to a Basic Stamp 2. How many I/O pins do I need? If I need more then 15, I would be happy to use a P/40. Anyways, how would I connect it. And then how would I read a specified byte from a specified sector off the disk? How would I write to disk? How would I determine if the disk is write-protected?
Thank you for your time.
Brandon
Comments
Thanks for your help so far.
Thanks for your help so far. :sm
A floppy drive does NOT normally have an IDE interface. I have never heard of one that does.
Why would you want to use old technology for data storage, that you'll have to roll your own interface for?
There are several options for data storage that interface directly to the stamp line of products.
Do a search on this forum for "USB, Flash" storage to find the threads.
Here are a few links that I have saved;
www.ghielectronics.com/ALFAT-SD.htm
www.ghielectronics.com/ALFAT%20DEV.htm
I have both, and they work great.
www.ghielectronics.com/USBhost.htm
here is one with USB on it "think thumb drive"....
www.roguerobotics.com/products/electronics/ummc
Here is another SD board.
I am sure there are more out there.
Remember, it will take time to develop an interface to a floppy drive.
How fast will that interface transfer data??
How much will it cost, time is money too!
Bob N9LVU
Although the IDE support chip in a PC sometimes handles the floppy drive (FD) as well, and the floppy port and IDE ports are often adjacent on many PC motherboards, the floppy drive interface IS NOT an IDE interface, so forget that line of thinking. The nearest thing to a floppy drive with an IDE interface, is a ZIP drive or the (so called) SuperDrives (similar in nature to a ZIP drive, but lower capacity).
IDE cables are generally 40, 50 or 80 pins wide, and so too the interface pinout. The floppy drive cable (and thus the interface pinout) is 34 pins wide. An IDE (ATA) interface transmits and receives data in a parallel fashion, while the floppy drive interface transmits and receives data in a serial fashion. Take my word that there are MANY more differences than there are similarities.
Why do feel you need to interface a Stamp to a floppy drive? It would be so much easier to interface a Stamp to a PC with an asynchronous serial connection, and have the PC interface with the floppy drive, IDE drive, or any other peripheral. If you need data portabilty, there are a number of other options, and they're FAR more reliable and faster than a floppy, with FAR less of a current demand.
Regards,
Bruce Bates
Post Edited (Bruce Bates) : 12/24/2005 11:13:59 PM GMT
That's why I said "normally"... There is only one drive that I know of that does support 3.25" floppies, BUT it also supports 120M disks as well. It was called a Super Disk by Imation, also some laptops had the same drive in them... I have been "playing" with PC's for over 25 years, and I LOVE to tear em appart and make em better!
I also think you should of posted it to "karbonus aka Brandon" whom started this thread..
Cheers
Merry Xmas
Bob N9LVU
If you check my post, you'll see that was changed a while ago. Sorry.
Bruce
No problemo..
If you look at the timestamps, I tink they is all wacko??
Have a good one!
Bob N9LVU
I want to make a project that can load a program off of a floppy and run it, so the basic stamp is kind of like a interpreter that takes the commands off the floppy and runs them.
First, the PBASIC Stamp IS an interpreter, so you're planning to WRITE an interpretive language IN an interpretive language? I'm not sure that is going to be terribly efficient, and additionally, the PBASIC language, nor any form of Basic would not be my language of choice for syntax parsing, string handling, and language generation. Snobol or Lisp might be much better choices for those types of needs. The C language and it's varients may also be so capable.
As far as the CDROM is concerned, most that I've seen are IDE devices, although there may be some USB CD drives out there today. Here are the interfaces/devices which the Alfat processor supports:
Supports Compact Flash (CF), Multi Media Card (MMC) and Secure Digital (SD) memory cards.
Supports Hard Disks (HD) using standard IDE cable.
Although IDE devices are supported (at least hard disks are), from a number of perspectives, size and power consumption among them, it would seem to me that some sort of memory data card (CF, MMC, or SD) whould make a good deal more sense. With an adapter that generally costs less than $20.00 US, you can read or write most of that type of media with almost any PC.
Due to the diversity and ready availabilty of all sorts of USB input and output devices, perhaps the GHI USBWiz might make more sense, using a "thumb-drive" for storage:
http://www.ghielectronics.com/USBhost.htm . Just a thought, not a suggestion!
I haven't investigate it to see if it appears that the USBWiz would work with a Basic Stamp however. You're on your own there.
Presuming you're fairly new to the world of Stamping, I might suggest that you find some more basic, easier, and more practical projects to start with, and work your way up from there. Many new users to Stamps are often overwhelmed by the ease of use, ease of interfacing, and relatively low cost for such a powerful microprocessor. One might do well to examine all of its capabilities, as well as its possible shortcomings, for any given project, before proceeding with same.
Regards,
Bruce Bates
Pricewatch.com has them listed for sale startinng at $73.00 with the standard IDE interface.
Good luck, I hope this helps
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I'de offer my 18 y/o daughter (she washes dishes) for that alflay dev board...
TO read an IDE hard drive from code... that would be way kewl...
(Ok, the KIDD in this 41 y/o is showing... )
/me sighs... Oh well, I'll have to wait and see if I can hide some $$$ at tax return time from SWMBO...
[noparse]:)[/noparse]
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Until our bytes cross again, may your chips never smoke, your bits never fall off, your parts bin never be empty and your jumpers never fall off.
KK
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