[PLUG] Reading Amiga floppies on x86 hardware

["Paul Snyder" <pls@littleraven.com>]

With respect to a passing comment from the meeting:

I don't think it is possible to read Amiga floppy disks using a standard PC 
floppy controller - you need an additional hardware solution.  This is true 
whether running Linux or Windows.  If anyone has other information, I would 
be really keen to hear it.  (Hard disks are another story, and are mountable.)

>From the Linux kernel source code for 2.4.3
[ http://lxr.linux.no/source/Documentation/filesystems/affs.txt ]:

"It's not possible to read floppy disks with a normal PC or workstation
due to an incompatibility with the Amiga floppy controller"

from [ http://cloanto.com/kb/3-118.html ]:

"Amiga floppy disks cannot be read on PCs without installing special 
hardware. As Amiga users know, this hardware incompatibility has limited 
Amiga-PC data sharing for more than 10 years, and there is no way that 
software emulation alone can solve it: a PC cannot read Amiga disks 
without an additional hardware interface."

You need a device like the Catweasel, which is an 8-bit ISA card that 
serves as a floppy controller that is rather more flexible than that of the 
standard PC.  (It can read [and write, under Linux] Apple II, Commodore, 
Amiga, and various Atari disk formats, among others.

Info about Catweasel:
[ http://www.jschoenfeld.com/products/catweasel_e.htm ]

Catweasel is made by a German company.  Their stuff is apparently 
available through "Software Hut", [ http://www.softhut.com/ ].  Softhut's site 
uses a slightly brain-damaged cgi store script, so I won't try to post a link - 
just search on Catweasel from the front page.  Their price is ~$100.  
Weirdly, Software Hut appears to be located in West Chester, PA, though I 
can't tell from the site if it is web-only.

There's also a build-it-yourself solution, the "Amiga Floppy Reader Project", 
which runs through the parallel port.  A cursory check reveals that the site 
is unavailable, and Google doesn't have it in its cache.

If you've got an Amiga handy, you can transfer disk images via serial, floppy 
or network.  (Any of which are a major pain for my poor old A1000.)

Paul


______________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group       -      http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements-http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  -  http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug