Seeking Applesauce FDC testimonials
Douglas Crawford
I'm wondering how comprehensive a solution it has become and how well it works on all supported formats. ... I may go this way for the museum ..
My general observation of floppy replacement technology, is that it comes and goes over periods of years. I have a long view, so I get skeptical. If a developer gets tired of working on some tech (or worse becomes unavailable), what happens to support for problems and availability of the "product"? Tech that uses then-standard microcontrollers (or flavors of Arduinos) may be hard to obtain when that part goes out-of-support. At the least, you have to get spares while available, and source codes for any software. Morso, if you buy for several systems. I don't know this particular product. But I'm asking about long-term support for reasons stated. I'm curious what other think; perhaps several years is enough, enjoying buying something new every several years, etc. regards Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com or try later herbjohnson AT comcast DOT net
On Thu, Jan 26, 2023 at 10:25 AM Herbert Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote: ..
My general observation of floppy replacement technology, is that it comes and goes over periods of years. I have a long view, so I get skeptical.
regards Herb
This isn’t a floppy replacement project, this is a disk imaging project. It started with Apple II media but have been expanded to include other disk formats. <https://applesaucefdc.com/what-is-applesauce/> Regards, Jeff
On Thu, Jan 26, 2023 at 12:24:55PM -0500, Herbert Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote: (Discussing floppy emulators)
If a developer gets tired of working on some tech (or worse becomes unavailable), what happens to support for problems and availability of the "product"? Tech that uses then-standard microcontrollers (or flavors of Arduinos) may be hard to obtain when that part goes out-of-support. At the least, you have to get spares while available, and source codes for any software. Morso, if you buy for several systems.
I don't know this particular product. But I'm asking about long-term support for reasons stated. I'm curious what other think; perhaps several years is enough, enjoying buying something new every several years, etc.
Is it really that different than the original floppy drive? Models available changed every couple years. If it still worked you didn't care. If it stopped working either you replaced it with current model or tried to fix it. How difficult that was depended on if any documentation was available and if you could get parts. There is open source software for some of the units. Haven't looked to see what hardware documentation exists though hardware is pretty simple so not too hard to figure out. Some are cheap enough that getting a replacement isn't a big deal if it fails. For my ST-506 MFM reader/emulator the majority of support is for imaging disk. People don't need a lot of support for emulation and very rare to need more after they have it working in a machine unless they move it to some other odd machine.
participants (3)
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David Gesswein -
Herbert Johnson -
Jeff Galinat