1980s Vintage Computers

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Add-ons

To help enhance vintage computers, many bright people have designed and built various add-ons connected to vintage computers, for example to replace floppy drives with modern flash based storage or to replace single game cartridges with units that can hold a huge selection of software. Below are some I have either purchased or have read good reviews of, this summary is just my personal selection and there will always be new developments that may be more suitable.

Floppy drive replacement

One device which has become ubiquitous is the Gotek floppy drive emulator. This as-standard replaces a 3.5" or 5.25" floppy drive with a unit that takes a USB memory stick that contains floppy disk image files. Adapters are needed for some floppy drives, eg 8" or early Sony 3.5" drives.

I use the Flash Floppy software which is free to use from Kier Fraiser. See his website for guides on buying the hardware, he also sells units pre-programmed with Flash Floppy software, via the Facebook group.

simulant.uk webshop offers Goteks for sale plus custom fitting brackets for various computers eg the Tatung Einstein.

HxC also make a floppy drive replacement, plus offer alternative software for a Gotek unit. This project is commercial software but has some free software for checking and editing floppy disk image files (see tools below).

Other floppy drive hardware

Virtual Sector Generator (VSG) - Some early computers used hard-sectored floppy disks rather than soft-sectored, as this required less electronics. As these are now hard to find, this device can be used to make a soft-sectored disk appear as a hard-sectored one. It plugs in between the vintage computer and a floppy disk drive.

Tools to preserve floppy disks

Most vintage computers had some form of floppy disk drive, and used floppy disks to load software or store data. Each manufacturer (prior to the dominance of PCs running MS-DOS and then Windows) used their own floppy controller and operating system, and hence many different incompatible floppy disk formats evolved. PCs no longer have floppy drives as standard, and those that do (eg under Linux) can only work with a small number of disk formats. Since the 1980s specialist companies saw a market for a service to transfer data between floppy disks, and developed custom computer systems and software to do it (for example in the UK the Gemini Multi Format BIOS or MFB system). As the vintage computer hobby grew from the 1990s onwards, owners of vintage systems wanted to run the same software that was available originally, but often they had little or no working software or had disks that were unreadable. Tools were then developed typically to allow original software to be backed up from an old floppy disk to a file on a modern computer then written back to a new floppy disk and shared with other hobbyists. Typically such a tool would be developed for one machine only (eg the Tandy TRS-80), then later tools supported multiple machines (or disk formats). Also the tools were developed further to allow the floppy disk image file to be used in an emulator (virtual machine), or directly by a floppy disk emulator.

Here are a few current tools that are compatible with several computers and disk formats, they each have pros and cons so please research before buying. Specialist tools for a single type of computer are not covered here.

Greaseweazle is a small USB device with an interface for a floppy drive (modern 3.5" or 5.25"). Together with the free Greaseweazle software (for Windows and Linux) it can be used to read the data from a floppy disk in the form of flux transitions and store them via USB to the computer as a file. Similarly it can write data from a file to a floppy disk. It can also allow some emulators to work with a real floppy disk. The units are available ready made in a case or as the design is open source users can build one from scratch. I have an earlier Greaseweazle V4.

FluxEngine is also a USB device with a floppy interface, built on a Cypress development board plus a floppy connector. The user has to put these together themselves, The free FluxEngine software runs under Windows, Linux or OSX. It has similar features to the Greaseweazle. The FluxEngine software can also be run with the Greaseweazle or Applesauce devices.

Applesauce+ is another USB device with a floppy interface, used to read/write floppy disks using flux transitions. Unlike the above however it can buffer data rather than having to stream it via USB, so can work better in some scenarios. As the name implies the Applesauce was originally focused on Apple computer disk formats but now supports a wide range of formats. It appears to be available only from the website.

Kryoflux are a company that has developed over many years a set of tools for disk archiving, and sell a USB device with floppy interface for reading and writing flux-transition images. It is sold as a professional tool rather than a hobbyist tool so is more expensive than several of the above. The company also offer a bespoke disk recovery service.

Supercard Pro (SCP) - this is a small PCB device with associated software that connects to a 3.5" or 5.25" floppy to allow them to be read (again using flux transitions) to a file on an attached micro-SD card, or to write a disk image back to a floppy. In addition the Supercard Pro can also be used in place of a floppy drive on a Commodore 64 computer. It is controlled via the USB port (also has a serial port) and requires a Windows PC. It was originally developed for the C64 computer, and has been enhanced to support a wide range of disk formats. The website says an advanced version is about to be released.

There were several disk imaging tools that are no longer in production, and are no longer developed (but may still be of use). Here are a few:

DiscFerret - USB device with a floppy drive interface for reading / writing disk images.

Catweasel - a series of PC interface cards with a floppy drive interface for reading / writing disk images.

Gemini MFB - this was a CP/M computer sold by Gemini computers in the UK, which could transfer data between various floppy disk formats.

For further information on archiving floppy disks with yet more tools see this article on archiveteam.org.