On Fri, 16 Jan 1998 17:51:53 -0000 Gareth McClean <gmcclean@STBNI.CO.UK>
writes:

>I'm interested to find anyone who has interfaced a PIC to a standard
>floppy drive for data storage.

The major problem is that an entire sector must be written at once.  This
means the controller needs enough RAM or other fast-access memory to
store a whole sector's data (typically 512 bytes) at once or some way to
produce the data on the fly.  No PIC chips have 512 bytes of RAM.  So an
external memory chip of some sort will be needed.

As for hardware, I'd use a PC type floppy controller chip or card, which
goes in one chip from MFM to 8-bit parallel.  Most of these have a couple
of serial ports and a parallel port as bonus.  These chips may buffer a
few bytes, but generally count on the host being able to supply the data
fast enough.