> The solution I thought of but haven't had a chance to implement was using
> an LS-120 drive. It reads and writes floppies but has a standard IDE
> interface. I haven't investigated it very throughly but it would seem that
> since the IDE interface is the only one on the drive that it would have
> to be used to interface to the floppy and not just the LS120 disk.

That's a good idea, except the LS-120 drives are now obsolete too.  Too bad
they didn't get the right marketing.  I thought LS-120 drives were a good
idea.  I had one in all my systems and used them for backup and sneaker net
of larger data.  I just recently purged all the LS-120 drives and put CD-RW
drives in all my systems.

> > I've just recently completed a project that had to do with a 16F877
> > connected to a floppy bus, so I'm familiar with what goes over that bus.
>
> Sounds painful.

I had a blast, actually.  I always wondered what the floppy bus was like, so
I didn't mind at all getting paid to find out.  The customer wanted a device
that would act like a floppy from the PC's point of view, so I didn't have
to deal with the low level formatting and file system issues.  I couldn't
find definative answers to a few details, so I wasn't quite sure if the
strategy I picked was correct until it worked for the first time.  It was
cool to see a 16F877, 16F628, 16F876, and a separate management PC all
working together.  Lots of blinky lights helped too.


********************************************************************
Olin Lathrop, embedded systems consultant in Littleton Massachusetts
(978) 742-9014, olin@embedinc.com, http://www.embedinc.com

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