Floppy Drive Emulator

[eric@rothfus.com (Eric J. Rothfus)]

Would anyone in this group be interested in helping with an Apple ][
(+ & e) floppy drive emulator?

As I collect the old machines, I like to run the original software on
them but was forever trying to find diskettes or setting up some
transfer mechanism.  I got tired of it all and created the
"Semi-Virtual Diskette" (SVD).

This device has an RS232 port on one side and a vintage-machine floppy
connector on the other.  The idea is that you download a floppy image
to the SVD (from your PC) and then boot the machine...which thinks
it's connected to a real floppy device.  The SVD supports the REAL
old formats...you know, those that use floppies that have less than
200k of capacity.

You can read more about it at www.rothfus.com/SVD.

I originally created it for the TRS-80 line, and have since expanded
to include the Heathkit H8/H89.

Now I'm looking to tackle the Apple ][, but wanted to make sure that
anyone cared.  If you think it would be useful, please let me know.
More importantly, if you could Beta-test the device when it is ready
for the Apple][, that would be great.

Also, the "driver" software is PC-based, so I could really use help
with a Mac version.  Note that the GUI is written in TCL/TK, but there
are 2 programs written in C.  Feel free to download the software off
of the web-site so you can see what it is like.

Eric