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Yeah, I want to make use of an IDE floppy drive, which will need to use a SATA adaptor to hook up to the server. I’ll probably be using a Debian-based container, and I’ll need to automatically read the contents of the disk in some way.
I’m kinda assuming this is actually viable, and that I can work along the basic process of using an off-the-shelf IDE-SATA adapter, give it a mount point in the system, then monitor that directory.
I’m still fairly new to Linux, so I’m not aware of all the quirks and astrices that often come up, especially when wanting to do something like this in 2023.
For the curious, I’m building a centralised music system that will serve multiple speakers, including RF. I’ll be managing the music and play lists via whichever modern music server seems the most appropriate, but I thought it would be really neat to use floppy disks as a physical way of selecting playlist, but not exclusively.
All the disks would contain are small ID tokens that represent the playlist on the digital system. The software will monitor the drive, and when a new token is identified, it will simply trigger the playlist to start, presumably via an API call.
Completely pointless, but I like tactile shit and the nostalgia factor!
Floppy drives don’t use IDE, they use their own type of connector ( called a floppy connector), I’ve never seen a Sata to floppy adaptor, but you can connect a usb to floppy adapter to an internal usb header
Yes USB is the way to go, cheap and effective: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002747925791.html
Also the native Linux driver for floppy drives is on its way out: https://itsfoss.com/end-of-floppy-disk-in-linux/ note that USB solutions will still work.
+1 for the internal usb header tip.
I have an ide floppy, ls120 which reads 720k and upwards. No issues under Linux
SuperDisk™? 😏
It’s derived from the old shugart interfaces IIRC. But yes not IDE. I’m sure a converter is possible but USB makes more sense these days, or if you must an FDD controller card (assuming no motherboard support).
Wow, floppies.
I would suggest looking for a 3.5" unit rather than 5.25", the small floppies are sturdier.
Even so a floppy can get corrupted at any time so personally I wouldn’t bother with a filesystem and mounting it, I’d just write a bunch of numbers in various places on the disk and attempt to read with dd from several spots.
If you want to go with a filesystem and mount, please be aware that floppy units don’t send a signal when you load a floppy, like CD units do. You just have to try and see if there’s anything in there.
You can use automount to mount a floppy when you access a directory but it’s more trouble then it’s worth imo.
Oh and it also takes a while for the drive to probe and access the floppy (can take 5-10 seconds).
If you want my opinion, I’d do anything except actually having to bother reading floppies. 🙂 I would look into an USB smartcard reader and use smartcards instead.
If that’s not cool enough and you really want to use floppies, I’d conceal an USB NFC reader inside the PC and stick NFC tags to the floppies and load them inside the unit purely for the cool factor, without actually hooking up the floppy drive. Not sure if they’ll be easily readable from inside the drive but I’d try, like I said I’d do anything. 😄
using nfc reader and tagged ‘disks’ is an interesting idea.
Do yourself a favor and just use a USB floppy drive 👍
From one perspective, it should work; from another I never thought about how SATA/IDE adapters exactly work in this regard. Would any old one work, or most, or (almost) none at all?
Just to add this idea, I’ve used internal floppy drives with USB connection in the past, to attach in systems that don’t have an old style floppy connector.
P.S.: Love the idea! I’m also a great fan of haptic/physical interfaces.
I’ve tried using a floppy on arch recently using a usb and a usb adapter with an original drive.
It works rather well, but it’s seen as a root drive. So long as you can give yourself root access it’s all good.
On that note you should get one of those internal usb 2 to female usb headers as it can allow you access if there isn’t a free usb port available
You should be able to get it to automount with autofs and unmount when it hasn’t been read for a certain amount of time. I would suggest mounting the disks read only so they don’t get corrupted it they are removed without unmounting them though.
The floppy drive is seen automatically and still fully supported in Debian 12 x86_64. You might have to mount the diskette to actually read it, but you can do that in fstab to do it on boot or ondemand or mount it manually.
What interface are you using? USB or FDD?
FDD
No idea how to do this properly, but it’s definitely possible. Maybe a USB to IDE adapter makes more sense than going through SATA as it can just expose the floppy drive as a USB stick.
But then again CD drives have been around for ages as well and work properly on linux, so do your research.
The steps will probably look like this:
- Autodetect when a floppy is inserted
- mount it (possibly combined with the first step)
- automatically run a script after mounting
- writing the script, which will read the contents of the drive and control your player (chatGPT should be able to do that for you with a bit of trial&error)
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They are not storing music on the floppys, only playlist identifiers and they want their system to listen on floppy insert events and launch a playlist when the matching floppy is inserted.
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Completely pointless
Holy moley - OP knows and acknowledges as much in the last sentence. They’re doing something for the fun of it. Lighten up.
You should probably learn how to read.
How old are you? Whiney old-timers fucking suck. And they love to voice their shit opinions at full volume. You all would be better off doing what you want vs listening to this cranky old fuck bitch about how life doesn’t allow fun.
…see how you sound? Everyone actually hates people who say braindead shit akin to ‘my way is the only right way, any other way is stupid’. Nobody asked for your shitty opinion piece, get the fuck off the stage.
Dude is trying to enjoy technology, and you want to shit all over it. What an awful way to go about life.
