This is the GitHub page for the Arduino Floppy Drive Controller aka "DrawBridge". https://github.com/RobSmithDev/ArduinoFloppyDiskReader

For further information I believe the Arduino controller only supports a serial connection. So the best solution for modern computers is USB to Serial connection. Rob Smith chose to use the FTDI Usb to serial translator chip. The other well-known brand is "Prolific". Poseidon already has a serialpl2303 class driver for Prolific chips. But looking at the source code it seems the driver turns the USB to Serial into a pure Serial Port. So we can then call OpenDevice ( seialpl2303.device, unit 0, ...) to send serial commands to an attached device. That's cool. 😎 My plan is to adapt a new Poseidon class driver for the serialft232r.device that uses the FTDI chip for USB to Serial. Then I can write SerialDiskReader to use the driver to send character commands across the serial connection. The SerialDiskReader program will handle all the data from each track which is returned as MFM encoded data streams. The data needs to be sent to an MFM Decoder Algorithm to turn it into Binary Data consisting of a stream of 1's & 0's. Then the data can be written to an ADF file at the correct offset. I have started to adapt the Prolific class driver to be used as the serialft232r class driver by binding the new class with the FTDI chip Vendor ID & Product ID for DrawBridge. Once completed, if it works, I should be able to send & receive data using the new serial device. DrawBridge only communicates with a high speed serial port. The settings are Baud=2000000 which is 2 Mbps. (Yes. Modern PC hardware supports that). Other settings are 8n1 values, RTS/CTS handshake, No Parity. These values are easily set using serial commands in AROS. If successful the set parameters command returns 0. If it fails it is non-zero. SerialDiskReader is at the point of setting parameters & opening the device. But we need a Poseidon class driver to send & receive data. Because working with serial connections in Windows (COM3) is much easier for me I will quickly (within 2 weeks) write a C# SerialDiskReader program to get the complete prototype for writing an AROS version.

deadwood These are all good questions. The DrawBridge Device is an open-source project by Rob Smith. You can find all the source files and information on his GitHub page DrawBridge is the name he chose because it's an Amiga "Disk Reader And Writer" and he calls all his similar devices "bridges". DrawBridge itself is actually a small (really small) PCB attached to a USB cable that Rob Smith solders himself when the PCB returns from the factory. He programs it also by uploading the Arduino sketch. There are two types of "DrawBridge" Device. On the GitHub page there are instructions to make your own or you can do what I did and buy the pre-made mini PCB that costs about $25 USD. If you buy the pre-made solution you will need to buy a cheap USB floppy drive on eBay for $30. Not just any USB drive will do. The drive must be of a specific type. I bought the wrong one at first. Then I watched a video by Chris Edwards. I had to zoom in to see the exact make & model no. The correct floppy drive is the N533 model no. FD-05PUB from China. It has p/n 19308801-19 and s/n U356244. Though others may or may not work this one is known to be compatible. The screw hole on the bottom has to be off center to allow room for the small PCB & the ribbon inside has to be compatible with DrawBridge. There is a video with assembly instructions. When you connect the DrawBridge equipped USB floppy drive in Windows 10 it doesn't appear as a USB floppy drive but rather a UART (serial) device attached by default to COM3. The Arduino controller is inside the PCB in the floppy drive case. To communicate with the Arduino I used Tera Term Serial Terminal to send single character commands such as "xR?" which is Reset & List Firmware Version. Each symbol is an Arduino command. Arduino replied "1V1,9" which is valid. The GUI for Windows is provided as a download. But I'd like to write my own C# version using the list of Arduino command s. The DrawBridge Device Driver for Windows can be compiled in Visual Studio. Rob Smith stated that there is a Linux driver that also compiles.

That's interesting, a few questions from me: 1) What is this DrawBridge? Is this a floppy drive that you can buy (assembled) or do you have to connect Arduino so some existing stock USB floppy drives? 2) How is this detected under Window? Does it see it as a floppy driver or a generic serial device? 3) I assume it's open source hardware. Isn't there a existing linux driver source code that can be adapted to expose a .device-like interface? 4) Doesn't the device expose some standard USB media interface so that it is auto-detected under Window (no need for driver)? Does it really allow access only via serial commands?

amifox is limited in any case compared to browservice

regarding bounty there is nothing known, there was a question here on the forum about it and many users were in favour of opening it, i think those who would like to upgrade odyssey or port another software should step in, amifox and browservice are the only alternatives at the moment

[quote name=Amiwell79 post=2425]@Amiwell79 - browserservice is a better service to navigate and have access to all sites then the rendering of pages is much faster with amifox i found problems on some web portals and also with rendering[/quote] OK, thank you very much for the feedback. [quote name=AMIGASYSTEM post=2426]@AMIGASYSTEM - Yes OK, but browservice does not work on native AROS or AROS VM![/quote] Browserservice runs the chrome engine in the background. If chrome already runs natively on AROS then ask yourself why on earth would someone need to have a (bounty for a) new browser for AROS ? :) fwiw: it is the whole point of such a proxy service: to allow old operating systems to access the web in a (more) secure and safe way because the original operating system / original hardware isn't capable of accessing the internet or provide certain safety features at all.

no browservice is a service that runs on windows/linux/raspberry then you use odyssey to browse

Yes OK, but browservice does not work on native AROS or AROS VM!

browserservice is a better service to navigate and have access to all sites then the rendering of pages is much faster with amifox i found problems on some web portals and also with rendering

@Amiwell79: Is there a particular reason you prefer to use browserservice instead of AmiFox (as they basically do the same thing) ?

yes I configured another computer for browservice in my case

[quote name=AMIGASYSTEM post=2418] If I understand correctly browservice can only run on Linux-hosted AROS, [/quote] No. It can but that is pure coincidental. [quote] so for Native AROS or AROS on a virtual machine it cannot be used :( [/quote] It is a proxy, just as [url=https://blog.alb42.de/programs/amifox/]AmiFox[/url] is. You run it on a (small) standalone server though it is possible to also run it on a host such as Linux and/or Windows. So, in case of running AROS in a VM you can opt for - running the proxy service on your host platform - run another VM next to AROS that has a small dedicated server that runs the proxy service. - have a(nother) dedicated computer that runs the proxy service

works on all versions of aros but I have only tried the native solution;)

On Native AROS we will be able to read/write & mount Amiga Disks on AROS workbench. The Poseidon Device Driver will behave like the usbscsi.device driver when reading USB PC formatted floppy disks. That's exciting! So with the realization that Poseidon and Trident are needed for USB devices it becomes much easier since I now know where the classes and drivers are located in the source code. But it becomes much more difficult because I have to research and learn everything I can about classes and drivers for Poseidon USB to Serial Devices. I found mass storage class which contains usbscsi.device driver. I also found serialcp210x and serialpl2303 classes each with their own drivers. The last one, serialpl2303 is the USB to Serial Driver for the Prolific USB to Serial Translator Chip. But DrawBridge uses the FTDI USB to Serial Translator Chip. So we need an FTDI FT232R class with it's own device driver. The driver will need to implement CMD_SEEK, CMD_READ and CMD_WRITE commands.

If I understand correctly browservice can only run on Linux-hosted AROS, so for Native AROS or AROS on a virtual machine it cannot be used :(

Great this way probably on Native AROS and Virtual Machines you will be able to see the contents of PC floppies in Fat, but I believe also those formatted Amiga FFS or other supported Filesystem!

Sometimes when you are searching for the solution to a problem such as trying to find out why I can't send and receive data to a device the answer should be obvious but you don't see it. 😭 I tried many times to use serial.device with unit 0, 1, 2, 3 to establish a serial connection to the DrawBridge Device which I knew was attached. Finally I concluded that USB to Serial Devices are not supported by serial.device. It seems that serial.device is for RS232 devices attached to the Serial Port on older computers. It doesn't support modern USB to Serial Devices. While trying to find out which unit number to use for serial.device I looked at Trident. Hmmm. If it's a USB to Serial UART Device with an FTDI chip on Hub 4 which unit is that? None. Poseidon USB handles USB devices. That's why usbscsi.device is used to read data from a USB floppy drive. In order to connect to the DrawBridge Device on AROS (or Amiga) we will need a completely new usbserial.device driver that works with Poseidon and Trident. But at least we have usbscsi.device as a model. It can be found in: AROS/rom/USB/classes/massstorage/ /* dev.c - usbscsi.device by Chris Hodges */

[quote name=Amiwell79 post=2414]@Amiwell79 - odyssey works well with this service of course you have to have another computer but you can consider getting something small, I am happy with this solution:)[/quote] https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice/releases

odyssey works well with this service of course you have to have another computer but you can consider getting something small, I am happy with this solution:)