FluxEngine
The FluxEngine[1] is not an ND product. It is interesting because it can be used as a ND media reader for floppies.
Subpages: testing,
The FluxEngine is a very cheap USB floppy disk interface capable of reading and writing exotic non-PC floppy disk formats.
The hardware consists of a single, commodity part with a floppy drive connector soldered onto it.
The software is open source, find it on Github[2].
Hardware setup
You will need a computer with an usb port; you can find the exact requirements on the FluxEngine web page. You will also need:
- the FluxEngine hardware itself
- a usb to micro-usb cable for connecting the FluxEngine to the computer
- a floppy cable, for connecting the FluxEngine to the floppy drive
- a floppy drive capable of reading the floppies you want to read
- a power supply for the floppy drive. Except for 3.5 inch drives, you can't power the drive from the usb port (this might change in the future with USB-C)
You also need a bit of storage space for the images you capture.
Note: FluxEngine numbers drives differently from the usual way. When using FluxEngine, drive 0 is the drive before the twist in the floppy cable, and drive 1 is the drive after the twist.
Software setup
The FluxEngine software and how to configure it is described on the FluxEngine webpage and will not be repeated here. Note: you need a Windows machine for the proprietary Cypress software (PSoC Creator) for compiling and loading firmware onto the FluxEngine. If you need additional software, for example ndfs to work with ND filesystem format images, you should install and test it.