floppy emulator

[isaacmacdonald]

I recall reading about something proggie that could emulate a floppy drive so that utilities could write to a phantom drive and you could produce a bootable CD from the img. The thing is I don't have a traditional FDD and I don't really want to get one, but all the AAM (acoustic management) software seems to require a FDD. *ack*. anyway, does anyone recall which software does that? I tried googling to no avail.

 

[Ichinisan]

Someone should make one!

It's kind of wasteful, but you could use VMware to create an entire virtual machine, then access the virtual floppy drive from within the guest OS. The floppy drive configuration dialog has some useful options. You can create a disk image and mount it as a floppy drive within your virtual machine. Of course, you will have to install Win9x in your virtual machine to run your disk-creation utility. VMware uses a lot of system resources for such a simple task...it has to allocate enough memory/processing/storage for the virtual machine. However, it is useful for many things.

[edit]
Screenshot of Floppy Configuration Dialog
[/edit]

 

[HitokiriBattousi]

or you could use Intel Application Accelerator to change the Acoustic Noise Management on the drive. It only works with intel chipsets that are Pentium 4 chipsets. Sorry if you don't have that.

 

[isaacmacdonald]

yeah I have it. keeps telling me "failed to change". I give up. This is ridiculous though. Why the hell are mfg's stuck in the anti-deluvian days of FDDs? They should at least supply img's for bootable cds along with them. *grumble* absolutely ridiculous. Floppy disks cost more than cds these days.... f*ck.

 

[HitokiriBattousi]

you can also make a bootable cd using easy cd creator 5. I don't remember how though.

 

[isaacmacdonald]

yeah, I can do the whole bootable cd thing. The problem is that I need bootable imgs to begin with. There's a perponderance of exe files meant to write images to floppys, but they rarely seem to segregate the img and the extractor, so I'm stuck needing a stupid floppy. It really is ludicrious. I tried setting up a ram drive as a:, but the progs can detect that it's not a real floppy drive. *grrr* bastard. I once again want to bang these mfg's on the head. FDDs are old. Give me something I can f*cking use man!

 

[bendixG15]

Hey isaac you got an attitude problem....
Go over to the vent thread and mouth off there....

 

[peter7921]

Why do you have a problem with getting a floppy drive, i mean i get them for $12 canadian, whats the big deal? They are obviously handy and still in use. We still don't have a replacement, and until we do i am going to keep them in my mahines. Yes the technology is old but it still has its uses.

 

[passign]

I'd like a floppy emulator also because I don't use nor will use a floppy drive unless they come out with a sata floppy drive!

 

[isaacmacdonald]

Originally posted by: bendixG15
Hey isaac you got an attitude problem....
Go over to the vent thread and mouth off there....

I guess, but this seems like it should be a completely obvious thing. The img is right there, why not distribute both, or at least sepperate the thing so that you don't NEED a fdd. It's not that I can't fork over 12 bucks. But it's insane for me to use up precious realestate inside my case (which already has too many hd's to fit in the 3.5" bay) not to mention buy more floppy disks just so that I can extract images. It's that inefficiency that's disturbing.

 

[McMadman]

Well this isn't exactly a virtual drive, but winimage will allow you to drag and drop to make a bootable floppy image which would then be burnable to cd

 

[RalfHutter]

This is so funny. I love it when the "anti-floppiests" post for help on how to make such-and-such into a bootable CDr just so they don't have to use a FDD. All that time and energy expended just to prove the point that the floppy drive is old and obsolete and that they can get along without one.

You can have your cake and eat it too. Just spend the $10 on a floppy drive and keep it hidden away somewhere. When you need it, open up your case, attach the drive, use it, then pull it out and put the floppy back in it's hiding place until you need it again. No one will ever know and you'll have the full use of your system.

 

[Bluefront]

Heh..this is funny. So you are too proud to have a floppy showing....well do this. Mount the floppy inside the case so you have to open the side panel to use it. You could use the std floppy bay, with the floppy mounted backwards.

But seriously, my SFF board doesn't even have a floppy controller on board....I'd also like an emulator.

 

[JCK86]

I recall that Bochs has some handy floppy image tools...

 

[FishTankX]

You guys are so funny..

Won't a USB floppy drive work just as well?!

 

[Intelman07]

I was looking for a floppy emulation too.......has anyone tried that winimage.

 

[Ichinisan]

Originally posted by: FishTankX
You guys are so funny..

Won't a USB floppy drive work just as well?!

Many executables designed to create boot floppies are incompatible with Windows NT/2K/XP because they try to directly access the hardware. These programs would be unaware of a USB drive.

 

[DeviousTrap]

Originally posted by: isaacmacdonaldThe problem is that I need bootable imgs to begin with. There's a perponderance of exe files meant to write images to floppys, but they rarely seem to segregate the img and the extractor

I dont know if this will work but have you tried opening up the extractor using WinRAR. Winrar has the ability to open most exe files which are install files so I would give that a try.

 

[onelin]

I too refuse to go back to my floppy ways I don't even want one in my system. Yeah, it's a little painful at times, and if I saw a deal on a USB floppy drive I'd get one, but manufacturers really SHOULD include a boot image for CDs nowadays. There's really no excuse. OTOH, I haven't had any issues w/o finding one. I flash my BIOS off off CDs and do all my reinstalls that way too.

 

[isaacmacdonald]

Originally posted by: RalfHutter
This is so funny. I love it when the "anti-floppiests" post for help on how to make such-and-such into a bootable CDr just so they don't have to use a FDD. All that time and energy expended just to prove the point that the floppy drive is old and obsolete and that they can get along without one.

I don't think that's the point. I'm not an "anti floppiest", I just don't think it's particularly usefull in everyday computer usage. If I need to transfer a file from work, I either ftp it if it's small, or burn a cd. Hell, CD's are cheapier than fdds these days. The point is, why should we continue to keep these archaic things in our computers just to use as readable boot devices? There's absolutely no reason a CD can't suffice. The advantage to FDDs is the writeability. But what do I need to write to inside of dos? I just want to change the freakin accoustic settings, not rewrite command.com.

 

[MikeMike]

www.daemon-tools.com

is that what your looking for? i know it allows for virtual cd drives, not sure about fdd's

 

[sharkeeper]

These utilities are communicating with the firmware of your disk(s)! If this procedure was performed within a multi-tasking operating system, the structure of the filesystem could very well be compromised! Trying to sidestep this is not a good idea, especially if you value what's on the target disk! :Q

You have been warned!

-DAK-

 

[McMadman]

I've ran the maxtor AAM program off the hd (booting with my 98 boot, command prompt only)

If a bootable cd is made from a bootable floppy image, it would still perform the tasks that the floppy was intended to do and act like it was using a floppy (I suppose some sort of usb device could also be used like this if you had a way of writing such an image to it)

 

[Loop2kill]

I too would like an emulator...only time i use a floppy is when im installing windows fresh and have to specify my Raid Card driver...i dont think the emulator would work in that case though.

i just hook up that almost useless pc of hardware that one time and then throw it back in a box till the next time its needed(about 6 mo-1 year down the road)

 

[CZroe]

Daemon-Tools is by far the best CD/DVD emulator, though it's lack of image creation and burning features seems to make it less popular. The programmers live by one of my rules: Use the best tool for the job. They didn't set out to integrate a CD-Imaging / burning application when CloneCD does it better. The makers of 120% sure don't seem to understand what makes bloatware bad.

Of course, if it doesn't even have CD-Image creation/management beyond simply being able to mount it, it sure doesn't have floppy image management