There are lots of floppy drive emulators floating around for sale these days. However, most of them have a very simple interface that can be frustrating to use. Enter the GoFloppy external floppy drive: not only does it have style, it also features an OLED display that shows you exactly which image is in use. This is a much better user interface than most of the floppy emulators available.
Unlike most emulators which use USB flash drives, this one uses SD cards, which may be a better choice depending on what you have available. Often, SD cards have higher read/write speeds, especially when compared with USB 1.1 or even USB 2.0, which most emulators use. This emulator uses the FlashFloppy firmware, which means it’s compatible with pretty much any retro computer that used 3.5″ floppy drives with 34-pin cables, including the IBM PC line, the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Acorn Archimedes, and many more.
This particular design also has a switch to easily change the floppy ID, so it can appear as a primary or secondary drive without having to change jumper settings or move it to a different spot on the floppy cable. The OLED display also shows which track and sector are being accessed; this can be really useful when using old floppy images that may have problems, or if you are trying to use copy-protected software that looks for “bad” sectors in particular spots.
Check out the video below for a demonstration, and consider grabbing this or one of the many other products Retro Supplies offers for retro computers!
