This kind of experiment *could* be interesting.
5.25 floppy drives built into PCs can not be used at all. The main reason is that the drive controller in IBM compatible PCs simply can't instruct the drive to read and write excotic disks like those of the EII.
But if a drive with a kind of built-in controller can be connected to a PC via USB, and this built-in controller is very flexible and can be programmed through USB or via the Atmel firmware to read or write exotic EII disks, then there's a chance that this could work.
The 1541 drive of Commodore however will not be the solution for EII disks.
That drive was designed for single sided disks, and it is only reliable in the first 35 tracks.
The drive is said to be able to handle two sides of a DS disk, but the range between 70 and 80 tracks is unreliable and anything above that is an even bigger gamble.
Note that EII disks carry about 540K, while the maximum (unreliable) double sided capacity of the 1541 is 360K.
But I think the 1571 disk for the Commodore 128 could be worth an experiment.
That drive could also be accessed by CP/M, and as far as I remember Emu had some equipment based on CP/M for creating EII disks. Maybe they used this hardware, I don't know.
So... why not doing this experiment (just for the fun of it) ?
Dr.C also gave a hint about the old Apple II. But I'm not sure where the diskcontroller of the Apple II drive is located (drive or Apple itself) and what characteristics it had.
In general I'm convinced that hardware *can* be made for reading and writing EII disks.
But someone has to delve into it.
Of course we are depending on the production of floppy drives in general. If that stops (and it will I guess), then it's all vintage and second hand stuff anyway.
Production of 5.25 drives has been stopped already I assume. Fortunately the EII can also use 3.5 disks.
If I would have more time I would love to do this kind of research...
///E-Synthesist
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