Greaseweazle

Greaseweazle Floppy-Drive front view

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in

The Greaseweazle is the ultimate bridge between modern hardware and vintage floppy disks. As a specialized USB controller, it allows you to connect original floppy drives directly to any modern PC. Instead of just reading standard files, the Greaseweazle analyzes and writes the magnetic tracks of a disk at the lowest level (flux level). This makes it possible to accurately backup, archive, and rewrite even copy-protected or degraded Amiga disks as ADF images.

Hardware Setup

The Greaseweazle floppy disk drive consists of the following components:

  • 3D-printed case designed by Tom Dalby
  • Greaseweazle v4.1 board
  • 3.5-inch floppy disk drive
  • Floppy data cable
  • Floppy power cable
  • Power-LED
Greaseweazle Floppy-Drive back view

Software

To use the Greaseweazle hardware, you will need one of the following software tools:

Greaseweazle Host Tool

Software-Installation: https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/wiki/Software-Installation

Download: https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/wiki/Download-Host-Tools

Tutorial: https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/wiki/Yann-Serra-Tutorial

Examples:

For my Greaseweazle, it is necessary to use the parameter: --drive=b

Read an Amiga floppy disk:

gw read --format=amiga.amigados --drive=b MyAmigaDisk.adf

Writing an ADF File to an Amiga Floppy Disk:

gw write --format=amiga.amigados --drive=b MyAmigaDisk.adf

After installing the Greaseweazle command-line tools, you may be interested in a Windows GUI wrapper. There are two available, maintained by third parties:

FluxMyFluffyFloppy

Link: https://github.com/FrankieTheFluff/FluxMyFluffyFloppy

Web: https://github.com/FrankieTheFluff

Wiki: https://github.com/FrankieTheFluff/FluxMyFluffyFloppy/wiki

GreaseweazleGUI

Link: https://desertsagesolutions.com/greaseweazlegui/

G-Copy

Setting:

Download

  1. Click to (1) for searching the Greaseweazle Hardware
  2. Click to (2) to set: Floppydisk IBMPC: B

The rest should be self-explanatory.


Other tools I haven’t tested yet:

HxC Floppy Emulator toolkit

https://github.com/jfdelnero/HxCFloppyEmulator

FluxEngine

https://github.com/davidgiven/fluxengine

https://cowlark.com/fluxengine/doc/greaseweazle.html

X-Copy

The original ones are on the official website: https://jope.fi/xcopy/masterdisk.html

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