hanshuebner / cpc-floppy-controllers

Floppy controllers for the Amstrad CPC464 home computer

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Amstrad/Schneider CPC floppy controllers

⚠️ This is a work in progress: Don't fabricate PCBs from these files yet!

This project started as attempt to clone the Vortex F1-D floppy controller, which supports two 720k DSDD drives. The desire was to have a controller that can support four drives at the same time. The starting point was a capture of the original PCB into a schematic, which can be found in the original directory.

Vortex F1-D PCB

Multiple variants have been designed, but none of the designs in this repository have been tested, don't fabricate any PCBs at this point!

no-rom

rendered picture of the no-rom PCB variant (front) rendered picture of the no-rom PCB variant (back)

The no-rom variant contains a revised, but wasteful address decoder and no ROM socket. It works to some extent, but the first revisions contained multiple errors and required several patches. The version in this repository has the fixes applied, but was not yet fabricated and tested.

no-rom-cpld

rendered picture of the no-rom-cpld variant (front) rendered picture of the no-rom-cpld variant (back)

The no-rom-cpld variant replaces the TTL chips with a CPLD, reducing the part count significantly.

rom-cpld

rendered picture of the rom-cpld variant (front) rendered picture of the rom-cpld variant (back)

The rom-cpld variant adds a Flash ROM that can act as a universal ROM box in addition to holding an operating system ROM to drive the floppy disk controller.

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Floppy controllers for the Amstrad CPC464 home computer


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Language:VHDL 61.1%Language:Makefile 38.9%