Hi all,
Thought I'd ask if anyone has built a collection of Sdisk2-compatible NIC images for quick download?
I know there are conversion tools from DSK to NIC, but if someone's already been through that pain barrier already and made NICs available, it would obviously save me a lot of time.
Part of the reason I'm asking is that I'm only having limited success with converted NICs - some load, some don't (even ostensibly "cracked" DSKs). Suspect it's a foible of the conversion process, but equally suspect I'm not the first to go through this process and a previous traveller on this journey might be able to save me some time :)
Hello,
why are you using NIC files ? You have built the SDISKII based on the atmega328p ?
I have bought the SDISKII from the ebay listing: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/255780944421 - no idea what chip it's using.
The docs I got with it say that only NIC files are supported.
Considering that it runs totally on an ATMega328 it is an amazing pre built disk drive reader option for the money.
Oled versions of this have very low power requirements.
Most of my problems have been with formatting the SD card, but I now seem to have got an SD card to format on Windows 11 and transfer NIC files to the card.
Reads by my Apple][e work faultlessly.
Writes to a preformated NIC file on the SD card do not seem to work. Units sold on Ebay are stating this.
The DSK to NIC conversion software can be tiresome to use but when it works it works well.
If I ever get the time , might try to port software to a ESP32 with wifi capability.
Crusty
It's very easy to just run a batch file on a whole folder of images.
Yeah, it was as much the curation of images that work as anything, though. On Asimov there's often several cracked versions of a game and some work better than others (and some don't work at all). If others had already been through that pain barrier and were willing to lob their NICs on some cloudy storage I think it's be a useful resource.
Are people not generally using the Sdisk2 as their primary modern storage solution, then? Is there a better solution?
If you want something more or less turn key and supports all images natively, a Floppy Emu or wDrive is the way to go. They support DSK, nib, po, do, and (most importantly) WOZ. They also support large hard drive po files like total replay (if your Apple is smart port enabled).
Then there are card based solutions like booti or cffa3000 which all offer po support, and some also offer DSK and do. But I don't think any support WOZ. If you are not aware, WOZ is a low level image that can fool copy protection schemes. So you can run images that haven't been cracked/altered.
The Nishida Radio sdisk2 is by far the simplest and most economical Apple II disk emulator; it is basically a single $1 microcontroller!
However, compared to other products at much higher pricepoints with exotic chips inside (CPLDs etc) it's fair to assume that there were some compromises in its compatibility. The requirement for a special disk image format is one such, but I wouldn't be shocked if there were others.