Floppy Emu Alternatives

wDrive is comparable to FloppyEmu, as both are floppy drive emulators.  Booti is a different beast.  It does not emulate a floppy drive at all.  It is more of a hard drive emulator.  It's a good product but not everything will work with it.  Most specifically a lot of games and DOS 3.3 doesn't work directly (there are some ways to partially get around that but nothing straight forward).  Now, as for games, a ton will run from a 32MB ProDOS image like Total Replay so that might not be a big deal to you.  But if you want to be able to download any old .dsk image off Asimov and run it you will need a floppy emulator.

If you are a DIYer, the device designed by VIBR and discussed on another thread here on Applefritter is an up-and-coming option.  It's not as mature as FloppyEmu or even wDrive, but it already works pretty well as a floppy emulator and it is being actively developed and getting better all the time.

All that said - FloppyEmu is really worth the money for what it is.  It's been more or less the best of breed product in its space for years and it works great.  And when you think about things, $150 is cheap compared to what a Disk ][ drive cost back in the day...  Before you even consider the cost of floppies or inflation.

to FHR : I recently acquired an Apple2 SmartDisk2 from VIBR, for 55 EUR via eBay shipment excl. : it reads and writes .dsk, .do .woz2 files (use .do for >140kB ProDos incl 32MB TotalReplay...) 

directly connected to disk2 interface card (dr1 or dr2) - accepts wide range of SD card, with specific format (easy to reach as detailed in doc) - passes weakbit, $EA ... protections

fully open doc project on github

see chats on Applefritter during 2024 dev stages between VIBR and Uncle Bernie (and others...)

NB: " SmartDiskII " also refers to be a Liron compatible Disk2 interface clone project ... 

This is probably not what you want, but if you have a serial card and cables and adapters, this is what I use.

https://adtpro.com/vdrive.html

vinski3141 wrote:

to FHR : I recently acquired an Apple2 SmartDisk2 from VIBR, for 55 EUR via eBay shipment excl. : it reads and writes .dsk, .do .woz2 files (use .do for >140kB ProDos incl 32MB TotalReplay...) 

directly connected to disk2 interface card (dr1 or dr2) - accepts wide range of SD card, with specific format (easy to reach as detailed in doc) - passes weakbit, $EA ... pro

For disambiguity, the VIBR floppy emulator device can be found here:

https://github.com/vibr77/AppleIIDiskIIStm32F411

And the BradleyB designed controller card can be found here:

https://github.com/btb/SmartDiskII

FWIW, I've had no luck getting the SmartDiskII to work.

softwarejanitor wrote:

All that said - FloppyEmu is really worth the money for what it is.  It's been more or less the best of breed product in its space for years and it works great.  And when you think about things, $150 is cheap compared to what a Disk ][ drive cost back in the day...  Before you even consider the cost of floppies or inflation.

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement.

The Floppy Emu emulates all number of diskette image formats, but it is also a rudimentary hard drive solution if you have a smartport, or smartport emulator card (and cable adapter) for your slotted II+ ot IIe.

The price is high-ish, but in retrospect it is by far one of the best purchases I have made.  A far better value than the Booti or even the WDrive, if you can still fine one.