Emulating A Floppy Drive By Emulating The Drive Itself
The Commodore 1541 is famously the floppy drive for the Commodore 64 sequence of 8-bit computer systems, and might be discovered with relative ease. Not so well-known is its 1551 sibling — the drive made for the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 machines.
They’re significantly uncommon in 2026, so [Maciej Witkowiak] has made an emulator. But it’s not simply trendy silicon emulating the entire thing. Instead it’s the identical 6510 and ROM you might need discovered on the unique, speaking to a Pi Pico emulating the drive {hardware}. It’s a gloriously excessive resolution to the issue of emulating a disk drive, the reason is that it began life as a daughter board plugged into an authentic drive mainboard.
Complementing the Pico is a CPLD for glue logic, and an OLED for choosing disk photos. The Pico even generates the clock and IRQ timing for the venerable 8-bit half. The ROM is 64k in measurement, room sufficient for each the unique firmware and enhanced neighborhood variations. The entire factor can be found in a GitHub repository, ought to you need a go your self.
Long time Hackaday readers will know [Bil Herd] as certainly one of our contributors. If you’re within the again story to the sequence of computer systems that included the Commodore 16, his book makes for interesting reading.
