DiskFlashback Released!

DiskFlashback

Rob Smith has brought us all an amazing new Windows package! If you are a retro computer user weather it be Amiga, Atari ST or PC, this is for YOU! See below for all the information and where to get it from his official page below.

(Taken directly from Robs page. For more information please visit his site directly)

A Windows package to use Floppy Disk Images Files & Non-PC Real Floppy Disks in Windows, directly.

Why?

Most of the USB floppy drives are terrible. And modifying a drive for DrawBridge removes the IBM/PC floppy disk support in Windows. Plus I was getting annoyed having to boot WinUAE just to copy a file to an ADF (or disk).

So I decided to build this – And all the silly playground arguments from childhood now behind us I gave a little love to the Atari ST too (untested, I don’t have one!)…

I’d been planning on building this since 2017, and now, with a simple double-click I can now access the contents of these disk image files directly!

 See the Getting Started Guide! for more details!

Features

• Mount ADF, DMS*, IMG, IMA, ST, MSA*, HDA, HDF and SCP* files as virtual drives (* read only)
• Supports AmigaDOS OFS/FFS DD & HD Disks
• Supports IBM/PC FAT12/16 DD 720k & HD 1.44Mb Disks
• Supports Atari ST FAT12/16 GemDOS Single and Double Sided normal & extended Disks
• Supports Dual Format Amiga/Atari floppy disks and mounts them as two drives! (read only)
• Use DrawBridge, Greaseweazle or SupercardPro as a real windows drive letter
• Create blank disk images for the above formats.
• Rip real floppy disks to file
• Write disk images to real floppy disks
• Install boot blocks on Amiga disks
• Optionally silently swap file extensions (eg: mod.thismusic to thismusic.mod)

Download – It’s Free!

Consider sending me a tip to say thanks!

WINDOWS MAY DETECT THIS AS A VIRUS
THIS IS A FALSE POSITIVE AND YOU ARE SAFE TO IGNORE IT
 Download DiskFlashback V1.0.0.6 beta

System Requirements:
Windows 10/11 64-Bit Only

View Release Notes

How does it work?

DiskFlashback is powered by:

• Dokany for the Virtual Drives
• ADFLib for the Amiga File System
• FatFS for the FAT12/16 File System
• xDMS for DMS File Support
• FloppyBridge for Real Floppy Disk Support

DiskFlashback is OpenSource and available under the GPL2 Licence, and available from GitHub.

Join me on Discord for discussion about the product!

Z3660 Accelerator First Boot A4000TX

What is this? Its an WIP accelerator based on the 3660 design Chuck (John Hertel) did with a catch. Below is taken from the GitHub page. For more information visit this Discord and the Github links below. So far its running absolutely amazing.

Z3660 by sHaNsHe (Double H Tech)

Z3660 is an Amiga 4000 CPU accelerator board based on A3660 and Z-turn FPGA board.

Compared to A3660, Z3660 has some key differences:

1. Z3660 accelerator board can only use 060 CPUs. This could be changed in the future, but at this time, only 060 is supported.

2. If Z-turn FPGA board is NOT used, then you get a simple A3660. The only difference is that all A3660 PLDs are replaced by a XC95144XL-10TQ144 CPLD. It could be possible to use 060 up to 100MHz, but only 50 MHz and 64 MHz has been tested. A board with 128 MB of CPU RAM is in the works (to be connected at Z-turn sockets).

3. If you use a Z-turn FPGA board, then you can add 128 MB of CPU RAM (DMA compatible), 256 MB of Z3 RAM (not DMA compatible), RTG 16bit, Ethernet, AHI and MHI. Also there is a SD to SCSI emulation for using raw RDB disk images (USB storage maybe in the future). And of course, you can use a 68060 rev6 at 100 MHz.

Main branch. Z3660 with Z-turn FPGA

This main branch has everything you need to build a Z3660 with Z-turn FPGA.
If you want to build Z3660 without Z-turn FPGA, please go to wo_FPGA branch. The board is the same, but the CPLD firmware and BOM are obviously different.

Current version of Schematics is v021. It has all fixes needed by v02 to have DMA compatibility (tested with ReA4091 as bus master), so you can build it.

The exact model of Z-Turn board you will need is: MYS-7Z020-V2 ( mouser https://www.mouser.com/c/?q=MYS-7Z020-V2-0E1D-766-C-S ).

v0.2 Z3660 without FPGA

v0.2 Z3660 with FPGA
In this version you can see that I have used a 3V3 DCDC converter, instead of old linear regulator on VR1. Board has both footprints in one. Please be careful with its connection.

Note on RTG status: RTG is full working now. It has all features that ZZ9000 has (except obviously scandoubler). Due limitations of Z-turn, output video is limited to 16 bit.
Manufacturer ID was assigned to 5195 decimal, 0x144B hexadecimal (thanks to Olaf Barthel).
All RTG, AHI and MHI are based on ZZ9000 RTG (https://source.mnt.re/explore). It has the same band-pass filters as the AX module, but made in software by one of the ARMs.

And finally, a checkmate move…

Don’t have a 060 rev6 CPU, and still want to try Z3660 with a Z-turn?
sHaNsHe to the rescue!!! 😛

One of the Z-turn ARM CPU can run the emulation code of a 68040 CPU with JIT that reaches up to 120 MIPS!!!
It is based on Amiberry CPU code (for 32bit ARM). (And yes, I know, but Emu68 no longer supports 32 bit ARM).
You can even switch between the real 060 CPU and the emulation by clicking on an app (and rebooting).

Discord channel link:

Z3660 Offical Discord