Greaseweazle V4.1 USB Floppy Disk Adapter

This USB device connects a vintage floppy drive to your modern computer to read and write disks from systems using standard Shugart drives, including Amiga, Atari, Commodore, Amstrad, Sinclair, PC, CNC machines, musical instruments and industrial equipment.

By extracting raw flux transitions from a drive, it is possible to capture and analyse any disk format.

Greaseweazle V4.1 also supports writing floppy disks from image formats commonly used for preservation, including ADF, IPF, DSK, IMG and HFE.

Greaseweazle V4.1 features

• Read and write 3-inch, 3.5-inch, 5.25-inch and 8-inch disks with a compatible drive and cable.
• Buffered outputs for communication with older 5.25-inch and 8-inch drives.
• Built-in power connector to power most 3.5-inch drives directly.
• USB 5 V isolation jumper to power the board through the floppy drive power connector, useful with a separate power supply.
• Convenient form factor with larger mounting holes.
• Correctly keyed floppy connector for PC drive cables, with pin 5 missing.
• USB-C connector.
• ESD protection on USB data lines.
• Overcurrent protection on the USB power line.
• Removable write-enable jumper to help preserve old disks.
• Compatible with modified 5.25-inch drives.
• Compatible with read/write operations in the WinUAE Amiga emulator.
• Supports disk-change detection used by Rob Smith’s WinUAE integration.
• Connector for external LEDs.
• 3 user-configurable outputs, such as the REDWC signal for an 8-inch interface.
• New PCB colour.
• 100% factory tested before dispatch.

This listing is for the Greaseweazle V4.1 device only.

You will also need:

• A disk drive, such as a 3.5-inch or 5.25-inch PC drive.
• A floppy ribbon cable, usually a standard PC cable with pins 10–16 twisted for communication with a PC drive.
• A floppy drive power cable or power supply.

The host operating systems recommended in this product description are Windows 8, Windows 10 and Ubuntu Linux. Windows 7 and most macOS and Linux versions should also work, but have been tested less extensively.

For setup information and documentation, see the Greaseweazle V4.1 setup wiki.

Also recommended: Epsilon’s World: Greaseweazle v4 – using real Amiga disks on Windows 11.