floppy controller PCI/PCIe x1 USB card for a Floppy controller board

[I Ate Minecraft]

So, I have Quite a few floppy drives and even more floppy disks, but I need a way to access them (I plan to store confedential info on the Floppies), and there is the Catweazel (MK4 Plus), which I would love to get but it is discontinued, so I found the GreaseWeazel (F7 Lightning Plus) and the GreaseWeazel is what I want to use but I want to have it on a PCI slot or a PCIe slot on my motherboard, so I would like to have a USB controller on the PCI slot merged (one PCB) with the GreaseWeazel, and I have no clue on how to make a PCI compliant board, so if anyone can send me gerber files and a schematic for a USB controller board so that i can combine and print the board. Or if you are able to tell me how I could go about designing a PCI USB controller board, that would be great.
Any help is appreciated!

[AbydosOne]

45 minutes ago, I Ate Minecraft said:

Any help is appreciated!

How much do you know about PCB design? PCIe design isn't exactly a beginner project.

 

EDIT: you should also be aware that building your own board will undoubtedly cost multiple times more than just buying a USB to FDD adapter.

[manikyath]

1 hour ago, I Ate Minecraft said:

(I plan to store confedential info on the Floppies)

that's a horrendously bad idea, if you dont plan to store 3 copies just in case your floppies decide to conk out..

also consider that the random I/O on floppies is horrendous so encrypting them is not really a valid path either.

 

 

as for an actual solution to your problem... the device you've found is probably the best option if you plan to reuse drives you have laying around.

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, I Ate Minecraft said:

(I plan to store confedential info on the Floppies),

You are aware that floppies are beyond fragile right? Like they will just flat out stop functioning at random.

 

1 hour ago, I Ate Minecraft said:

I found the GreaseWeazel (F7 Lightning Plus) and the GreaseWeazel is what I want to use but I want to have it on a PCI slot or a PCIe slot on my motherboard,

Teflon tape and strap it to the usb controller card. That is as easy as it gets as making a pcie pcb is REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY hard.

[I Ate Minecraft]

Quote

21 hours ago, manikyath said:

that's a horrendously bad idea, if you dont plan to store 3 copies just in case your floppies decide to conk out..

also consider that the random I/O on floppies is horrendous so encrypting them is not really a valid path either.

 

22 hours ago, AbydosOne said:

How much do you know about PCB design? PCIe design isn't exactly a beginner project.

 

EDIT: you should also be aware that building your own board will undoubtedly cost multiple times more than just buying a USB to FDD adapter.

 

I have like ~100 floppies, the reason I dont want to buy a USB FDD is because, they headbang if there isnt a floppy being actively read. I don't need to encrypt the floppies because just about no one can read them. As for having any knowledge on making PCIe boards,  have no idea, but I really want to learn how to.

 

[AbydosOne]

2 minutes ago, I Ate Minecraft said:

As for having any knowledge on making PCIe boards,  have no idea, but I really want to learn how to.

Do you have any circuits background at all? To design PCBs, you need to be able to design circuits.

[manikyath]

5 minutes ago, I Ate Minecraft said:

I don't need to encrypt the floppies because just about no one can read them.

that reeks of "security trough obscurity"... at that point you may as well write your passwords in a little booklet. it's secure because no one knows where the booklet is.

[I Ate Minecraft]

21 minutes ago, AbydosOne said:

Do you have any circuits background at all? To design PCBs, you need to be able to design circuits.

I know how to read schematics, I have PCB design softare, but I usually just use it to view files

[mariushm]

pci-e is extremely complex, you would need expensive microcontrollers or fpgas with built in pci express and then you'd have to write drivers for windows and lots of complications.

 

My advice would be to make your own "floppy disks" by making a custom usb stick where the microcontroller you use reads the contents of a small flash chip and shows up as mass storage device

You can get 16 mbit (2 MB) Flash memory chips for less than 50 cents : https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/winbond-electronics/W25Q16JVSSIQ/6193769

 

32 mbit (4MB) are like 0.75$ if you get 100 : https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/renesas-electronics-operations-services-limited/AT25SL321-MBUE-T/6827495

 

128 mbit chips (16 MB) are 1.72$ if you buy one, 1.36$ if you buy 100 ... https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/winbond-electronics/W25Q128JVSIQ-TR/5803944   or  https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/renesas-electronics-operations-services-limited/AT25SF128A-SHB-T/10107135

 

You could have the microcontroller show them as a 2 MB or 4 MB storage device (formatted as FAT32 or FAT16) and basically duplicate writes 2 - 4 times, to have the same content stored multiple times on the chip for redundancy, maybe also have ECC data for the 512 byte blocks for error correction. 

 

So you could have the memory chips in a sort of cartridge  (could be 3d printed) so that user can't touch the contacts, and you'd have your "usb stick" with a usb connector and your microcontroller that sits between usb and the "cartridge", you plug the "cartridge" in the custom connector and your microcontroller detects it and optionally disconnect itself from usb, waits a second or so, reconnects, to show up as different mass storage device with the new content.

 

With redundancy, you'd be able to read the data even 10-20 years from now.

 

Without ... there are cases of some 10+ years old video cards that won't boot anymore because 1 or 2 bits were flipped in the 64-128 KB bios chips (using older eeprom / flash), rewriting the data fixes them.

Floppy discs are less reliable either way.