Fred 's microdisc clone?

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Chema
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Fred 's microdisc clone?

Post by Chema »

By chance, I stumbled upon a disc system for our Orics that was unknown to me.

https://atari-owner.com/club/threads/or ... tions.344/

No indications about where to find a website or any other information about the author apart from his name, Fred, and that he is from France.

The design, as you can see some posts below, include an altera fpga, so it is not a direct clone.

Anyone has any further information? Maybe the author is around in these forums?
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Symoon
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Re: Fred 's microdisc clone?

Post by Symoon »

Hi Chema,

If I'm not mistaken, Fred sold his board + drive on Ebay, bought one years ago. I'm not sure he still does though.
I wasn't even aware it had a specific hardware design, I just thought he managed to get a compact board.
There has been so many hardware projects in the past few years that I'm a bit lost to be honest, and personnaly don't have time to discover/test them properly.

BTW, do you have any idea how to register to this forum?
EDIT: found, there's a small post on one of the forums that indicates you have to send an email.
nigelr0
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Re: Fred 's microdisc clone?

Post by nigelr0 »

Hi Chema,

I bought one of these from Fred in 2017. I replaced the floppy disk drive with a Gotek drive as my main PC couldn't have a disk drive fitted. It's superbly made and Fred even gave me a couple of cd's with lots of games and utilities. This is the following description from when I bought mine from eBay:-

Microdisc compatible floppy controller for Oric-1 and Oric ATMOS.

The controller uses the same scheme as the microdisc. The specialized ICs are the same and the logic components have been replaced by a CPLD in order to obtain a more compact PCB that can fit under a 3.5 "drive.

The lot includes:
- the controller
- the connection cable with the oric
- a 5V / 3A power supply to power the controller, 2 readers and the oric

The computer is powered by the controller power supply via the cable. It is therefore no longer necessary to use the oric's power input.

Although tested on 3 Oric without worries, I can not guarantee a functioning on 100% of Oric.

He goes by the name of fred_7271 on eBay.

Regards,

Nigel
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coco.oric
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Re: Fred 's microdisc clone?

Post by coco.oric »

Hello,

I've one too.
It's a fine small unit
coco.oric as DidierV, CEO Member
Historic owner of Oric, Apple II, Atari ST, Amiga
rjiji
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Re: Fred 's microdisc clone?

Post by rjiji »

hi,

Fred sold the last 2 at the beginning of the month


https://forum.system-cfg.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=12442


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Chema
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Re: Fred 's microdisc clone?

Post by Chema »

Thanks for all the replies. Weird I heard nothing about this until recently. It would be great if the author shared the project with the community.
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Re: Fred 's microdisc clone?

Post by hutch »

so does fred no longer make these?? i would purchase one...
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