Adafruit provides a GreaseWeazle compatible firmware for the Adafruit Floppy FeatherWing paired with the Adafruit Feather RP2040.
This firmware can be used together with GreaseWeazle or FluxEngine software on a host computer to archive the data from floppies onto a modern PC. They each have slightly different capabilities, so it's great that they both work with the same device firmware.
Upload the firmware to the Feather RP2040
Grab the latest release from GitHub. Pick the file named "feather_rp2040_tinyusb.zip" and unzip it.
Plug in the Feather and then place it in bootloader mode by holding the BOOT button and clicking RESET.
Drag the GreaseWeazle UF2 file to the RPI-RP2 volume. It will automatically restart with the new firmware.
Determine the serial port name
Depending on your operating system, the device will be assigned a serial port name. On Windows, a serial port name is a string like "COM6" or "COM33"; on Mac and Linux it's a string starting "/dev/". Check out this guide page for more info on finding the serial port name: "COM / Serial Port Name"
When you run FluxEngine or GreaseWeazle, you'll need to manually specify the serial port name.
Install & Use FluxEngine
Grab the appropriate installer (exe or pkg) from the releases page on GitHub.
After installing it, insert a floppy disk and close the door. In a terminal and run the FluxEngine command to check that everything's working (change COM6 to the serial device name that's right for your computer):
C:\fluxengine>fluxengine rpm --usb.greaseweazle.port=COM6 Using GreaseWeazle on serial port COM6 Rotational period is 198.445 ms (302.351 rpm)
FluxEngine supports a wide range of disk formats. Check out the official FluxEngine documentation for detailed information on how to use it. To whet your appetite, here's how to use FluxEngine to read the content of a 1.44MB 3.5" DOS/Windows disk to an image file:
C:\fluxengine> fluxengine read --usb.greaseweazle.port=COM6 ibm
Windows users can grab a compiled version from the releases page on GitHub. Others can install the source with the command pipx install git+https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle or by cloning the git repo and running its make command.
After installing it, open a terminal and run the gw command to check that everything's working:
C:\greaseweazle>python3 gw info --device COM6 Host Tools: v0.34 Device: Port: COM6 Model: Adafruit Floppy Generic Firmware: v1.0 Serial: 2E1A9C125337543239202020FF0B160C USB Rate: Full Speed (12 Mbit/s)
GreaseWeazle also supports a wide range of formats. There's an official greaseweazle documentation wiki for more information on how to use it. To get you started, here's how to read the content of a 1.44MB 3.5" DOS/Windows disk to an image file (change COM6 to the serial device name that's right for your computer):
C:\greaseweazle> gw read --device COM6 --format ibm.1440 output.img
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