KryoFlux - USB floppy controller | MSX Resource Center

Developed by the Software Preservation Society, the KryoFlux USB floppy controller (or "High Definition Flux Sampler for USB") aids the preservation of floppy disk based software, allowing you to back perfect dumps straight from disk to your PC. Disks can be exported as raw streams or as commonly supported disk image formats - including MSX DSK images. Additionally, these dumps can also be written back to (other) disks.

Supposedly all kinds of custom formats, recording scheme violations, encodings and other kinds of tricks usually used as copy protections can all be dumped - and thus preserved - with this hardware. This demonstration video on YouTube gives a good impression of how it looks and works.

KryoFlux is available for € 89,95 - but then you only get the board and a quick start sheet. A complete 'premium' package with necessary cables and power supply is available as well, for € 109,95.

Relevant link: KryoFlux website

Comments (12)

By ro

Scribe (4962)

16-10-2012, 08:44

I'm trying to get my head around this; why is this different than a general FDD?

By Huey

Prophet (2694)

16-10-2012, 11:26

ro wrote:

I'm trying to get my head around this; why is this different than a general FDD?

Probably because this one is for persevation instead of preservation. ;P

By snout

Ascended (15187)

16-10-2012, 11:35

oi! I typed it correctly once! ^_^

@Ro - dunno, but FDDs are quite scarce in PCs nowadays. Other than that, I expect that this interface is better at creating exact duplicates when there are quircks (e.g. copyprotections and/or rotten sectors) on the source disk?

By luppie

Paladin (869)

16-10-2012, 12:01

This is different, cause a FDD to FDD copy is in most cases a file level copy.
With some other copy programs, its possible to do a bitlevel copy.

With this hardware it's possible to copy the magnetic field on a floppy, making it an exact copy of the source. In other words, the perfect clone of a disk. Or if you use a corrupted disk, the imperfect clone of a disk

By Rataplan

Champion (338)

16-10-2012, 12:06

Is more like the CopyIIpc board of ~~ancient~~ MSX times?

By Manuel

Ascended (19462)

17-10-2012, 11:36

Would be interesting if it could write the data to DMK format... Because, DSK isn't good enough for copy protected disks...

By gargamel

Expert (101)

20-03-2014, 17:24

Mumbo Jumbo

If the MSX had a special designed floppy controller, like the Amiga or the Macintosh, then it would be more useful.

- Dave Dunefield's ImageDisk (including source code and free for non-commercial use)
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img/index.htm

- Individual Computers - Catweasel (first PC card was with ISA, still have it)
http://www.jschoenfeld.com/

By Manuel

Ascended (19462)

20-03-2014, 21:59

....or just use an MSX with a WD2793 or compatible and make DMK images. They're just as good for preservation and can dump all existing copy protections.

I did ask the developers of Kryoflux to support DMK. In the end said it makes sense, but I haven't seen anything after that. See http://www.softpres.org/?id=ticket&op=view&tid=01118&code=Tq...

By gargamel

Expert (101)

21-03-2014, 00:58

Hopefully, will see support in the support in future. The DMK format has been around for a long time also.

By FiXato

Scribe (1742)

24-01-2018, 16:53

Shame that thread hasn't had an update since 2014, and the thread that was linked to as a last post, doesn't lead to anything useful.
Recently came across this device, and was wondering if it supported DMK. I guess not.

By enribar

Paragon (1208)