Blue Pill Direct
This method is deprecated* and unreliable due to use of weak Dupont connections. Do not expect support if your direct-connection setup doesn't work!
Directly connecting a "Blue Pill" to your floppy drive requires the following parts:
- STM32 "Blue Pill" board
- Dupont jumper wires (Female-Female)
The "Blue Pill" is available very cheaply from many Chinese Ebay sellers for less than £2 including postage. The best search term is "STM32F103C8T6 board", sorted by lowest price first, and look for a board identical to below.
UPDATE: Please be aware of fake STM32 chips flooding the Chinese market. You may be advised to use a local source for your Blue Pill: For example, in UK they can be purchased for £3-4, you can more easily question a local seller, and you have wasted much less time if your chip does turn out to be fake.
Before programming your Blue Pill board you should solder the supplied header pins.
Please see the Firmware Programming page for further instructions.
You can connect the Blue Pill to any floppy drive implementing a Shugart interface: Old PC 3.5-inch and 5.25-inch drives are a good choice, or an Amstrad 3-inch drive for Amstrad CPC and Spectrum +3 disks. Note that the drive need not be the same model as in the system to which the disks belong: a Shugart drive is a Shugart drive, and it only really matters that it takes the correct size physical media.
3.5-inch drives typically require only 5v power and can be supplied directly from the 5-volt pin on the Greaseweazle board. Older 5.25- and 3-inch drives typically are more power hungry and require 12v power too: These you must connect to a separate power source.
Connections are as follows, for a PC 34-pin drive and for an Amstrad 26-pin drive:
| GW Pin | Signal | PC Pin | Ams Pin |
|---|---|---|---|
| B9 | DENSEL | 2 | - |
| B6 | INDEX | 8 | 2 |
| B10 | SELECT | 12 | 4 |
| B11 | MOTOR | 16 | 8 |
| B12 | DIR | 18 | 10 |
| B13 | STEP | 20 | 12 |
| B4 | DKWD | 22 | 14 |
| B14 | DKWE | 24 | 16 |
| B7 | TRK0 | 26 | 18 |
| B8 | WRPROT | 28 | 20 |
| B3 | DKRD | 30 | 22 |
| B15 | SIDE | 32 | 24 |
Odd numbered pins may be connected to Ground on the Greaseweazle board. It is mandatory to connect at least one odd-numbered pin if you are using an external power source for your floppy drive, to connect the ground planes of Greaseweazle and the drive.
See the following diagram showing the Dupont jumper connections.
In the above example please note that no odd-numbered 34w pins need be connected to GND as grounds are already connected via the power connector. This would not be the case if using an external power source.
Connect to your host PC (Linux, Mac, Windows, etc) using a normal USB cable. Greaseweazle appears as a serial or modem device, depending on your OS.