"Catweasel Advanced Floppy Controller"
Solution to the floppy disk problem via an add-on card. From the FAQ:
2. What is the Catweasel controller?
The Catweasel controller is a very advanced floppy disk controller.
It is designed as ISA card for standard PCs, but there are also
special versions for various Amiga computers. This FAQ contains
information on the PC version only.
The Catweasel was designed to be capable of reading every old disk.
So far, we don't know of any floppy disk that can't be read using
the Catweasel hardware. All decoding is done by software, so there
is no need to extend the hardware, if we want to support new disk
formats. In the current version of the software, the following raw
disk formats are supported:
- CBM 1541, 5.25" single sided 170 KB
- CBM 1571, 5.25" single sided 170 KB
- CBM 1571, 5.25" double sided 341 KB
- CBM 1581, 3.5" double sided 800 KB
- Amiga, 3.5", double sided 880 KB
- Amiga, 3.5", double sided 1760 KB
- Amiga, 5.25", double sided 880 KB
- Amiga, 5.25", double sided 1760 KB
- Atari ST, 3.5", double sided 720 KB
- Atari ST, 3.5", double sided 800 KB
- Atari ST, 3.5", double sided 1440 KB
- IBM PC, 3.5", double sided 720 KB
- IBM PC, 3.5", double sided 1440 KB
- IBM PC, 5.25", double sided 360 KB
- IBM PC, 5.25", double sided 720 KB
- IBM PC, 5.25", double sided 800 KB
- IBM PC, 5.25", double sided 1200 KB
- Catweasel-Extra, 3.5", double sided 1160 KB
- Catweasel-Extra, 3.5", double sided 2380 KB
- Apple Macintosh, 3.5", single sided 400 KB
- Apple Macintosh, 3.5", double sided 720 KB
- Apple Macintosh, 3.5", double sided 800 KB
- Apple Macintosh, 3.5", double sided 1440 KB
- Apple IIe, 5.25", single sided 140 KB
The following file systems are implemented:
- CBM 1541 (DOS 2A)
- CBM 1571 (DOS 2A), single sided & double sided
- Amiga OFS
- Amiga OFS localized
- Amiga FFS
- Amiga FFS localized
- PC FAT12
- PC FAT16
- PC VFAT12
- PC VFAT16
To summarize the other important point, it uses standard commodity PC floppy drives, compensating for the physical characteristics of the drives/controllers being emulated via a variable bitrate controller in addition to some other magic... And yes, Linux is supported, somewhat.