Short:        PCMCIA Sony FA-P1 floppy driver
Author:       amiga@aidanholmes.co.uk (Aidan Holmes)
Uploader:     amiga aidanholmes co uk (Aidan Holmes)
Type:         driver/media
Version:      1.0
Requires:     A600/A1200
Architecture: m68k-amigaos >= v36
Distribution: Aminet
Kurz:         PCMCIA Sony FA-P1 floppy driver

$VER: pcmciafd.device 1.0 (7.9.2025)

About
-----
PCMCIAFD.device is a device driver for the Sony FA-P1 floppy drive
These drives do not require any additional power to operate and plug 
directly into the PCMCIA port.
This may also work with Toshiba drives with Flashbuster Y-E data drives.

The device driver supports hot plugging of the floppy drive.
Removal of the card will appear as a normal disk ejection.

The pcmciafd.device will work alongside other device drivers such as 
compact flash and network cards. 

Support
-------
This driver has been developed primarily for the A1200 and works with
FFS and Fat95 filesystems. 2 example mount files have been included.

Card reset patch is recommended for correct operation due to a bug in the 
PCMCIA implementation. Without this utility the card could fail to detect
if the driver is properly expunged from memory and then reinitialised.
This is an edge case for general use so not essential. 
A work around solution is to eject the card and reinsert to perform a hard
reset if the drive stops working without CardReset patch.
See Aminet: util/boot/CardReset.lha

This drive doesn't support 250kbit/s transfers properly meaning a 720Mb
format isn't possible unless I can figure this out. 

Driver Install
--------------
Copy pcmciafd.device to DEVS: 

A mount file will need to be setup in DEVS:DOSDrivers. You can use the 
example mount file included in the archive:
FD0 is for FAT filesystem setup - read, write and format DOS disks
FD1 is for FFS filesystem allowing Amiga formatted disks

Only unit 0 exists for this driver on the PCMCIA card bus.

See Aminet for Fat95: https://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/fat95

Versions
---------

1.0 - 8th Jul 2025: First release. Tested A1200

IMPORTANT NOTE:
---------------
Testing has been conducted with various devices, but there 
may be unforseen issues with other PCMCIA cards causing crashes or 
even damage to some types of card or data associated. Whilst this 
risk should be very low the driver needs to prod and poke devices
to determine their function and not all types of PCMCIA cards will
react to probing in the same way.
Data on floppy is unreliable and you may experience issues with data
quality with these old drives. Backup all important data on floppies
before use of this drive and device.

Legal Information
-----------------
pcmciafd.device is Copyright (c) 2025 Aidan Holmes

Redistribution and use of the binaries are permitted as long as the 
file names are retained, binaries are unmodifed 
and the above copyright notice is reproduced.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND
CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, 
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY 
AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. 
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGE.