Industrial Solutions

We will be more than glad to support you with first-hand information on our highly innovative Hardware and Software products and concepts. We would be happy to see you and give you a live display of our produce from today until 3 March 2011 at Stand 129 in Hall 9 in the Nuremberg Trade Fair Center (Messezentrum Nürnberg).

Also this year we proudly present a very special highlight:

Floppy emulator V3

The extended version of our Floppy-Emulator is to be at the ready.
In addition to higher compatibility, even to exotic disk formats, the configuration and setup is all done via graphical user interface on the PC.
Now jumpers are a thing of the past.

Take the chance to see the Floppy-Emulator 2 live at the embedded world 2011 until Thursday. Visit us at Hall 9, Stand 129.

The "USB Disk Format Tool" is a small console application to format a USB flash drive for use with the Floppyemulator.

The USB Disk Format Tool is now available for download in the support area and on the product page.

Supported operating systems: Windows 2000/XP (x86)

Using the USB Disk Format Tool and the USB Disk Index Selector together (for example in a batch script), a variety of actions can be automated.

• automated formatting
• automated switching
• automated selection

Note:
Of course, the USB Floppy-Emulator works completely operating system independent when using only one disk image per USB flash drive.

If you are only looking for a comfortable USB-Flash-Drive disk images format tool, you can use the "USB floppy format tool for Windows" (also available in the support area).

The USB Disk Index Selector tool is a small console application for the USB-Floppyemulator. Simple activities such as switching between virtual disks can be automated.

The driver UFBFfilte.sys can be installed and de-installed with the console application USBSelector.exe, without additional and extensive software. This tool allows you to switch through the index and select/set a floppy disk image for use.

The example script “test.bat” shows how to automatically switch through 10 disk indexes on a USB Device “H” and create a file on each disk.

test.bat:

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@echo off
setlocal
 
set basePath=%~p0
set usbApp="%basePath%\USBSelector.exe"
set drive=H:
 
:doInstall
@echo.
@echo *** Install driver for %drive% ***
@echo.
%usbApp% -d%drive% -i
 
:doTest
@echo.
@echo *** Create a test file on index 0-9 ***
@echo.
for %%i IN (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9) DO (
	@rem @echo Select index %%i, write file %drive%\00%%i.txt ...
	%usbApp% -d%drive% -n%%i
	@rem @echo errorlevel=%errorlevel%
	if not %errorlevel% NEQ 0 @echo 00%%i > %drive%\00%%i.txt
 
	rem use the ping command to wait for a little while ...
	ping 127.0.0.1 -n 2 -w 1000 >nul
)
 
:do UnInstall
@echo.
@echo *** uninstall driver ***
@echo.
%usbApp% -d%drive% -u
 
:end
endlocal

Please note:
After switching a little break must be made before switching again.
The number of actual disk indices is not checked.

Supported operating systems: Windows 2000/XP (x86)

Note:
Of course, the USB Floppy-Emulator works completely operating system independent when using only one disk image per pen drive.

The USB Disk Index Selector Tool is now available in the support area and on the product page.

We are constantly enhancing and expanding our products.

The new USB Floppy Emulator user guide is available now.
You can download the current version on the product page or from the support area.

The new manual/user guide for the USB floppy Emulator is available now. You can download the current manual on the product page or from the support area.

Comparison of the ipcas floppy emulator with 3.5 inch and 5 1/4 inch floppy drives.

Demonstration of the Floppy Emulator: A USB Pen Drive in use as floppy disk or up to 100 floppy disks in one USB Pen Drive.

Where’s the replacement?

On Saturday (April 24) the Japanese Newspaper Mainichi Daily News reported that Sony would stop its production of 3.5 inch diskettes (Floppy Disks) by the end of its current business year in March, 2011. The report spread like a wildfire in the media and particularly throughout the web. (Refer to reports in the portals of cnet and BBC.)

Sony released its first 3.5″ floppy disk in 1981 (in those days with only 720 KB memory space). The gradual decline of the 30-year old data carrier had already begun several years ago. The respective disk drives have practically disappeared from current PCs.

But what is going to happen to all the old machines, systems, measurement devices, electronic musical instruments and similar devices? This haunting question is recently being heatedly discussed in a lot of forums and blogs.

Diskettes are still being used as the main removable memory carriers, especially in the industrial production sectors, but also in many smaller facilities such as robot controls and lab instruments. In many cases this is not even due to aging machines, but actually because manufacturers want to keep their systems supplied with the proven, stable, and compatible disk drives.

We are offering a most practical and cost-effective way out of this dilemma – the ipcas Floppy Emulator! It provides you with a brilliant alternative if you want to keep your old systems up to date.

All you have to do is replace the legacy disk drive in your system with the ipcas Floppy Emulator and you can then simply use an USB pen drive to replace your old floppies.

What experiences have you made in recent years with floppies and old disk drives? Just tell us where you are still using floppies or cannot do without the old floppy disk drives. Please consult us – no strings attached. We’ll be sure to find the best solution to suit your individual requirements.