Apple Preserves Floppy Disk Controller (FDC)

The Apple Preserves FDC does everything the Emulator does — and adds true flux-level disk imaging. It's the complete preservation tool: capture your original disks at the flux level, analyze them right on the device, and play them back immediately. All the imaging, analysis, and format conversion happen on the FDC itself — the companion app is just the interface.

Where the Emulator plays disk images, the FDC creates them. Connect a real floppy drive and the FDC reads the raw magnetic flux transitions straight off the disk — the physical signal beneath the data — preserving not just the files but the exact timing that copy protection depends on. Image a disk, then boot it on the same device seconds later.

Flux-level imaging, done right

The FDC images both 5.25" and 3.5" drives, capturing all 5.25" formats as well as 400K and 800K 3.5" disks. It records raw flux at 62.5 ns resolution (16 MHz sampling) — fine enough to resolve every Apple II and Mac timing window with margin to spare. Each track start is anchored to a Hall-effect sync sensor to within about 1 µs, so captured tracks can slip by at most a single bit cell.

Advanced analysis routines run on-device to identify valid tracks and characterize copy-protection schemes, while quarter-track comparison detects half-tracks, spiral tracks, and hidden-track protection. Rather than preserving noisy reads, the FDC normalizes during imaging to cleanly capture the intent of a protected track. Headers for IBM-PC-style drives are present on the board, with support for additional 5.25" formats possible in the future.

Imaging software features

Automatic 5.25" copy handles 99%+ of copy protections automatically, with no manual setup required. For the rare titles that need a hand, you can supply your own imaging parameters — and a built-in parameter database lets you look up known-good settings by title and other criteria. Boot Trace Copy mode follows the boot of a 5.25" diskette to discover exactly which tracks it uses, so you capture what the disk actually needs. For everyday, non-protected disks, high-speed imaging covers both 5.25" and 3.5" formats. Typical imaging runs about 14 seconds for a 5.25" disk and about 50 seconds for a double-sided 3.5" disk.

Full preservation pipeline, all on one device

Flux capture → on-device analysis → A2R → WOZ / MOOF — then straight to playback. The FDC does all the work itself; the Windows or Android companion app is simply the UI for driving it and managing your images over Bluetooth.

Everything the Emulator does, too

Beyond imaging, the FDC is a full disk emulator: it emulates up to two 5.25" floppy drives with authentic GCR flux timing, automatically detects the host machine so you can move it between systems with no configuration, reads and writes disk images from a standard SD card, and includes addressable status indicators. Drive passthrough mode gives your Apple direct access to the attached physical drives, so you can use them as real drives on the machine. The board supports two drives and two sync sensors for flexible imaging setups. Sync sensors come in 5.25" and 3.5" versions to suit each drive type — pick the one you need, and add the other anytime.

Compatible with

Connects via DB-19 or ribbon cable.

Supported image formats

Under the hood

In the box

Sold separately: DB-19 to DB-25 cable, and additional sync sensors (5.25" and 3.5" versions available).