Hacker News Reader

Comment by jgalt212 | Hacker News Reader

The cheapest Saleae Logic Analyzer costs $499.

https://www.saleae.com/products/saleae-logic-pro-16

A Greaseweazle costs like $35.

That being said, it's always fun to hack around using the tools you have lying around. Put money already spent to good use.

View on HN

How does $5 sound?

https://hackaday.com/2022/07/07/pico-makes-capable-logic-ana...

or maybe $1 with free shipping?

https://hackaday.com/2024/04/15/logic-analyzers-decoding-and...

Yep. I have a Greaseweazle and a Central Point Copy II PC Deluxe Option Board (and regular). Greaseweazle is largely the way to go. It's important to use the highest-fidelity method on the best FDD with the highest SNR because using a floppy disk causes wear to the media. Age also plays a factor.

I also have TEAC (2.88M, 1.44M, 1.2M, 720K, 360K, and SCSI versions), Sony, and various other FDDs.

If you already have a logic analyzer, are interested in the details, and maybe are facing a tricky disk with physical damage or creative copy protection, TFA may be helpful. If you just need to read disks without hassle and expense, a Greaseweasle or another adapter us likely a more suitable choice.

As a great alternative there are a handful of very cheap Saleae knock-offs using the same series of Cypress/Infineon logic chips, and they work well with e.g. Sigrok.

Very cheap knock-offs have same CY7C68013 usb interface chip, but lack an FPGA that original Saleae has, so can't capture quite as fast.

Plenty fast enough for a floppy bit-stream, of course.

Note that the knock-offs are clones of the original ~10 year old Salae Logic design, which also used the CY7C68013 without an FPGA (and had smaller margins than their current design, it only cost ~$100). They added the FPGA as a way of differentiating their products from the clones after they started becoming widespread.

I remember it used to be $200 for a Saleae logic 8. Their margins on that hardware are insane..

you're really paying for the software, imo

There are much cheaper logic analyzers out there.

I would suggest as the starting point to look at sigrok's supported hardware table[0].

I personally own a bunch of the cheap 8ch 24Msps saleae clones, which are typically below $10. I would recommend the one from muselab as it has open sourced its design.

The next step, the DSLogic, of which I have a 200Msps 16ch model.

0. https://sigrok.org/wiki/Supported_hardware

I would recommend the one from muselab as it has open sourced its design.

The original Saleae, USBee AX, etc. are basically the Cypress FX2 reference design.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com