I started this project while reading a series of articles in Amiga Addict, written by Rob Smith the original creator, and came to the conclusion that maybe it was time to start looking into backing up my old Commodore Amiga floppy disks. In the articles he describes several ways of building an Amiga DrawBridge from scratch, even without a PCB if that is what you prefer to do. I like to draw things and before long I found myself busy within KiCAD, opting to put the Pro Mini-variant onto a PCB. The reason for picking that one, is that I found it to be the easiest to assemble as it wouldn't require any fine soldering (some requiring alterations to the development board used). Anyway, with all of those resources at our fingertips - there's really no excuse for not getting started on it today! Alternatively, you could get this PCB and build it tomorrow! Wait any longer and all of those treasured memories, will already have started to rot away!

Given that I've also built and shared a Greaseweazle, it's probably a good idea to include a short blurbs about the differences between them. The Greaseweazle aims to work at the raw magnetic flux layer of the physical disks and then interpreting that into various disk formats or simply dumping the raw data to a file, the Amiga DrawBridge by comparison acts more like a Commodore Amiga and works within this specific format though later versions also support raw data dumps as well. I would consider the DrawBridge a bit easier to get started with and obtain suitable parts for, but given a passing interest in archiving your disks and the cost of the components themselves - I'd consider both of them excellent options. At least for getting started on archiving your disks, and we all know that actually getting started is the hardest step of all - and today it couldn't be easier.

As shown in some of the images, I like to design various faceplates that goes on my designs in order to keep them from looking like bare PCBs. Most of these faceplates will also be available as shared projects, this specific project is for the main PCB that holds all of the active components. For parts list, assembly instructions as well as any other information that you'd need, check out the corresponding github-repository.

NB! Rob Smith has also created a software package called DiskFlashBack, allowing you to have real disks show up as an actual drive letter in Windows and you can copy files off or onto them. Even if the disk was made for an Amiga. Truly amazing stuff, check it out!