Say goodbye to floppies

Do you remember paper cards for jacquard, and the revolution of first electronic jacquard, which supported floppies? That was over 20 years ago, most large mills now use network to transfer designs, while some smaller ones are stuck with once cute 3,5” floppies.

This is a big problem for Stäubli JC4 controllers, where it is virtually impossible to get a network card, while new computers do not have internal floppies. What used to be a nice solution, is slowly turning into a nightmare. External USB floppy is difficult to set up, and for some non-DOS formats, like Stäubli JC4, special tricks are needed to write such floppies.

There is a solution now. A floppy emulator is available on the market. You insert it in your jacquard controller, in place of floppy drive. No other changes are necessary on the controller, as controller will “think” it is still using the floppy, but it will actually read USB memory key. The USB key needs to be formatted in a special way, and CAD software needs to write it in correct format. Arahne has solved this problem, and in ArahWeave 6.1j you will find “Floppy emulator” as one of the write destinations in “Save cards for production”.

You can buy floppy emulator from Stäubli or from other companies.