Hi Christian,

A floppy drive has no intelligence. If you look at the interface connector, you will see roughly the following lines:

1) An index signal which will give a pulse each time the disk has made one turn

2) A direction and a step input to move the heads one track forward or back per pulse

3)A track zero output which signs the heads are above track zero

4)A motor on/off line

5)A signal inpujt line and a signal output line.

6)A head zero or head one select signal.

You have to to controll all by your program. In principle it must be possible to use a floppy with an 8051, but in practice I think it is not worth to make an effort to do a project with it. If you nevertheless want to use a floppy, I think it is best to dedicate an extra 8051 to the floppydrive only to control it.

Henk