This Raspberry Pi automatically archives a stack of Amiga floppy disks

Sometimes it takes a modern eye to innovate problems of the past. Today we’ve got an incredible creation to share that does just that by maker and developer Graham Tinkers. Graham has created a custom archival system using parts from disk duplicators and our favorite SBC, the Raspberry Pi, to automatically process stacks of floppy disks and back them up onto a USB drive.

Automated Floppy Disk Archiving Part 1 – YouTube

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Graham has been sitting on a stack of over 800 Commodore Amiga floppy disks with intentions of manually backing them up. Looking through the stack of disks, we can see a few “backups” in the mix. The Amiga scene was notorious for cracked software which was pirated and shared via disk copy parties and BBS.
For those a little too young to remember the Commodore Amiga range. The Amiga 1000 was introduced in 1985 and disrupted the market as it was. Custom hardware and a pre-emptive multitasking OS meant that the Amiga was ahead of its time, but also pricey. The range saw a plethora of low and high cost machines. Typically with machines like the 500, 500+, 600 and 1200 taking a larger percentage of the range due to their lower cost and consumer focused design. The more expensive Amigas, for example the 2000 and 4000, often found their way into the TV industry of the 1980s and 90s.

The idea began when Graham came to own a couple of old disk duplicators. He ended up integrating them into this project which uses a spring loaded mechanism to pop floppy disks into the duplicators automatically from a stack. The rig can hold about 50 disks at a time and puts them into a complete pile when they’re finished. Graham encountered only a few issues, for example a label peeled off and stuck to a disk turning spindle so it’s necessary to keep an eye on it while it processes. He also programmed error codes for situations like when disks get jammed.