The Adafruit Floppy FeatherWing lets you read and write 3.5-inch or 5.25-inch floppy disks using a Feather microcontroller. It connects to standard 34-pin IDC floppy drives and includes built-in level shifting between 3.3 V Feather logic and the 5 V signals that floppy drives require.

Floppy drives stream raw bit transitions at high speed, so a fast microcontroller with large SRAM and DMA capability is needed. This FeatherWing is currently supported with the Feather M4 and Feather RP2040 only — ESP32, ATmega, nRF52, and other platforms have not been ported.

Key Features

• 34-Pin IDC Connector – Pre-attached 2×17 header for standard floppy drive cables
• 5 V Level Shifting – On-board boost converter provides 5 V logic output and shifts incoming signals to 3.3 V
• Write Disable Switch – Physically prevents accidental writes, ideal for archiving use cases
• 3.5-inch and 5.25-inch Drive Support – Works with both form factors

Supported Use Cases

• Data Archiving – Read raw bit patterns from floppy disks for preservation; compatible with Greaseweazle and FluxEngine command-line tools running on your computer
• FAT Disk Read/Write – Read and write FAT-formatted floppy disks from Arduino or CircuitPython, or via USB connection to a computer
• Floppy Music – Drive stepper motors for musical sequencing projects

Ideal For

• Floppy disk data archiving and preservation
• Retro computing projects
• Interfacing modern microcontrollers with legacy storage

Package Contents

• 1× Floppy FeatherWing with 34-pin IDC connector and level shifting circuitry
• Pin headers for Feather connection (unsoldered — assembly required)