Floppy drive upgrade
A common floppy drive upgrade for older embroidery machines is a floppy disk emulator. This is a device that emulates a mechanical floppy disk drive with a solid state or network storage device and is fully compatible with the drive it replaces.
History
Embroidery machines built from the 1970s until the mid 2000s often used a floppy disk drive to input data to the machine. When compared to newer storage technologies, floppy disks are fragile and prone to dysfunction. An alternative is a floppy drive hardware upgrade in which a floppy disk emulator is used to replace the older disk-based medium with a newer storage medium, typically a USB flash thumb drive.
Floppy disks and floppy drives are gradually going out of production and replacement of malfunctioning drives, and the systems hosting them, is becoming increasingly difficult.