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 disk drives have been in the process of phasing out of production, but replacing older, industrial machinery and working systems with newer storage technology is often more expensive that the floppy drive upgrade option.