Wondering if anyone can recommend a product that is known to work.

I tried one of those USB types, some years ago but it was flakey as heck.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "upgrading", but are you familiar with this?:
https://www.gotekemulator.com/Gotek-Floppy-Drive-to-USB-Emulator.html

These are available with modified firmware and pinout to fit many systems. For example, there are also modified firmwares for the Amiga (so that the device can emulate 880kB and 1760kB Amiga drives and floppy disks).

If you search on Google, you might find DIY projects on GitHub. I vaguely remember something about the Pico as well...

Greetings.

The Gotek is generally considered to be very reliable once it's set up right. Of course, the settings have to be correct for the disk controller in the machine.

Gotek:

Depends on the system. I tried a Gotek in a HP54622D scope, and that was not succesfull, since it could not save screenshots as BMP, only as TIF.
And they did not save as a file on the USB, but packed inside an .img file.

At that time Windows could not open the .img (a floppy image). Linux could. But it was so clumbersome that I purchased a second hand floppy drive, and a USB floppy disk to attach to the PC.

Volhout

P.S. and I almost fried the scope since there was 12V on the 26 pin cable from the scope. And 5V logic does not like 12V.

  Volhout said  

Gotek:

Depends on the system. I tried a Gotek in a HP54622D scope, and that was not succesfull, since it could not save screenshots as BMP, only as TIF.
And they did not save as a file on the USB, but packed inside an .img file.

At that time Windows could not open the .img (a floppy image). Linux could. But it was so clumbersome that I purchased a second hand floppy drive, and a USB floppy disk to attach to the PC.

Volhout

Yes, the Gotek only stores sector data (decoded MFM bitstreams) in image files tailored to the specific system. It knows nothing about the actual file system – that would be asking too much, I think. But reading these images on PCs shouldn't be a problem anymore – 7-Zip, for example, can directly process DOS FAT disk images, and there are plenty of tools for Amiga ADF files. I think even CP/M formats shouldn't be an issue anymore?

  Volhout said  

P.S. and I almost fried the scope since there was 12V on the 26 pin cable from the scope. And 5V logic does not like 12V.

Yes, you should definitely check the pinouts carefully beforehand to make sure they match. Something can easily go up in flames if something is completely incompatible.  

There were countless variations of floppy drives. The original Shugart bus with DS via jumpers, IBM PC drives (with a modified drive select implemented via a cable with reversed DS signals), and special versions. That's probably why Gotek offers special versions, for example, for Yamaha keyboards.

Bfwolf