I'm currently in the process of dumping all my old Amiga floppies too. If your basement was relatively not too humid or hot, the disks should all still be readable.

There are two popular USB floppy drive controllers for archiving Amiga disks: KryoFlux and Greaseweazle. You need a standard disk reader to use along (not a USB one).

The KryoFlux is a bit more expensive but can create complete archival level images (called KryoFlux stream). Otherwise both devices will produce floppy images (ADF) that can be used in any Amiga emulator or written back to floppy to use on a real Amiga.

Here's an overview of the available tools, some of them are pretty old, you can't go wrong with the two I listed above: https://www.amigaforever.com/kb/13-118

The Greaseweazle can directly read/write KyroFlux stream files as well. The KryoFlux files are my preferred "archival grade" backup format because they also store multiple reads of the disk tracks in each file to get a consensus on a "good" read.

You can easily convert to other formats with the HxC Floppy Software.

Just buy a simple USB floppy drive for 15 bucks online. You can even connect it straight to the VM if you feel like it.

A USB floppy drive won't read Amiga disks.

You might like this:

https://amiga.robsmithdev.co.uk

That looks great, I was not aware this existed.

However, considering you have to build your own custom Arduino board or be on the waiting list to buy one, it's a bit more complicated than "Just buy a simple USB floppy drive for 15 bucks online".

Better yet, GreaseWeazle[0].

0. https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/

Crazy to think that a floppy drive used to be a big expense back then. Well, at least for my family. Now you can get a big mac meal for the price of a floppy drive.

(I'm the video author)

For the Amiga you have some really good options, I would personally recommend getting a standard PC 3.5in drive and a GreaseWeazle floppy controller which adapts it to USB with extreme low level control for reading disks.

This will also allow the WinUAE Amiga emulator to directly read the disks in the drive!

I can't speak to the Amiga, but my dad recently went through a box of 3.5s from the 90s, and they were all perfectly readable. I've got some 5.25s my C64 can read just fine, too (I could even play HHGttG if I wanted to wait a minute per command to learn I died an hour ago without realizing it).

I'm using daily 30 to 35 year-old floppies. They're almost certainly fine unless you kept them in really bad conditions.

Most likely readable.

Note that while GreaseWeazle is an awesome project, I have had more luck reading floppies with the actual Amiga.

I suspect it would help to use a DD FDD like the one the Amiga has rather than an HD one.