By nogginj
Tue Apr 05, 2011 6:44 am
Howdy
So a lot of people have been taking notice to this thing, so i thought I'd share my experience with it.
Long story short, it's an sd card reader that will replace almost ANY older disk drive. Yes, even on your true old school SP's, EPS's, and Mirages. Will also work perfect with classic MPC's such as MPC 60, MPC 3000, MPC 2000, and S-series samplers.
What is it?
The HxC floppy Emulator is a device that you plug in where your floppy drive goes. It emulates the floppy drive, + thousands of disk images, in order to 'trick' your sampler into thinking that you have a floppy loaded up.
You store floppies as 'images' on an SD card, and you use three physical buttons to select, load, and unload these images into the virtual drive, running on the emulator.
What is it not?
This is NOT the same as most people around here mod their MPC 2000's and XL's to take an ATAPI or SCSI card reader. With those, you can usually use the card as is, and use one or many gigs at one time, like a really big floppy.
This floppy emulator still has to fake the sampler into thinking there are 'disks' loaded up...so data is still broken up into 1.4mb, 800k, or whatever size chunks. You still have to 'load' disks...the difference is your 'disks' are on the SD card.
So why is it good?
It's good because it works well in place of almost ANY floppy drive. Samplers have a tendency to have very strict requirements as to the type of drives they will accept...just ask anyone who has tried to replace their floppy with one they found at the thrift store... you cannot just put any disk drive in any sampler and expect it to work.
Since the HxC is an emulator, it can be re-configured fairly easily in software to mimic almost any drive ever made.
Also, since you are using an SD card, usually gigs in size, to replace floppies, usually 800-1000k in size, you can put THOUSANDS of floppy images on one card. You can essentially convert your entire disk library to reside on one SD card.
You also no longer have to worry about finding new disks, because you can just create a new image on the card.
Finally, backing up your data is pretty simple since you can load the SD card into your pc, and drag and drop your disk images to anywhere you like to back up.
So why is it bad?
It's bad because it is REALLY GOOD at emulating a floppy drive...this means it's just as slow as your floppies were (even has a speaker to emulate the 'click...click...' of loading), and, as mentioned earlier, you have to keep your data in floppy size chunks. However, most samplers are ok with this and have the ability to split large files over many disks.
You still have to 'load' and 'eject' floppy images...just as if it were a real drive. All this takes is one button press, though.
It's not going to be perfect for everyone...if you have the ability to add a modern, atapi or scsi card reader, I'd say that is the way to go. Still, a lot of samplers do not have support for that, and in those cases, or in cases where you don't have SCSI, this thing is a life saver.
Case in point, I used it recently to upgrade my EPS classic (thanks Karl, thanks Laura). The disks I have were starting to fail, and finding 800k, DSDD disks is not as easy or cheap as you'd hope. This thing installed very easily, I simply replaced the old floppy drive...I did do some set up to convert my disks to images, but to simply replace the old drive and use it, it worked the first time I turned it on.
Here is a video I made while installing it into my EPS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM2o0W5Y ... r_embedded
Again, this should work in just about ANY SAMPLER with the same ease.
You will need to get on the computer to generate a couple 'blank' disk images...the easiest way is to use an image of a blank, formatted disk...but you can also just create the disk image correctly with the hxc software, and then 'format' that via the sampler.
Currently, you need to create a lot of these blank images to save on...you cannot generate a new blank disk directly from the unit. That is the biggest drawback I have found...
A note on disk images:
I wanted to convert the old disks I had to HxC image format, and that did take some work to do properly.
First of all, you need a computer hooked up to a drive to read your images. USB drives will usually not work.
You read the disk into 'raw' format via OmniDisk.
You then load those images in the HxC software using "Load Raw".
For 819200 byte EPS disk images, use these parameters:
Sector per track = 10
Sector ID start = 0
GAP3 length = 40
At that point, you'll have images of your floppies which you can flip through on the emulator.
One final note, this is not in an enclosure or anything, so it either hangs loose from the floppy cable or you can build your own case for it. I plan on mounting mine inside an empty disk drive like this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm7avjMS ... re=related
The HxC project page is here: http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/
And can be purchased here: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0617542150
Have fun salvaging dead or dying gear.
EDIT: I've done a more serious modification to the EPS to integrate the HxC unit into the sampler body.
I had to solder a ribbon cable to the LCD so I could move it away from the HxC.
The buttons are easy enough to relocate, I just soldered wires to the underside of the board where the buttons where already soldered in. Then I brought the LCD and the buttons out to the front where the floppy drive used to sit. I attached them to a thin plastic faceplate.
The HxC itself sits upside inside an old tape case, with the ribbon cables (for floppy and now for LCD) passing through a hole I cut in the back of the EPS disk holder above the old floppy drive.
So a lot of people have been taking notice to this thing, so i thought I'd share my experience with it.
Long story short, it's an sd card reader that will replace almost ANY older disk drive. Yes, even on your true old school SP's, EPS's, and Mirages. Will also work perfect with classic MPC's such as MPC 60, MPC 3000, MPC 2000, and S-series samplers.
What is it?
The HxC floppy Emulator is a device that you plug in where your floppy drive goes. It emulates the floppy drive, + thousands of disk images, in order to 'trick' your sampler into thinking that you have a floppy loaded up.
You store floppies as 'images' on an SD card, and you use three physical buttons to select, load, and unload these images into the virtual drive, running on the emulator.
What is it not?
This is NOT the same as most people around here mod their MPC 2000's and XL's to take an ATAPI or SCSI card reader. With those, you can usually use the card as is, and use one or many gigs at one time, like a really big floppy.
This floppy emulator still has to fake the sampler into thinking there are 'disks' loaded up...so data is still broken up into 1.4mb, 800k, or whatever size chunks. You still have to 'load' disks...the difference is your 'disks' are on the SD card.
So why is it good?
It's good because it works well in place of almost ANY floppy drive. Samplers have a tendency to have very strict requirements as to the type of drives they will accept...just ask anyone who has tried to replace their floppy with one they found at the thrift store... you cannot just put any disk drive in any sampler and expect it to work.
Since the HxC is an emulator, it can be re-configured fairly easily in software to mimic almost any drive ever made.
Also, since you are using an SD card, usually gigs in size, to replace floppies, usually 800-1000k in size, you can put THOUSANDS of floppy images on one card. You can essentially convert your entire disk library to reside on one SD card.
You also no longer have to worry about finding new disks, because you can just create a new image on the card.
Finally, backing up your data is pretty simple since you can load the SD card into your pc, and drag and drop your disk images to anywhere you like to back up.
So why is it bad?
It's bad because it is REALLY GOOD at emulating a floppy drive...this means it's just as slow as your floppies were (even has a speaker to emulate the 'click...click...' of loading), and, as mentioned earlier, you have to keep your data in floppy size chunks. However, most samplers are ok with this and have the ability to split large files over many disks.
You still have to 'load' and 'eject' floppy images...just as if it were a real drive. All this takes is one button press, though.
It's not going to be perfect for everyone...if you have the ability to add a modern, atapi or scsi card reader, I'd say that is the way to go. Still, a lot of samplers do not have support for that, and in those cases, or in cases where you don't have SCSI, this thing is a life saver.
Case in point, I used it recently to upgrade my EPS classic (thanks Karl, thanks Laura). The disks I have were starting to fail, and finding 800k, DSDD disks is not as easy or cheap as you'd hope. This thing installed very easily, I simply replaced the old floppy drive...I did do some set up to convert my disks to images, but to simply replace the old drive and use it, it worked the first time I turned it on.
Here is a video I made while installing it into my EPS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM2o0W5Y ... r_embedded
Again, this should work in just about ANY SAMPLER with the same ease.
You will need to get on the computer to generate a couple 'blank' disk images...the easiest way is to use an image of a blank, formatted disk...but you can also just create the disk image correctly with the hxc software, and then 'format' that via the sampler.
Currently, you need to create a lot of these blank images to save on...you cannot generate a new blank disk directly from the unit. That is the biggest drawback I have found...
A note on disk images:
I wanted to convert the old disks I had to HxC image format, and that did take some work to do properly.
First of all, you need a computer hooked up to a drive to read your images. USB drives will usually not work.
You read the disk into 'raw' format via OmniDisk.
You then load those images in the HxC software using "Load Raw".
For 819200 byte EPS disk images, use these parameters:
Sector per track = 10
Sector ID start = 0
GAP3 length = 40
At that point, you'll have images of your floppies which you can flip through on the emulator.
One final note, this is not in an enclosure or anything, so it either hangs loose from the floppy cable or you can build your own case for it. I plan on mounting mine inside an empty disk drive like this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm7avjMS ... re=related
The HxC project page is here: http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/
And can be purchased here: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0617542150
Have fun salvaging dead or dying gear.
EDIT: I've done a more serious modification to the EPS to integrate the HxC unit into the sampler body.
I had to solder a ribbon cable to the LCD so I could move it away from the HxC.
The buttons are easy enough to relocate, I just soldered wires to the underside of the board where the buttons where already soldered in. Then I brought the LCD and the buttons out to the front where the floppy drive used to sit. I attached them to a thin plastic faceplate.
The HxC itself sits upside inside an old tape case, with the ribbon cables (for floppy and now for LCD) passing through a hole I cut in the back of the EPS disk holder above the old floppy drive.
Last edited by nogginj on Thu Aug 18, 2011 2:18 pm, edited 3 times in total.
There is no 'one for the sp1200'...there is only one model. It is basically a little circuit board with a small lcd and 3 buttons on it. Way smaller than a floppy (it will fit in a floppy case), so you must be talking about something different.