HxC Floppy Emulator - SD Card replacement for disk drives

the speaker for the noises is brilliant. hobbyist nerd DIY engineering at its finest

mr_debauch wrote:who is gonna bite the bullet and test one of these on their 60?

I just ordered two replacement floppy drives so it won't be me.

But I'd try it at some point, looks like a great piece of work for only £75.

high hat wrote:the speaker for the noises is brilliant. hobbyist nerd DIY engineering at its finest

Heh. I'd disable that straight away.

jimmie wrote:

high hat wrote:the speaker for the noises is brilliant. hobbyist nerd DIY engineering at its finest

Heh. I'd disable that straight away.

it's like the 1-foot tail wing on a riced out honda. adds ten horsepower !

(it's totally unnecessary, and most people probably WILL disable it. but the guy that designed it thought it was cool, and so it's there. any musician should be able to relate!)

From experience, the speaker with the floppy sounds is actually not bad...you can adjust the volume on it, and it's kind of a reassuring 'blip blip blip' that you can hear in the background while you do something else, just reminding you that your data is being loaded.

For the record there is also a visual readout that counts the number of sectors loaded, so you would still have feedback if you turn the sound off.

As I mentioned earlier, the developer just added a new feature where you can swap images by removing and re-inserting the sd card...just like taking out a disk and putting the next one in. I think that is hilarious and also somewhat useful as it means you could in theory use the device without the buttons. Personally, I think that would get cumbersome if you weren't always loading the same sequence of disks, but I'm sure it will help somebody.

This will work in an MPC 60. I'm curious how much you paid for two working drives clint?

Where this really helped me wasn't so much the drive but the disks...DSDD are harder to find and that's what the EPS wanted. Now i've got well over 2000 already formatted disks on an sd card.

nogginj wrote:Where this really helped me wasn't so much the drive but the disks...DSDD are harder to find and that's what the EPS wanted. Now i've got well over 2000 already formatted disks on an sd card.

DS/dd disks are not hard to find. Stop spreading misinformation


two suppliers right here
http://www.oldsoftware.com/floppy_disks.html

http://floppydisk.com/

nogginj wrote:DSDD are harder to find and that's what the EPS wanted. Now i've got well over 2000 already formatted disks on an sd card.

yeah well normal DSHD disks and DSDD disks are internally identical... the only difference is the hole on the side which you put some tape on and it is then set in DSDD mode.

I have piles of taped disks that work in the 60 with no issue at all.

mr_debauch wrote:

nogginj wrote:DSDD are harder to find and that's what the EPS wanted. Now i've got well over 2000 already formatted disks on an sd card.

yeah well normal DSHD disks and DSDD disks are internally identical... the only difference is the hole on the side which you put some tape on and it is then set in DSDD mode.

I have piles of taped disks that work in the 60 with no issue at all.

my 60 takes hd disks without taping the hole.

also if you were to use the emulator on the 60 wouldn't you need different disk images for os 3 than 2?

Lord Toranaga wrote:DS/dd disks are not hard to find. Stop spreading misinformation

Damn dude that's hardly misinformation...that's my experience, that they arent easy to find. Everything i find at that thrift stores is DSHD.
Yea I found them on fleabay but I don't like just running to the internet with my credit card every time I have a problem.

Thanks for the links, though, somebody might find them useful.

mr_debauch wrote:ll normal DSHD disks and DSDD disks are internally identical... the only difference is the hole on the side which you put some tape on and it is then set in DSDD mode.
I have piles of taped disks that work in the 60 with no issue at all.

That's great but this is not true in my EPS. Any HD disks I used would write maybe once but then wouldn't load properly again. I had to use DSDD for any operations I wanted to do. This is a known issue regarding differences between DD and HD.
Check this out:
http://www.ensoniqsamplers.com/epsasr/018.html

Grenozh wrote:also if you were to use the emulator on the 60 wouldn't you need different disk images for os 3 than 2?

I'm not really sure, but I don't really understand the question.

Put it this way, an image behaves EXACTLY like a physical disk. You can have an OS 3 disk sitting alongside an OS 2 disk and load them up, in the proper way, however you want.

Does that help clarify?

I don't own a 60 so yea, I really don't understand the question.
Thanks though...if you clarify how it works I bet I can answer, but keep in mind what I said above, an image behaves exactly like a disk, without the physical loading and unloading. Further, the emulator is just like a floppy drive, you can put any 'disk' into it, but which disks work will depend on the disk (image) and the host machine.

And the 60 must have a better drive than the EPS because they definitely don't work as well with HD disks.
Nice to know, thanks yall.

nogginj wrote:

Grenozh wrote:also if you were to use the emulator on the 60 wouldn't you need different disk images for os 3 than 2?

I'm not really sure, but I don't really understand the question.

Put it this way, an image behaves EXACTLY like a physical disk. You can have an OS 3 disk sitting alongside an OS 2 disk and load them up, in the proper way, however you want.

Does that help clarify?

I don't own a 60 so yea, I really don't understand the question.
Thanks though...if you clarify how it works I bet I can answer, but keep in mind what I said above, an image behaves exactly like a disk, without the physical loading and unloading. Further, the emulator is just like a floppy drive, you can put any 'disk' into it, but which disks work will depend on the disk (image) and the host machine.

And the 60 must have a better drive than the EPS because they definitely don't work as well with HD disks.
Nice to know, thanks yall.

that could be the case, I know a guy who uses DSHD disks in his eps and it does work, however he also suggests important projects be backed up using real DSDD disks as well because of the potential corruption issue.... however... who cares since floppies should either be backed up regularly or the project should be recorded anyways since they are a very risky unstable format anyways.

just saying, you got a cheap option for the time being.

mr_debauch wrote:....since they are a very risky unstable format anyways.

I don't have to worry about that anymore.

HxC made my sampler usable (lack of DD disks) and more reliable (one sd card vs thousands of floppies).

ps. backing up images to a computer is a simple drag-and-drop praise jesus

nogginj wrote:

mr_debauch wrote:....since they are a very risky unstable format anyways.

I don't have to worry about that anymore.

HxC made my sampler usable (lack of DD disks) and more reliable (one sd card vs thousands of floppies).

ps. backing up images to a computer is a simple drag-and-drop praise jesus

that is a smart idea though for real. I am surprised we are only seeing usable ones for these kinds of applications now.

They have had the C64 one for quite some time.


I wonder if this will work for booting an OS in say the 2000 or maybe OS4 on the s900?

It's JUST A FLOPPY DRIVE, keep that in mind since I don't know all the answers to these particulars.

If it can be booted from a disk, it can be booted from a disk image on the emulator.

So if all it takes is a disk to boot the 2000 or s900, then yes, it will work.

I have to load a boot disk in my EPS and it works wonderfully for that. I actually hacked it a bit so that it auto-loads the boot disk on powerup.

nogginj wrote:It's JUST A FLOPPY DRIVE, keep that in mind since I don't know all the answers to these particulars.

If it can be booted from a disk, it can be booted from a disk image on the emulator.

So if all it takes is a disk to boot the 2000 or s900, then yes, it will work.

I have to load a boot disk in my EPS and it works wonderfully for that. I actually hacked it a bit so that it auto-loads the boot disk on powerup.

it is just a floppy drive which is true... however we also know about emulators.... okay I admit I dont know about this particular one but emulators in general often have a draw back of some sort or they aren't perfect.

but if it works that well in a more picky machine then I am confident it would be made to work in something like our mpcs. This may be a great cost cutting alternative to the 8 meg f-rom chip expansion for the 2000 classic as well.

It would be cool if the screen was on the front of some sort of 3.5" sized unit with a card slot and buttons rather then just raw pcb.