Using the HxC Floppy Emulator
Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 12:31 pm
A few of us got these from the festival (from http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/) - they couldn't guarantee it would work with the Dragon, but I saw no reason it shouldn't, and indeed, it works just fine. So here's how to use it.
You will need: Dragon with DOS cart. 5V supply for the board. Way of running a Windows application (Wine is fine). SD card (oh, and the images you create are pretty large, so a USB2 reader/writer is probably a good idea - try to avoid having an old GP2X as your only way of accessing SD cards).
The home page for the project is here: http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/. Go to "Download", fetch the HxCFloppyEmulator software and unpack it.
Format an SD card to FAT32.
Run HxCFloppyEmulator.exe. Select "Drive -> SD HxCFE settings file", configure to your taste and click "Save". The default filename of HXCSDFE.CFG is what the device will look for, so accept that. Copy that file to your SD card.
Prepare a raw disk image. This needs to be an image without any headers, so for VDK or JVC images, calculate the image size modulo 256 and trim that many bytes from the beginning of the image. e.g., if the file size is 184332, (184332 % 256) == 12, so delete 12 bytes from the beginning of the file (leaving 184320 bytes which is 40 * 18 * 256).
Still in HxCFloppyEmulator.exe, select "Load Raw image". For a typical DragonDOS disk, you want to set "Number of track" and "Two sides floppy" to the appropriate values and the rest of the options to:
Track type: MFM
Reverse side: leave unticked
tracks ... grouped: leave unticked
GAP3 length: 24
Sector ID start: 1
Sectors size: 256
Interleave: 2 (otherwise it'll be very slow)
Sectors per track: 18
RPM: 300
Bitrate: 250000
Then click "Load RAW file", and select your image. It will load in, and return you to the first menu. Select "Export", give it a name to write to and click "Save. That should be it! Copy that to your SD card, unmount the card and put it in the floppy emulator.
Hook your floppy emulator up to its power source, connect it to your DOS cart and power everything on (probably doing this in the time honoured "devices first, then Dragon" order is a good idea, just in case). You might need to experiment with drive IDs depending on what cable you're using. I'm using a PC cable with a twist, and having Drive A configured to ID3 works for me.
Use the buttons on the board to select Drive A, then pick your image file and try accessing it. Tada! If not tada then perhaps post here and we can (hopefully) sort out why.
You will need: Dragon with DOS cart. 5V supply for the board. Way of running a Windows application (Wine is fine). SD card (oh, and the images you create are pretty large, so a USB2 reader/writer is probably a good idea - try to avoid having an old GP2X as your only way of accessing SD cards).
The home page for the project is here: http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/. Go to "Download", fetch the HxCFloppyEmulator software and unpack it.
Format an SD card to FAT32.
Run HxCFloppyEmulator.exe. Select "Drive -> SD HxCFE settings file", configure to your taste and click "Save". The default filename of HXCSDFE.CFG is what the device will look for, so accept that. Copy that file to your SD card.
Prepare a raw disk image. This needs to be an image without any headers, so for VDK or JVC images, calculate the image size modulo 256 and trim that many bytes from the beginning of the image. e.g., if the file size is 184332, (184332 % 256) == 12, so delete 12 bytes from the beginning of the file (leaving 184320 bytes which is 40 * 18 * 256).
Still in HxCFloppyEmulator.exe, select "Load Raw image". For a typical DragonDOS disk, you want to set "Number of track" and "Two sides floppy" to the appropriate values and the rest of the options to:
Track type: MFM
Reverse side: leave unticked
tracks ... grouped: leave unticked
GAP3 length: 24
Sector ID start: 1
Sectors size: 256
Interleave: 2 (otherwise it'll be very slow)
Sectors per track: 18
RPM: 300
Bitrate: 250000
Then click "Load RAW file", and select your image. It will load in, and return you to the first menu. Select "Export", give it a name to write to and click "Save. That should be it! Copy that to your SD card, unmount the card and put it in the floppy emulator.
Hook your floppy emulator up to its power source, connect it to your DOS cart and power everything on (probably doing this in the time honoured "devices first, then Dragon" order is a good idea, just in case). You might need to experiment with drive IDs depending on what cable you're using. I'm using a PC cable with a twist, and having Drive A configured to ID3 works for me.
Use the buttons on the board to select Drive A, then pick your image file and try accessing it. Tada! If not tada then perhaps post here and we can (hopefully) sort out why.