E3 floppy drive - floppy emulator?

[massimo]

Hi,
I am told by my local tech maybe (his guess, based on the infamous "System Error UND" that appears on the display...) I have to replace the floppy drive in my E3 rack.
Route66 wrote me they are out of stock for such drives.
I have been once told the floppy drive in the E3 is the same as in the Emax and Emax2.  Now, I read on their website that the HxC floppy emulator works with the Emax. The E3, however, is not on their list of compatible machines.
Is any tech on this forum able to tell, based on the specs of the SD HxC emulator, if this will work with the E3?

Also (admittedly a silly question...I am no tech whatsoever): The E3 must boot the operating system from the floppy. Should I install the floppy emulator, I must therefore copy the OS on the SD card. How do I perform this? When I put my current floppy disk with the OS in the floppy drive of my home computer, It sees nothing in it. So, how do I copy that OS into the SD card, if I am unable to select/click-and-drag anything from a disk that is seen as "blank" from my computer?

thank you very much
best regards
Massimo

[esynthesist]

It *may* work, but I didn't test it myself yet.
The SD HxC is configurable regarding the DS0/DS1 setting and the type of 34-pins connector which is being used. So from hardware point of view it should be OK.
More important however is whether the disk format of the EIII is supported by the firmware of the SD HxC.
The floppy disks of the EIII are formatted in the same way (tracks, sectors) as the Emax/Emax-II floppy disks. So also here there's no problem.
The only possible problem that I currently can think of, is that the Windows software of the HxC, which you need to put floppy disk images on the SD card, does not support the EIII. Jeff (from the HxC project) seems to have made this software only compatible with Emax .EM1 and .EM2 files, and the HxC software is merging these sound bank files with an Emax OS file itself to construct the full Emax floppy disk image of 800K before saving it on the SD card.
Now, although the EIII disk *format* is the same as the Emax disk format, the EIII *file system layout* on such a disk is different from the Emax one, so this merging process is useless and not compatible with the EIII.

Perhaps Jeff has also foreseen full Emax disk image support besides .EM1 and .EM2 support (I should test this first). If that's the case, the SD HxC will most probably work with the EIII by using it in "Emax" mode.  And if that's not the case, it's probably only a few minutes work for Jeff to adapt the software.

[massimo]

Hi techs here,

I was told the Floppy Drive in the Emax also works with the E3, correct?
Now, I just read on an Emax thread here that a floppy drive in an old Atari Mega (Epson SMD-380) works with the Emax. Shoud it therefore work also with the E3? Saying this because TEAC drives at Route66 are out of stock...

best regards
Massimo

[esynthesist]

I think many drives will work - mine has been replaced too. Next week I can check which one is installed now. I will also try the SD HxC in the EIII next week.

With the latest information I have now, the SD HxC will probably work "out of the box" in the EIII, so even the HxC windows file conversion software is probably able to handle the EIII floppy images.
Jeff from HxC has let me know that we should try to use the "load raw image" option in his software (instead of .EM1 and .EM2 emax files), and use a "sectors per track" value of 10 instead of 9 and a "gap3" of 48 or lower.
But I didn't test it yet.

[massimo]

Any news?
(I miss my E3 - still in the repair shop - so sorely...)


best regards
Massimo

[esynthesist]

I just did some tests: the SD HxC seems indeed to work pretty fine on the Emulator III !

- Booting from "floppy", reading sounds from "floppy" and formatting a "floppy" works 100 pct fine with the SD HxC as floppy emulator.
- Writing soundbanks to "floppy" seems however a bit unstable; the EIII often complains with a "floppy drive failure" error after having written a part of the disk. I had to restart the saving of a bank four times before the EIII could successfully complete a full "floppy disk" write on the SD HxC.

Fortunately saving banks will not be the most popular usage of the HxC; that will most probably be booting the machine. For backup up the OS and calibration settings to the SD card, the write errors may occur too, in that case it also seems just a matter of retrying a few times until it succeeds...
Anyway, if I find time, I will check this issue with Jeff - perhaps it's only a small problem which can easily be fixed or bypassed.

FYI:
- the SD HxC can simply be connected to the original 34 pin floppy ribbon cable and floppy power cable of the EIII
- the jumper of the SD HxC should be set to ID0/DriveA
- in the HxC software the SD settings should have "Generic Shugart" as interface mode before creating .hfe files for the EIII
- the SD card should of course be ready for use in SD HxC (see SD HxC manual: format the card as FAT32 and save a hxcsdfe.cfg file to it)
- saving EIII "floppy disks" (.hfe files) on the SD card can be done with the "load raw image" button in the HxC windows software. Press this button, set the GAP to a number lower than 48 (e.g. 47), set the number of sectors per track to 10 and press the "load image" button to select an existing 800K EIII image (*) from your pc harddisk. Then press the "export" button to save this disk to an .hfe file on your SD card. That's it.

(*) 800K images of existing EIII floppy disks can be created with OmniFlop on a Windows PC with internal floppy drive; an 800K image for a bootable EIII disk (OS 2.42) can be downloaded from http://www.emxp.net, BUT be aware that this image does not necessarily contain the correct calibration settings for *your* particular EIII - see other threads on this forum with remarks by Dr.C about this.

[massimo]

Sounds like great news!

As I mentioned I use my floppy drive only for booting the OS (never to save banks, which I do on my Syqest cartridge), so an HxC SD device is indeed overkill for this, but since I seem to be unable to find a replacement floppy drive, be it Teac or Atari, I guess this is the only viable solution. Then - being the computer hater/old fart that I am - I must figure out (following your tips) how to transfer the v. 2.42 OS (from my current floppy or from your website) to an SD card (must buy some SD card reader/writer I guess). Then voilà, it is hoped... (still am not sure the floppy drive is the "System Error UND" generator with my E3). Going to order a couple of SD HxC emulators (one for the E3 and the other for my DPX-1) this week...

Thank you so much for your precious help!
best regards
Massimo