alright so i'm sure there is some reason why this won't work with the e2... go ahead dash all our hopes and dreams
Hello all.... Having owned an EII+ for several weeks and pulled it apart along with reading the service manual I'm starting to see why the EII is a particularly difficult disk format to read in a modern PC. The problem is that rather unusually the EII does NOT have a disk controller - it's floppy disk support is carried out by a bunch of off the shelf discrete ICs and some clever firmware. Most devices designed in the 80s and 90s used disk controllers such as the Intel 8271 and the WD1770 and WD1772 - these generally lead to similar low level formats. Unfortunately since the EII's format is purely determined in firmware via a PIO and CTC it's unlikely to be similar to either of these.
There is just a chance that HxC could be coded to work with these disks but it's not entirely likely.
This is why I still intend to plough on with my EMXfer project giving us all USB sample transfer via the "Computer Interface" for Windows in Sound Designer format for EII via EMXP. This interface runs at 50Kbytes / second and hence will be much quicker than midi sample dump. The project is still underway but progress has slowed a little. The first revision of the hardware has been designed but needs to be manufactured and then some firmware written.
The good news is that it's looking increasingly possible we will be granted permission to distribute a large chunk of the official sample libraries (ie. factory and OMI disks 1&2 but not currently disk #3) in SD format.
I really hope to have a production ready interface available by the end of the year.
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