HxC floppy emulator and Cumana controller

[langph]

I have bought an HxC floppy emulator to replace an 'old' floppy drive. I use a flat cable connected to a cumana controller and I adjusted the old floppy drive to work as master not as slave (from memory).

Now I want to use the HXC instead of the floppy drive. Can anyone please inform me how can I connect this to the HXC, what jumper settings to use, what config settings to use and how to create a compatible floppy image? Can I use the existing (untwisted) flat cable?

Thanks in advance,

Philip.

[RWAP]

Ah well, if you had purchased the HxC emulator from me, or been a member of Quanta, you would have access to my guide on using it with the QL....

Actually, drop me a pm with your email address and I will send the guide I wrote - if I think on I will email the guide to Dilwyn to add to the Sinclair QL Homepage

[RWAP]

The article on using a HxC Floppy Drive emulator with the QL now appears on the Sinclair QL Homepage - http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/docs/manuals/index.html

Direct link is: http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/docs/manuals/Si ... rticle.pdf

Thanks Dilwyn

[Dave]

Thank you Rich for publishing this guide - a selfless contribution to the community as always

[schombi]

Thanks for the PDF!

[langph]

Rich, Thanks for posting the guide.

Got it working, the problem was mostly the flat cable that is reversed, by cutting the lug with a stanley knife, the problem is resoved.

I also got some images working. .flp images can be read as raw images and can thus be directly transfered to HFE format with HxCFloppyEmulator for windows or osx. I tried discover.flp, and this works.

An empty HFE image in QDOS format can be generated by selecting an empty DOS 720k DD HFE image (downloadable from http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/ ) and formatting it from the QL.

If you convert this back to a raw image using HxCFloppyEmulator, it than can be filled with files with the aid of q-emulator. Then transfer back with HxCFloppyEmulator to HFE and you got a working image in the QL.

It is an elegant generic solution for retro-computers, can be used with several systems, not restricted the QL.

Thanks,

Philip.

[Dave]

These guys need some competition: their prices are rather high.

[RWAP]

They are cheap compared to some of the floppy disk emulators out there!

[Dave]

I counted $9 of components there. £6.

Good mark-up.

[RWAP]

I counted $9 of components there. £6.

Good mark-up.

Dave - comments like that will not help your own hardware ventures if people want to judge your prices against the cost of components you can see!

Maybe - although you can't base prices JUST on the cost of components. There are of course initial design costs and the costs of producing prototype PCBs, and the PCBs / minium order requirements for components.

The designer spends a lot of time improving the software and supporting users and new equipment which needs access to floppy disk drives. The designer deserves some recompense for this - or else I am sure he would have turned his back on the project long ago....