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Offline Jeff_HxC

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #14 on: March 09, 2009, 11:25:31 AM »
Quote

alexh wrote:
This project is very old. It's been "finished" for several years.

The developer is a very good engineer and the product reportadly works well, however the PCB design is rather clunky.

If only the PCB had been designed to be the same form factor as an FDD it could have gone inside the computer instead of the FDD!

If the USB connector had been a mini-USB connector the cable could have been inserted through the hole in the computer case left for the floppy disk.


Yes but the pcb space cost a lot...
The sdcard floppy emulator used the floppy drive form factor, but i need to reduce it to be viable.

EDIT : Mounting holes of the USB Floppy Emulator Rev C are compatible with the floppy drive form factor.
 

Offline Quixote

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #15 on: March 09, 2009, 05:17:33 PM »
;-) Now that's impressive!  This looks to be very useful.

:-? Can it also be made to emulate high density floppies, or just double density?  Can one boot the Amiga from this?
 

Offline Iggy_Drougge

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #16 on: March 10, 2009, 03:33:02 AM »
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XDelusion wrote:
Who doesn't have a PC anymore?

Those of us who have a Mac.
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Offline PeterSieg

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #17 on: March 11, 2009, 02:11:08 PM »
Hi all.

So finally you don't have to register at a german c64 forum to get access to me ;-)

BTW, I think I am a registered amiga.org user since a couple of month already.. ;-)

Some 'historical' informations first. I had the problem, that more and more floppy disk stopped working on my amigas.. allso some disk drives had problems.. this could be overcome with modifying pc drives.. however, I seeked out for some kind of drive replacement.. From the app. 5-6 projects I found and evaluated, the hxc usb project from Jeff was finally selected, because all is open source and firmware as well as pcb layouts were availabe.. and the forum/web site was still active.. My only problem was/is the french language ;-) But Jeff is and was very helpful in every aspect!
I had a lot of respect to solder
the FT245 in the TSOP package at the first units.. but after all it is not a problem anymore ;-)

So when I did the first batch of 20 black units, I never expected so much and ONLY positive feedback!

Since I have such units, I have never used a floppy drive nor disk ever after that.. (but I only need reading!).

Right now, after 45 black units from me, 20 red ones from CrazyIcecap, 20 blue ones from me again, I do have now only a few units left off me latest 20 white units..

So more then 100 units/sets have been made and send to: Japan, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, USA...

So far, all are quite happy with it.

Concerning the form factor, 2 holes are fitting right to replace a original disk drive.. so I have one sitting in an external floppy case for an amiga..

So If you want a unit, only a few are available. Price is
80€ + 10€ shipping with registered mail to the US.
The material price tag is already quite hight (20€ cpld, 5€ FT245, other parts 10€) and I still need app. 2-3h for soldering and testing with my a600..

Just let me know at: peter (dot) sieg1 (at) gmx.de

Have fun,
Peter
 

Offline sim085

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #18 on: March 11, 2009, 04:25:49 PM »
Just out of curiosity ... so this allows someone to have USB support without the need for an 030 Accelerator Card?
 

Offline Claw22000

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #19 on: March 11, 2009, 07:11:08 PM »
no this allows you to plug in your Amiga to a PC and send ADF files to a Amiga FD Emulator and never need a real floppy again!

I so wanna get one but don't have a lot of money.  About to go check transfer rates.

Claw
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Offline Hessu

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #20 on: March 12, 2009, 10:11:06 PM »
I have now ordered one from Peter :) I've had enough about those damned read/write errors :)
 

Offline Claw22000

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #21 on: March 13, 2009, 07:41:30 AM »
I only wish I had the money.  I need this and a blizzard 1230.  sigh.  Hopefully they will make more of these.

Claw
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CD32/SX1/30GigHD/2MBChip/ClassicWBv26w/3.1OS/SX1 isn\'t allowing fast ram :(
 

Offline Speelgoedmannetje

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #22 on: March 13, 2009, 10:24:43 AM »
Quote

sim085 wrote:
Just out of curiosity ... so this allows someone to have USB support without the need for an 030 Accelerator Card?
No, it uses the floppy port so it can't do anything but access 880kb of data.
And the canary said: \'chirp\'
 

Offline zektor

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #23 on: March 13, 2009, 06:32:55 PM »
This is exactly what I have been waiting for. I ordered one almost immediately after viewing this thread. This is WELL worth the money. According to the site, seems to work with many other devices as well. Awesome!
 

Offline zektor

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #24 on: March 25, 2009, 03:34:05 AM »
Time to bump this up since mine had arrived and I figured I'd give a small review as to how it is and how it operates:

The board is about the size of a 3 1/2 inch floppy. Very sturdy and well designed, and contains four LED indicator lights so that you can tell what is happening and when (mounting disks, loading, power..etc)

The install was pretty straightforward. Plug it in USB, install the drivers and run the software. What I have tested hookup wise thus far:

Plugged it directly into the internal Amiga 500 Floppy port using a standard floppy cable - Works of course as DF0:

Plugged it into the innards of an Amiga 1010 floppy drive and then plugged that into the Amiga 500 external floppy port - Works as DF1:

Plugged it into DF0:, mounted an ADF image of "XCopy", booted in, then mounted a random game ADF, and copied to a REAL disk on DF1:. Not that I plan on ever using that feature again, but regardless it worked perfectly.


As for loading disk images, it works perfectly. Every single disk image I have tried (that is Amiga 500 compatible of course) has worked. I did run into a slight snag in which I could not play multi disk games because the emulator did not seem to poll the second disk when mounted, but that was just a setting that needed to be changed. After that, everything worked great. I have tested dozens of games and demos thus far, and have not hit a single snag.


For those concerned about speed, there is no speed increase with the emulator. It loads in pretty much the exact same time it would take to load a real disk. I do not consider this a drawback however, because I think that if it did not mimic a real floppy drive in this respect I could be looking at some incompatibilities.

Where all seems to be perfect there is one tiny drawback, and that is NO write support, and this is a hardware limitation. In other words, ADF's mounted are read only through the emulator. This would mean you could not save your high scores on games that would take advantage of that. Although, there were certain games that I do remember that required the actual disk to be un-write protected to function correctly (Hoyle, Tetris) and these worked just fine without giving an error....so the emulator is doing something here to bypass that, and it is a good thing.


Bottom line is that this device is incredible. Can I recommend it? Absolutely! No longer having to shuffle disks is a great thing. It has successfully run image counterparts of each and every single original Amiga disk I own and then some. With literally thousands of disk images out there and the little time I have has using the device, it is hard to say exactly what the compatibility rate is. I can say again however that I have not come across an image that did not work, so my guess is that it is quite high :)In fact, I love it so much I purchased ANOTHER one for my brother, who loves the Amiga almost as much as I do! :)

The only real problem with this is probably the limited availability!



 

Offline alexh

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #25 on: March 25, 2009, 09:27:15 AM »
Quote

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
it uses the floppy port so it can't do anything but access 880kb of data.

I dunno if that is strictly true. I would imagine you could go beyond 880Kbytes if you wanted to.
 

Offline Speelgoedmannetje

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #26 on: March 25, 2009, 12:00:58 PM »
Quote

alexh wrote:
Quote

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
it uses the floppy port so it can't do anything but access 880kb of data.

I dunno if that is strictly true. I would imagine you could go beyond 880Kbytes if you wanted to.
What I wanted to say actually is that this device is subject to floppy drive controller limitations.
Though, to think of it, the Amiga floppy drive controller is pretty flexible. Still, it's surely no USB port equivalent.
And the canary said: \'chirp\'
 

Offline bloodline

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #27 on: March 25, 2009, 12:06:40 PM »
I imagine almost all limits are due to the trackdisk.device! It would be a simple task to rewrite it if need be :-)

Offline PeterSieg

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #28 on: March 26, 2009, 09:21:41 AM »
Hi all.

Just for your information. I have ordered two more cpld's to complete the last 2 remaining HxC USB floppy emulators..

So in a few days, this 2 ones are available, since the boards
are already assembled and tested, just missing the flashed cpld's..

I am not planning to make another batch, after these units
are gone..

Thanks, Peter
 

Offline whiteb

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Re: USB vintage floppy emulator
« Reply #29 from previous page: March 26, 2009, 10:29:33 AM »
Quote

PeterSieg wrote:
Hi all.

Just for your information. I have ordered two more cpld's to complete the last 2 remaining HxC USB floppy emulators..

So in a few days, this 2 ones are available, since the boards
are already assembled and tested, just missing the flashed cpld's..

I am not planning to make another batch, after these units
are gone..

Thanks, Peter


Peter, if this is the LAST batch of USB, then can I assume that you will be proceeding over to the SDCARD Standalone version ?

I cannot wait for this version..
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