HXc floppy Amiga capable version

[digiflip]

have recently purchased one off amibay, just wandering what would be best configuration to have if say have real df0 floppy and hxc has df0 and df1 or would have to use hxc has df1 only or df1 and df2?

or would there be a way to make a floppy cable switch to say from real floppy to hxc?

[Jope]

Connect everything to the drive and the HxC except DS0. Then use a SPDT switch to route DS0 to either the floppy mechanism or the HxC.

You can easily modify a two drive cable that is used with a PC.. Straighten the twist and cut the DS0 wire from before and after the middle connector.. Then just connect your switch there.. Use longer wires to make locating the switch easier.

If you want to go further, you could make it so that the HxC and physical drive can alternate between DF0 and DF1, but I'll leave that as an excercise to you. Hint: unless you have a big box Amiga, you will need the little circuit board from an external drive.. Or alternately you can recreate an external drive's circuit yourself onto a piece of vero board.

[digiflip]

im building my a1200 in to a tower. would you be able to draw us a diagram and how you suggest to make a switch with a floppy cable ie df0 to df1 and vice versa with switch. ps what do u mean by dso wire. think i need diagrams for this.

[digiflip]

like this ascii diagram


Controller           Drive 2   Twist   Drive 1
+--+                   +--+            +--+
|::|===================|  |============|  |  <-Pin 1
|::|===================|  |=====/=====|  |
|::|===================|  |=====/=====|  |
|::|===================|  |============|  |
|::|===================|  |============|  |
|::|===================|  |============|  |
|::|===================|  |============|  |
+--+                   +--+            +--+


is this the kind of switch you mean http://lh6.googleusercontent.com/public/2u7Gxqy2_ML3DaJc0J-hs6l4BU7aSsed6BtnGNJlGGsHiYCdvVUZTtEvFWwZA_kW0u5bdIoLY_qaSnOyxPW2PJj4ddZyocgYZ6Oe3HFT4HOq1_bn9zzxjPFLNIcNgx-2xf_HMQ56CrqzYpn2jXp9_BwFlg

[digiflip]

cool for advice ive got amiga 600 coming now so il think stick in that for ecs games

[TheGoose]

So, do you have to convert everything to a special format .hfe for things to work with it? Or just disk images like .adf ?

[fordp]

For the SD Card version of the HxC all of the files need to be converted to the .hfe format. I use the windows software under wine with no issues. It is available at the project's site:

http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/index.html

I don't have the USB version, but I believe it also requires the files to be converted to .hfe before use. Documentation is also available at the above site also, which is more authoritative than me.

As for switching the meaning of DF0, I think the cleanest solution would be to find something like the ICD Shuffleboard. The shuffleboard moves the CIA lines so that
DF0 can be housed via the external drive connector. It has an enable/disable jumper that
can be used to toggle the internal DF0 on/off.

On a related note, if anyone knows where I might find the documentation that goes with the shuffleboard, it would be appreciated as my manual has gone missing.

[TheGoose]

Ok. Is this useful for moving large files from PC -> Amiga ? Like large archives (.lha) that will not fit on a 880K floppy?

[fordp]

Ok. Is this useful for moving large files from PC -> Amiga ? Like large archives (.lha) that will not fit on a 880K floppy?

AFAIK this can't be done on the Amiga. IIRC there what some discussion about using the device as an arbitrary filesystem, and even for mounting harddrive images. In fact they just released an update last month to use it on the Atari ST platform as a HDD. But I've not heard anything on the Amiga side.

[jakov]

This is just because no one has done it yet. It is completely possible to write "harddisk driver" for the floppy port. It will be almost as slow as a real floppy drive though, except for lightning fast seek of course. :-)

[fordp]

It occurs to me that the CIA's on the A1200 are mostly likely surface mount, so something like the shuffleboard probably isn't feasible. So a modified floppy cable is probably your best bet. Jope's description is correct as far as I can tell. It is certainly how I would have gone about the process.

DS0 is pin 10, and all odd number pins are GND, so I'll ignore them in the diagram:

 

Code: [Select]

2 |:|==========|:|======|:|
 4 |:|==========|:|======|:|
 6 |:|==========|:|======|:|
 8 |:|==========|:|======|:|
10 |:|===A B====|:|  C===|:|
  ...
34 |:|==========|:|======|:|

Find a SPDT switch at your local electronics, or even hardware store. It should be labeled as such. The image you linked is likely such a switch, but read the packaging to be sure.
Connect A in my digram to the pole, normally the center pin. Connect one throw to A, and the other throw B. The switch diagram would look something like:

Code: [Select]


A ---o
      \
       o--- B
C ---o        

Also, if its a standard FDD cable, with a flip between the connectors. You'll want to undo the flip as this reverses the controls lines for Drive0/Drive1 on the cable. You can open up the header at the end of the cable and undo the flip by hand, but be careful as the its pretty easy to break the header doing this.

Because I'm paranoid, I would check for shorts, n/c wires before using a modified cable. You can look up the cable interface at http://pinouts.ru/Storage/InternalDisk_pinout.shtml among other places.

[digiflip]

good solution but they are not sold anymore lol has in the icd shuffle

[fordp]

This is just because no one has done it yet. It is completely possible to write "harddisk driver" for the floppy port. It will be almost as slow as a real floppy drive though, except for lightning fast seek of course. :-)

Agreed. I did not intend to mean it is impossible, just that if one were to purchase an HxC today, they would not have that feature. Speed aside, I do think it would be a very useful feature, especially if I could use it on Kickstart 1.2 machines.

good solution but they are not sold anymore lol has in the icd shuffle

Indeed not. I have one that I plan on using as a reference design for a similar board to be used in some of my machines, but given the A1200's surface mount chips, the above schematic seems your best choice.

[TheGoose]

@fordp - sounds pretty cool, but a few more tweaks that would make it more "native" will make it hugely more useful; without adding a another layer of converting stuff and so forth.

If it actually worked like a big fat floppy from hell, I'd get one for all 3 Amigas I have.

[magnetic]

Goose

You should look into Amiga explorer from Cloanto for simple network xfers via serial