+Larry Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 And I'm not referring to an S-Drive or SIO2SD. This would be a hybrid drive -- electronics from the XF and the replacement mechanism from the emulator. Seems as if it could be used as a replacement mechanism for the 720K drives in an XF551 (with XFfirmware upgraded to 720K)? Has anyone ever done any research on this or perhaps has one in use? As I understand how it works, it seems feasible. The USB stick or SD card would be formatted as 100 or so 720K floppies. Then the regular Atari firmware would be used to treat it as a FDD for R/W and Atari format. Of course, not as handy as a S-Drive or such, but as a replacement for a dead 720K drive in an XF551, might be useful. And of course, just because we can -- maybe. Any thoughts? -Larry Edit: What-if: since this would seem to solve some of the issues of using a 1.44 high density drive in the XF551, it seems like possibly the XF551 rom could be altered so that the XF could recognize the total capacity of the 1.44. (?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brentarian Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 I'm sure it would work - I've thought about that before but really don't have the need because of other alternatives. As far as 1.44MB is concerned, I believe the 1772 needs to be overclocked to 16mhz, and thus the reason for the Ajax chip for the ST (http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/custom-i.htm#Ajax). If somebody were to get that working with the XF551 somehow that would be awesome! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted November 23, 2017 Author Share Posted November 23, 2017 I'm sure it would work - I've thought about that before but really don't have the need because of other alternatives. As far as 1.44MB is concerned, I believe the 1772 needs to be overclocked to 16mhz, and thus the reason for the Ajax chip for the ST (http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/custom-i.htm#Ajax). If somebody were to get that working with the XF551 somehow that would be awesome! I *think* that the overclock and High Density data rate would not enter into it, because there is no actual disk reading/writing involved. I do wonder about the "native" emulated format of 160 tracks X 9 sectors per track X 512 bytes/sector (instead of 256)? So I wonder also if some of these are adjustable in the format to accomodate 256 bytes/sector. Shades of the MIO years ago! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brentarian Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 How does this compare to Lotharek's? It is much cheaper. https://ebay.com/itm/Updated-Version-SFR1M44-U100-USB-Floppy-Drive-Emulator-with-Screws-Gray/182740858569 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ijor Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 I agree that it should work, and you should be able to emulate not also a 3.5" drive, but also a standard XF551 5.5" drive. Yes, overclocking the FDC would still be needed for HD because the emulator will transfer data at double the rate than DD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 because hxc is what you just showed us with a firmware change and a slight mod or two... which is one of the reasons I have made some statements in the past..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted November 23, 2017 Author Share Posted November 23, 2017 because hxc is what you just showed us with a firmware change and a slight mod or two... which is one of the reasons I have made some statements in the past..... ? Could you elaborate? That linked unit is a 1.44, which I would not expect to work -- at least as a "drop in." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted November 24, 2017 Share Posted November 24, 2017 (edited) these all started out a few years back at around 14.00 and you could hack on sound and other things and change the firmware... a multitude of em at 720k emulation and 1.44... the number of slots varied... but changing them usually came down to very little work.. the firmware during development was free then all the sudden it wasn't anymore.... it is what it is.... it shouldn't be too hard to google or find an internet archive or back up of the how to and firmware though.... not really sure what there is to elaborate on.. http://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1683 comes to mind but there were at least 12 sites with adding displays sounders etc etc... Edited November 24, 2017 by _The Doctor__ 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ijor Posted November 24, 2017 Share Posted November 24, 2017 (edited) How does this compare to Lotharek's? It is much cheaper. https://ebay.com/itm/Updated-Version-SFR1M44-U100-USB-Floppy-Drive-Emulator-with-Screws-Gray/182740858569 It is usable, and actually it has more powerful hardware than the HxC sold by Lotharek. A cheaper design of course. But the HxC firmware is much better and it is worth the price. Also the HxC can emulate two drives at the same time. Those Gotek emulators as the one at Ebay, can't. Edited November 24, 2017 by ijor 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted November 24, 2017 Author Share Posted November 24, 2017 Thanks, guys for the info. I've been digging around, and learned quite a bit already. The HxC seems to be in a completely different league as goes flexibility from the "gotek" devices. I'm impressed, and think that this XF idea may have already been explored. If I get one of these and get it going, I will update this thread. -Larry 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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