X68000 CompactXVI and SD HxC floppy emulator

[caius]

Hi all,
I want to post here my result with SD HxC floppy emulator and CompactXVI.For the uninitiated the SDCard HxC Floppy Emulator is an universal floppy drive emulator based on SD/SDHC memory card designed by Francois del Nero:

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

Now, We all know that internal FDDs of the  X68000 CompactXVI model are very fragile and  prone to failure and since no valid substitute or replacement exist the SD HxC is a good alternative .Here are some video  I made :

SD HxC floppy emulator test#1 on X68000 CompactXVI

SD HxC floppy emulator test#2 on X68000 CompactXVI

As you can see I succesfully loaded two games (based on 1 or 2  floppy since one HxC board can emulated two drives at time) but due of the lack of X68000 FDD extra-signals emulation there are still issues with multi-disks games or games that use particular signals but the author ( and also someone from this forum) is working on this.

This is the diagram to follow to interface X68000 CompactXVI and SD HxC floppy emulator. 

Code Select Expand

X68000 CompactXVI             Signal                          SD HxC Floppy  emulator connector   
Internal floppy connector
(Shugart)
                               
17                                 Disk type select             2
8                             DS3                            6           
31                             Index                            8
5                             DS0                          10
6                             DS1                          12
7                             DS2                          14
12                                Motor ON                     16         
14                             Direction                 18
15                            Step                          20
10                            Write Data              22
13                            Write Gate              24
29                            Track 00              26
30                            Write Protect              28
33                            Read Data              30
16                            Side Select              32
28                            Ready                      34
1-9-11-32-34             Ground              1-3-5-7-9-11-13-15-17-19-21-23-25-27-29-31-33


Note also that I removed original internal floppy FFC connector and put simple female headers for a more easy connection using a custom ribbon cable  I made.But you can connect HxC emulator also to  external FDD connector if you want and use it as FDDs 2-3 (obviously the connection diagram will be different).

[gypsie]

GREAT JOB!

[Neshek]

Hey!
I've been looking this HxC thread for some time. Are you in touch with the creator?

I've seen some plan posted eons ago, so he could not be that motivated. Maybe trying to gather some kind of pre-ordering might convince him he's not wasting his time?

[caius]

Hi, yes, I'm trying to cmmunicate with author Jeff, I opened a thread on the support forum:

http://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1372

but , as you said, I don't how much he  is motivated.The problem is that he should modify the whole board in order to implement X68000 FDD extra-signals emulation since no free I/O ports are available in the MCU.

[Neshek]

I've just got the forum activation, so i've sent a small message in your threads.
Hopefully it will add a little supporting and keep Jeff motivation from fading.

[caius]

I've just got the forum activation, so i've sent a small message in your threads.
Hopefully it will add a little supporting and keep Jeff motivation from fading.

Yes, I have already seen, thanks.I hope Jeff will listen our appeal, let's wait and see.