VOGONS


First post, by Torkeep

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I am setting up a 486 DX-100, and decided to try a Gotek FDD emulator and a CF to IDE interface for the hard drive. I was just browsing the forums though, and reading online, and there seem to be a few firmwares available to flash the Gotek device. FlashFloppy and HxC seem to feature a lot in a search on the forums. I am curious, as to which would be better or even easier to use?

In case it makes any difference, my system will (likely) be running:
- DOS 6.22
- Windows 3.11
- Windows 95 (maybe, not sure how well it will run on a 486)

Reply 1 of 2, by kalohimal

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I would go for FlashFloppy as it is not only free but also works well on a lot of retro platforms (PC, Atari, Amiga, etc). It is still being actively developed and maintained by Keir Fraser and is opensource.

Slow down your CPU with CPUSPD for DOS retro gaming.

Reply 2 of 2, by Jeff_HxC2001

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Torkeep wrote on 2020-08-08, 06:04:
I am setting up a 486 DX-100, and decided to try a Gotek FDD emulator and a CF to IDE interface for the hard drive. I was just […]
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I am setting up a 486 DX-100, and decided to try a Gotek FDD emulator and a CF to IDE interface for the hard drive. I was just browsing the forums though, and reading online, and there seem to be a few firmwares available to flash the Gotek device. FlashFloppy and HxC seem to feature a lot in a search on the forums. I am curious, as to which would be better or even easier to use?

In case it makes any difference, my system will (likely) be running:
- DOS 6.22
- Windows 3.11
- Windows 95 (maybe, not sure how well it will run on a 486)

The HxC firmware for Gotek support all machines with Shugart and pc floppy interfaces (PC).
Still actively supported and developed : https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_drive_emu … lease_notes.txt 😀
And have more features 😉

This one may interest you :

5 May 2019 : Firmware STM32 USB HxCFloppyEmulator v3.2.1.1a […]
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5 May 2019 : Firmware STM32 USB HxCFloppyEmulator v3.2.1.1a

- New major feature ! : Auto mount USB stick folder to a FAT/DOS compatible virtual floppy !

This feature allows you to directly put your files in a stick's folder and mount this folder as a FAT/DOS floppy disk !

You can use it with any machine compatible with the FAT file system (PC, Atari ST, lots of keyboards/samplers and CNC machines...).

To use this feature, copy an empty/preformatted DOS IMG image to the stick path "/mount/emptyfat.img"
This image can be a 720KB or 1.44MB blank DOS image or any other FAT compatible blank image.
You can use the HxC Floppy Emulator software Disk Browser to create it or take the ones present in the firmware archive.

Once you select a "mount source" folder on the emulator, the emptyfat.img file is duplicated to a "MOUNTED.IMG" file.
Then all files/subfolders present into the selected folder are added into this duplicated image.
(Note : the emptyfat.img remains untouched).

Your "mount sources" / root folders should have the extension ".mnt" to be mounted by the emulator :
example : "myvirtualdisk.mnt"

This new feature can be used with the "normal"/direct browsing (oled/lcd screen usage) and indexed modes.
For the indexed mode just put the DSKAXXXX prefix in the mount point folder name.
example : "DSKA0000_MyMidiFiles.mnt"

Please note that the image duplication and files copy operations can take some seconds.
I will try to optimize/speedup the mount operations in the next releases.

Let me know if you have any problems or any suggestions/questions/comments on the HxC forum or by email.

- FAT 12/16/32 layer write support enhanced to create entries (files & folders) and allocate clusters.