Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

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patallen
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2016 3:12 pm

Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by patallen »

Hi, i am diggin into a project to rejuvenate a 1989 Hunter alignment machine. It boots from a 3.5 floppy (that keep eating them) and that is almost impossible to read properly. the mother board of the machine is 100% custom spec, and runs on a motorola processor.
its the pro align system made by Hunter.

the content of the floppy is very unusual and very hard to duplicate, even just to made raw copies. i found only one person for now who successfully did it.
there is no boot sector, its not dos either and there are forced errors on the disc to render the copy impossible.

for now only Omniflop has made possible to read the disk. all copies made doesnt work on the machine.

at the end id like to make a emulator to work on this machine to throw away the floppys but it seems very far to be possible.

dare to help ?

thanks

Jeff
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Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by Jeff »

If you can send me this disk, i can read it.

patallen
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2016 3:12 pm

Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by patallen »

i am a bit shy to part out with the floppy disk because of its uber rare content $$$$$.
wouldnt there be a way to read it in a different way ?
i did read it with the hxc software (disk dump) and omniflop but thats the most i did for now. there is nothing i did after that did work, i did try to make copy/image and whats not. no good success to copy that.

is there a way to create a new fresh disk with the hxc software ?

i can send the memory dump if that can help anything at all.

thanks for the reply

fwiw there is a lot of scam messages on the forum....might do a litle cleanup....

patallen
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2016 3:12 pm

Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by patallen »

i would like to try my luck with one of the hxc unit, would it be possible to know which one could fit the best the project ?
i know its a trial/error thing.

fwiw the actual floppy disk in the machine is a SONY MP-F17W-10, set under DS0. i had some success with an ALPS too.

Krookz
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Sep 27, 2016 5:35 pm

Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by Krookz »

Hey, im the guy patallen was referring to as the one who can copy these disks. While im sure others can do so id like to keep my method/images private as I use it as a source of side funding for some fun projects. I spent a bunch of time working on a solution to these old machines.

My original intent was setting up an emulator to do away with the floppies. I tried many things over the course of 6 months to get a Gotek emulator(one with image mode to read non-dos disks) to boot. The machine could see and read from the emulator, but it would never pass the image to the machine. Im unsure or what was the cause and called it quits about 3 months ago. The emulator and image was passed on to a close friend in Australia and was lost by post.

I had started a post over on Vogons about loading an image that was 1.6mb vs the 1.3mb the emulator supported. Turned out I originally had the wrong emulator, getting the correct one did nothing more.

From what I can see. Its a standard MFM format running some flavor of linux/unix. I can see file structure in the images I have but I have not found a way to open them to see the contents or even identify what it is. The image is also laden with errors that seem to hiccup software like winimage and hxc. It writes an image(raw) but if you try to write it back to disk it fails... even with my hardware. I would still like to get this going on an emulator but the time, money, and effort already put into such a niche thing... Im really not interested in spending even more for another failure.

Jeff
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Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by Jeff »

Please follow the procedure at the page 14 :
https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_driv ... al_ENG.pdf
And send me/share the hfe image.

patallen
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2016 3:12 pm

Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by patallen »

fwiw i got my new floppy drive and disk, the machine works.

the programm on the machine to make potential disk back-up dont work...actualy, if one reads the instructions properly, it only back-up the set-up and user settings, NOT the whole disk...

yeah...

Krookz
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Sep 27, 2016 5:35 pm

Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by Krookz »

patallen wrote:fwiw i got my new floppy drive and disk, the machine works.

the programm on the machine to make potential disk back-up dont work...actualy, if one reads the instructions properly, it only back-up the set-up and user settings, NOT the whole disk...

yeah...
Yep... that's correct. Before you stick that disk in any other computer make sure you have the write protect enabled. It will get wiped like the others. Happens every time I test something with them.

patallen
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2016 3:12 pm

Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by patallen »

still trying my luck on this

id like to make myself first a back-up floppy before going any further. anyone dare to help me ?

thanks.

Nico_DK
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Aug 17, 2017 12:30 am

Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by Nico_DK »

Hi.

I bought a Hunter L111 and am looking to do the Floppy to emulator swap.
Did you ever succeed in making it work?

I already messed up my first floppy and have now contacted a guy in the US who is selling new floppydisks for the Hunter.
Hopefully he can provide me with a new disk or maybe even an image to put straight on to the Gotek emulator

patallen
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2016 3:12 pm

Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by patallen »

i indeed made it work.

patallen
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2016 3:12 pm

Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by patallen »

i am dropping this here...
found a way to achieve all i wanted.
thanks.
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eberger
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Nov 02, 2017 4:35 am

Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by eberger »

Pat,

I am interested in how you accomplished that. I would like to do the same for a Hunter H111, very interesting project, can you point a novice in the right direction?

Eddie

Berlincam86
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2022 1:30 am

Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by Berlincam86 »

Any chance you will let me know how you did it?

Berlincam86
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2022 1:30 am

Re: Hunter k111 alignment machine with 3.5 floppy

Post by Berlincam86 »

Can someone at least send me a disk image?

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