Problem with aircraft data loader

[PGAengineer]

Hello,

We bought the SDCard HxC Floppy Emulator last month in order to load the navigation database into the flight management computer (FMC) of our aircraft. Over the last years we have been having so many problems with disks and the drives that we decided to give your solution a try.

The original data loader is a Sony MP-F17W-12 floppy drive attached to an RS-422 converter that connects to the FMC. I believe the unit is not modified but I am not 100% sure.

In order to load the navigation database we use regular 1.44 MB diskettes that we prepare in a PC. This can be done through a software but also using the Copy + Paste method, so I assume that the disk format is standard FAT.

Using the HxCFloppyEmulator software we have created the FAT images from the files that are put in the diskettes and then we installed the emulator in place of the Sony floppy drive. However, we are not able to load the database into the FMC. It seems that the emulator starts to read the disk image when the FMC asks for it because we can see the "RA" message on the display and the track changes quickly until it reaches 002 of something similar. But then, it stops and the FMC display shows an error code that according to its manual means "STATUS command illegal".

In order to troubleshoot this we have tried with several configuration files changing the HFE file interface mode (AUTO and Double step enabled/disabled, IBM PC 1.44MB, Generic Shugart, Atari ST...) but with no success. We have also tried to change the jumper setting from what we expected but the results do not improve (sometimes it doesn't communicate at all, other times it has the behaviour described above).

Finally, we also tried to install the emulator on a regular PC and we were able to make it work so I assume that there is no problem with the emulator. We did not try to upgrade the firmware because with such a recent unit we believe that we are already using the up to date firmware.

Could you please assist us in solving this situation? We are very keen on using your emulator in our aircraft but for that we need to address this issue.

Thank you.

[Jeff]

Hi,

Can you send me some of your HFE files + your cfg files ?

What is your firmware version ?

Also what is your sdcard ? (model +class ?)

What is your jumper setting ? (do you use a twisted floppy cable ?)

Can you dump/read some your floppy disk with the software and send me the hfe files ?

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