Roland S-770 with Gotek HxC, working - kind of.

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plzi
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Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2018 3:38 am

Roland S-770 with Gotek HxC, working - kind of.

Post by plzi »

Some background information:

- S-770 uses the Chinon FX-357 floppy drive (not FZ, as so many other Roland samplers do). FX-357 has no jumpers.
- The FX-357 is capable of reading/writing 720k and 1.4M disks
- I have the official Roland system disk image, provided in 720k format (.OUT)
- I have a system disk image also in 1.4M format

First of all, I used a DOS machine and the venerable SDISK.EXE to create both floppies - so I have a physical 720K OS floppy, and a physical 1.4M OS floppy. Both work fine in S-770 original floppy drive. The slightly weird part is, 720K floppy takes around two minutes to boot up, and the 1.4M floppy is way, way faster (boot sequence takes around 20 seconds).

Now, I have a Gotek FDD emulator with HxC firmware. First test was to use the hxc software to create a single .HFE file from the 720K floppy image. This went without a hitch (using the pre-defined Roland DD layout setting). The S-770 boots fine from USB - USB contains indexed mode default configuration file and the DSKA0000.HFE which was created using the presets.

The 720K OS image is as painfully slow to boot as it is from the real floppy. So I would very much like to use the 1.4M image. And therewithin lies the problem. I can not use predefined formats importing the raw image file (since there is none for 1.4M Roland format). Mucking about with the settings (different bit rates, sector settings to 18, forcing output HFE to IBM 1.44M format) ends up in either disk not being recognized or massive amount of read errors when S-770 boots up.

I can provide both source files for comparison, if needed. I would very much like to use the 1.4M image for booting.

Any ideas how to proceed?

Jeff
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Re: Roland S-770 with Gotek HxC, working - kind of.

Post by Jeff »

Update the firmware to the the very last version (in the wip folder) :
https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_driv ... rmware.zip

Once updated, enter the new setting menu :
-> To access it, remove the USB Stick and press both buttons.
-> Choose the sub menu '1' - wait some seconds for the selection validation.
-> Change the setting to '0F' - wait some seconds for the selection validation.

This change the interface mode to new "Akai" mode with auto Density selection. This should be compatible with the Roland machines.
Let me know if this is working properly.

Please note that you should be able to use the .OUT files without converting them. Just change the .OUT extension to .IMG.
(i will add the .OUT extension support in indexed mode in a next firmware.)

plzi
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Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2018 3:38 am

Re: Roland S-770 with Gotek HxC, working - kind of.

Post by plzi »

Updated the firmware to HXCFEUSB_V3_1_10_1a.UPD. I presume I need the indexed mode config file from the subfolder (64k versus 8k on previous fw).

Update went without a hitch. I stored the .OUT file as DSKA0000.IMG on the USB stick. Copied the config file as well.

Power on, went into menu, selection 1, value 0F.

When inserting the stick, net result is that the Gotek shows "000" and "Err". Tried other interface modes (using the same .IMG) , no success.

Jeff
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Re: Roland S-770 with Gotek HxC, working - kind of.

Post by Jeff »

And with the HFE files ?

Can you share this IMG file ?

plzi
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Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2018 3:38 am

Re: Roland S-770 with Gotek HxC, working - kind of.

Post by plzi »

HFE files - I do not know what will happen, since I can not decide how to read the raw image and export it as HFE (since there is no pre-defined layout for high-density Roland floppies). Yes, I tried to find FX-357 drive documentation but that is very, very scarce. Reading the service manual tells us that the part number - or firmware version - for the drive is 308F1R0, and that the floppy disk controller chip is uPD 72068GF-3B9. Which, if I understand correctly is fairly generic NEC-made controller for IBM PC/XT and AT environments. Supports IBM and ECMA/ISO formats, data rates go in steps from 150 to 600 kb/s.

If there is a way to correctly guess a custom RAW format for importing the image, I'm all ears and willing to try a bunch of combinations, if need be.

The image itself is available at http://www.plzi.com/misc/S770HD.zip

Also, I just realized that I must sound really terse (being Finnish and all, comes with the territory). Thank you - help is very much appreciated, and I find all this stuff very interesting. :)

Jeff
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Re: Roland S-770 with Gotek HxC, working - kind of.

Post by Jeff »

This image have some extra bytes that make the format auto detection non-working. Will try something in the firmware later.

As workaround here is the HFE version and the fixed IMG version :
https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_driv ... _V2_25.zip
(rename them DSKA0000.HFE and DSKA0001.IMG)

Tell me if both are working with the same/above procedure.

plzi
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Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2018 3:38 am

Re: Roland S-770 with Gotek HxC, working - kind of.

Post by plzi »

Absolute greatness.

The fixed image works like a dream. I set the drive type to 10, which was elsewhere stated to be IBM HD/DD automode (I think), dropped the .HFE into the stick and away it goes. Boots in less than 20 seconds.

So, to summarize, working combination for Roland S-770 Sampler is:

- Gotek SFR1M44-FU-DL (this probably does not matter as I think the models differ only by original firmware)
- HXCFEUSB_V3_1_10_1a and the matching indexed mode config file
- Fixed 1.4M Roland OS image (and yes, I'm gonna post this on to my website)
- HxC firmware setting number 1 set to 10h (IBM mode, auto HD/DD).

Just before you posted the fixed disk image, I got around to look at other (mostly sample data) HD disk images, and noticed they were 1440K, versus the OS image which for unknown reason had 1441K. As the SDISK made a working floppy from the 1441K image, I stupidly did not question the validity of the image. Any idea what the extra data was? I know the OS itself takes like 260K or so from the floppy, so it's not like the image is chock full of necessary data anyway.

Anyway, happy camper, thank you very, very much. :) I will put up a web page detailing this and other S-770 modifications - web seems to be full of W-30 and S-760 -related guides, but 770 is a slightly different beast. Will post the link here when it's done (a week or two, the only things left are to debug the PS2 to MSX mouse adapter and installation of SCSI2SD, which is still on it's way).

plzi
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Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2018 3:38 am

Re: Roland S-770 with Gotek HxC, working - kind of.

Post by plzi »

One more question, if I may.

Does the .HFE file contain the setting for the interface mode? The .IMG presumably does not, as it is just the contents of the floppy. And if .HFE has the setting, which setting wins - the one in the .HFE or the one set manually on the Gotek itself?

Jeff
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Re: Roland S-770 with Gotek HxC, working - kind of.

Post by Jeff »

plzi wrote:
Sun Feb 18, 2018 3:49 am
One more question, if I may.

Does the .HFE file contain the setting for the interface mode? The .IMG presumably does not, as it is just the contents of the floppy. And if .HFE has the setting, which setting wins - the one in the .HFE or the one set manually on the Gotek itself?
The HFE contains the interface mode. The internal device setting wins if set.
During the HFE creation you can set/force the interface mode too in the sd settings window.

Jeff
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Re: Roland S-770 with Gotek HxC, working - kind of.

Post by Jeff »

plzi wrote:
Sun Feb 18, 2018 3:34 am
Any idea what the extra data was? I know the OS itself takes like 260K or so from the floppy, so it's not like the image is chock full of necessary data anyway.
This is just an text indication of the number of sector per track. This is not on the floppy disk, just in the file image, probably added by the tool used to create these images.
Remove the last 512 block and you have a standard 1.44MB images.

Anyway if you want to batch convert these images without modify them :

- In the raw loader, select the "Standard 3.5 DOS HD floppy" predefined format.
- Set the Akai S950 HD interface mode for the hfe files (sd setting window).
- Then use the batch converter function (set "Treat input files as RAW files")

You can also select the "RAW" format as target, this will recreate IMG files without the extra sector.

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