Apple II Support

[aotta]

Quite honestly that is not true about needing a liron card to emulator a unidisk or smartport device. Yes the emulator will need the smartport protocol but you should NOT NEED anything other than a disk II and a Soft SP card. I am using my Apple II plus right this moment with a standard Disk II emulator hooked up to one of my Floppy EMUs. The newest firmware of the floppy emu has a emulation type "UNIDISK 3.5" and I am booting an 800KB prodos image from a standard disk II controller card (with the SOFT SP card/ROM).

Of course, you're right! i mentioned Liron and Yellowstone but forgot to include the SoftSP card (since i've not one) but it should work and it's a very cheap solution!

[Verault]

And i indeed have to find a Liron card + a Unidisk 3.5" drive to capture all the require signals...

Jeff I had a question. Is the support for the hxc firmware directly responsible for the HXC software not being able to convert 800KB files (including .PO, .DSK, or .2MG) over to .HFE? In other words not using a gotek at all, just the HXC software on my computer is incapable of convertering any of these over to .HFE. Does it know it doesnt support the format?

[Jeff]

And i indeed have to find a Liron card + a Unidisk 3.5" drive to capture all the require signals...

Jeff I had a question. Is the support for the hxc firmware directly responsible for the HXC software not being able to convert 800KB files (including .PO, .DSK, or .2MG) over to .HFE? In other words not using a gotek at all, just the HXC software on my computer is incapable of convertering any of these over to .HFE. Does it know it doesnt support the format?

The problem is that i am not sure what a 800KB ".PO/.DO/.DSK" is exactly... For me this is related to the Disk II floppy interface - limited to 140KB.
How is encoded a 800KB disk ? GCR ? MFM ? how many tracks and sectors per tracks ?

[Verault]

According to this http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/202 ... %201.44MiB.
"The UniDisk 3.5 and Apple 3.5 Drives support 400K single sided and 800K double sided GCR disks, while the SuperDrive supports those disks as well as standard IBM MFM formats up to and including 1.44MiB"

As far as Sectors and tracks I am still looking

[Jeff]

The lack of detailed technical documentation about the disk formats and interfaces is terrible on these machines... I understand why BMOW had to reverse engineer almost everything about the protocols/format himself some years ago... I have the felling that i will have to do the same in some degree too...
It seems that very few people have the in-depth technical knowledge on this topic, and the specialized forums don't seems to help at all (for example : What is this terrible mess on the forum that you pointed out to me )

I want to understand the physical layout of these 800KB Apple II compatible disks (sectors distribution and the way they are encoded on the disk) and the exact electrical and logical protocols used between the floppy drive and the machine connection !

For the disk format one solution may be to send me one working Apple II 800KB disk. I have all the necessary hardware to analysis it here.

For the moment the plan is to complete all the images support able to run on a "standard" Apple IIe Disk II interface without any modification or additional controller or ROM change. Maybe this is already done ? What is missing in the HxC software regarding the image support related to a basic Apple IIe Disk II floppy support ?

[Verault]

Dont get me started on the forum.. What a nightmare of bad attitudes that turned into. Well quite honestly that has always been the "apple crowd", They in general are not like the rest of the retro computing crowd which is a shame... its their loss in the end.

Steve Chamberlin at BMOW seems a pretty bright and open guy. Have you thought about contacting him directly and picking his brain about the workings of the drive formats? Couldnt hurt right?

I can send you several disks sure, but my question would be are they all the same format? Prodos vs commerical software vs games. Are there any strange formatting on the same 3.5" disks? I can send several different types I suppose to help. System disk, game disk, program disks.

[Verault]

The lack of detailed technical documentation about the disk formats and interfaces is terrible on these machines... I understand why BMOW had to reverse engineer almost everything about the protocols/format himself some years ago... I have the felling that i will have to do the same in some degree too...
It seems that very few people have the in-depth technical knowledge on this topic, and the specialized forums don't seems to help at all (for example : What is this terrible mess on the forum that you pointed out to me )

I want to understand the physical layout of these 800KB Apple II compatible disks (sectors distribution and the way they are encoded on the disk) and the exact electrical and logical protocols used between the floppy drive and the machine connection !

For the disk format one solution may be to send me one working Apple II 800KB disk. I have all the necessary hardware to analysis it here.

For the moment the plan is to complete all the images support able to run on a "standard" Apple IIe Disk II interface without any modification or additional controller or ROM change. Maybe this is already done ? What is missing in the HxC software regarding the image support related to a basic Apple IIe Disk II floppy support ?

So do you need me to send you disk images or real disks? Send me a direct message to clarify please.

[Jeff]

Not tested yet against the Gotek HxC Apple II firmware but the HxC tool now support WOZ files :

https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_dri ... t_beta.zip

https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_dri ... _notes.txt

Screenshot at 2023-12-25 14-18-50.jpg (237.58 KiB) Viewed 4290 times

[Verault]

Not tested yet against the Gotek HxC Apple II firmware but the HxC tool now support WOZ files :

https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_dri ... t_beta.zip

https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_dri ... _notes.txt

Screenshot at 2023-12-25 14-18-50.jpg

Any progress is good progress! Thank you and Merry Christmas!

[Verault]

Seems there is renewed interest... Finally!

Someone made a device and a pcb so people no longer have to make the ribbon cable which is nice.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI3qG2vm8Fg

pcb: https://www.pcbway.com/project/sharepro ... bc20b.html

[softwarejanitor]

I just recently bought a GoTek and got the license and downloaded the HxC code. I am looking for some step by step instructions for how to flash the Apple II compatible firmware using Linux. I have a CP2102 USB Serial module. Also it looks like the File Select utility for Linux is on GitHub and the source code is there but there is no Makefile, build script or even instructions on how to do the build. I think I can probably figure out how to compile it, but it seems like maybe something is missing? The README has basically almost nothing in it at all.

[Verault]

Softwarejanitor, the Apple II firmware is simply copied to the usb stick in the gotek. For the Gotek to work with that apple II firmware it needs the initial HXC firmware programmed to gotek board. via serial or USB. this is a long video (dont know why programming it takes a couple minutes but regardless) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2qVgBJUI5U I would install pin headers and jumpers and run jumper leads to the serial device not wires soldered to it as this guy did.

[softwarejanitor]

I already soldered the pins in, so that's taken care of. Your explanation of how to install that firmware helps an awful lot. I will watch the video and hopefully that will all make sense then. I will try to put together some simple step by step instructions on how to put everything together for an Apple II when I get it all working and then post it here and over on the Apple forums like AppleFritter.

[softwarejanitor]

Is there a version of the STM32_SerialBridge for Linux or MacOS? I was getting ready to install the bootloader and noticed the software links sent to me only include a Windows version and I don't have Windows.

[softwarejanitor]

It looks like the bootloader executable works under Wine, unfortunately it appears my GoTek may be dead. Nothing lights up on it even if I plug power directly into the power connector.