unable to emulate floppy using .HFE

HxC Floppy Emulator on IBM PC and compatible support
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niceguy64
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Nov 22, 2015 5:28 pm

unable to emulate floppy using .HFE

Post by niceguy64 »

I have the latest version of HxC2001 (SD). I am now using the latest software. I have created several HFE-files from real floppies (e.g. 1,44MB HD) and I can open them under Windows both using DOSDISKBROWSER and conventional HxC-software. Those floppies I can also read under WINDOWS (7 Ultimate, 32Bit) from the real floppy drive. But when I try to open the emulated floppy a: , I get the feedback "not ready reading drive a: ". That happens with all my HFE from all dumped floppies.
If I use however pre-configured empty HFE-Files (e.g. 2.88 MB or other) from HxC-manufacturer, it works. I have tried dumping my real floppies either way (direct export and export from DOSDISKBROWSER), but always same problem. Strangely enough : The problem was observed today first time. The Configuration file has following settings:

MODE: IBM PC
AUTO: not marked
LOAD LAST LOADED FLOPPY: not marked (makes however no difference)
TWO DRIVES EMULATION: not marked
MODE: FROM HFE

Who can help me?

Best regards
niceguy64

niceguy64
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Nov 22, 2015 5:28 pm

Re: unable to emulate floppy using .HFE

Post by niceguy64 »

I have meanhwile found the reason for my problem by mself :

At least in my system (PC; MSDOS71/WIN7-32bit): In order to be able to emulate real floppies (dumped by HxC-Software under WIN7 /32bit from the real floppy into a suitable file as to be put onto the SD-card of HxC) two points have to be fullfilled: 1. One must create a DOS-compatible IMG-file from the dumped real floppy by HxC as additional (interim) step before creating a HFE-file (as to be put onto SD) out of the IMG-file 2. The DOS-format on that real floppy must be compatible with the HxC-software.

Point 1) may have been the reason for an earlier post of mine.
Point 2) I did not realize so far. Most of my todays real floppies are either DOS-formatted to 1,44MB (HD) as usual or DOS-formatted to 1.764KB (HD;84 tracks, 21 sectors / track). The format 1.764kb is, until now, not adapted to the (DOS)Disk-Browser resp. HxC-software. Perhaps would Jeff be so kind to additionally adapt that format of 1.764kb. Some others may have floppy drives which can handle only 83 tracks, not 84 tracks. I have only one single drive which can handle 85 tracks (the format recognized by the software).

In case someone would be interested by which software I could test the maximum number of tracks acceptable to the real floppy drive and by which software I could DOS-format e.g. to 1.764KB :

In order to format e.g. 1.764kb I was using the program "nformat" with the DOS-command under real DOS (MSDOS 7.1 from WIN98SE) "nformat a: s21 t84" . The program "nformat" usually reports "bad sectors" in case that one requests more tracks than acceptable to the drive. In order to give the drive another specific check, I was using the DOS-program under real DOS called "2mgui" . That test resp. software (in particular "2mf") in its latest version (!) delivers even more info about the drive. I used e.g. the DOS-command "2mgui /test" .

There are other DOS-programs which do such formatting, but I could not found any other program which do report misformatting resp. bad sectors resp. track-drive-incompatibility - those other programs format those special DOS-formats only virtually in correct manner.

One must however keep in mind that under WIN7 not all floppy-formats are directly readable. The software of HxC incl. the DOS-browser is for that purpose a great help (even under Windows 7!).

Jeff
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Re: unable to emulate floppy using .HFE

Post by Jeff »

niceguy64 wrote:The format 1.764kb is, until now, not adapted to the (DOS)Disk-Browser resp. HxC-software. Perhaps would Jeff be so kind to additionally adapt that format of 1.764kb.
This is already available into the beta version.

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

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