HxC Floppy Drive Emulator

Hello
I wanted to know if the HxC would help when I looking for replacment for my 5.25" Disk drives. It based on a shugart 34 standart and uses something like Flex or Anadisk format. I've a program who could write those disks using a windows PC and a standard 5,25" pc disk drive.
But I'm not sure about the HxC emulator?
If you like I can upload such images and the program.

I also found a link about the spec. of the FLEX file format:
http://www.flexusergroup.com/flexusergroup/fug10.htm#faq2

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What is the format of a FLEX disk? NEW!
(Contributed by Michael Evenson)
Track 0 does not have a sector 1. All of the other tracks don't have a sector 0. SWTPC Flex always had track 0 side 0 formatted as Single Density. Other manufacturers may have allowed track 0 side 0 to be Double Density. Gimix was one of these.
All of the sectors except the boot sector and sectors that belonged to random files were linked to the next logical sector by the first two bytes of each sector. This created a sector link chain. The chain was broken at the of the file by having the link set to 00 00. The start of the chain for each file is kept in the Directory entry for the file. Each linked sector also contains 2 bytes that signify its sequence number in the file. Flex uses this to determine the integrity of the file when it is read using the File Management System calls. This leaves 252 usable bytes in each sector to store the file.

This is the disk layout:

track 0 sector 0 boot sector
0 2 extended boot sector
0 3 System Information Record (SIR)
0 4 not used
0 5 start of the directory area.
... ... the rest of track 0 is used for
directory storage
1 1 start of the data and program
storage area of diskette

On double sided diskettes, the sector numbers on the second side continue on from the numbers on the first side. That is, if track 1 sector 10 is the last sector on side 0, then track 1 side 1 will start with sector number 11 and end with sector number 20. Track 2 side 0 will start over with sector number 1.

This is the layout of the SIR:
The first 16 bytes are not used (all zeros)

offset(hex) size(hex) contents
----------- --------- -------------------------
$10 $0B Volume Label
$1B $01 Volume Number High byte
$1C $01 Volume Number Low byte
$1D $01 First User Track
$1E $01 First User Sector
$1F $01 Last User Track
$20 $01 Last User Sector
$21 $01 Total Sectors High byte
$22 $01 Total Sectors Low byte
$23 $01 Creation Month
$24 $01 Creation Day
$25 $01 Creation Year
$26 $01 Max Track
$27 $01 Max Sector

The First User Track and Sector mark the beginning of the free chain. This is the chain of available unused sectors. The Last User Track and Sector mark the end of this chain.
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What is a random file?
Coming soon...
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What is the directory structure of a FLEX disk? NEW!
(Contributed by Michael Evenson)

Each Directory Entry is laid out as follows:
The first 16 bytes are not used (all zeros)

offset(hex) size(hex) contents
----------- --------- -------------------------
$10 $08 File Name
$18 $03 File Extension
$1B $02 Unused
$1D $01 Start Track
$1E $01 Start Sector
$1F $01 End Track
$20 $01 End Sector
$21 $01 Total Sectors High byte
$22 $01 Total Sectors Low byte
$23 $01 Random File Indicator
$24 $01 Unused
$25 $01 Creation Month
$26 $01 Creation Day
$27 $01 Creation Year

The Start Track and Sector mark the beginning of the linked list of sectors that make up the file. The directory sectors are linked, but do not contain a sequence number like other linked sectors do.
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What are DSK files?
DSK files, or files with the file name extension DSK, are file representations of a FLEX disk. The complete disk structure is copied, the only difference being that the inter-sector and inter-track bit strings used by the floppy disk controllers are not present.

FLEX DSK files are a very useful way of saving the contents of aging floppy disks. Also, and fortunately, all the FLEX software emulators use the DSK format as their basic FLEX disk format. Using DSK files then becomes a true representation of the floppy-based age for the FLEX Disk Operating System.

Software on this website and CD is stored in the DSK format. Tools are available to extract and insert FLEX files into the FLEX DSK images.
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Hi,

The HxC Floppy Emulator should be able to support this format.
You can try to read a Flex with the hxc floppy emulator software : http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emu ... r_soft.zip
Export it hfe, and post the file image here.
I am also interested by some dsk files.

Hello Jeff
That are awesome news.
I just found this additional information regarding the disk format:
....
structures : 77 tracks of 4 sectors of 1024 bytes, double side,
single density, 500kb/s data rate) and writes to it an Anadisk
or Flex DSK container file (files must be 630784 bytes long)
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Unfortunately I didn't have a 5,25" connected to my Laptop, but I will get one in the next days so I can try the HxC emulator to create an image and email it to you.