Help with Memotech MTX disc format

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anvil1man
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Joined: Tue May 17, 2011 6:37 pm

Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by anvil1man »

Hi, just got hold of the SD card version and am trying to figure out how to set it up to act like drive C (df1) so I can backup my MTX discs to SD card before they all stop working. Any help with the settings I need (am assuming it is in the raw option) would be appreciated. Jim

Jeff
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Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by Jeff »

anvil1man wrote:Hi, just got hold of the SD card version and am trying to figure out how to set it up to act like drive C (df1) so I can backup my MTX discs to SD card before they all stop working. Any help with the settings I need (am assuming it is in the raw option) would be appreciated. Jim
Hi,

Do you some floppy disk or some floppy image file ?

anvil1man
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Joined: Tue May 17, 2011 6:37 pm

Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by anvil1man »

Hi, I have a working MTX with CP/M SDX floppy disc controller that boots from the 3.5" drive and reads a BBC cumana 5.25" as drive C type 3 DSDD drive. I am looking at copying these discs and putting them onto the SD card, or at the very least copying the contents of the discs and backing them up. Not really quite sure how to go about this with the hxc2001 as never done anything like it before.

Jeff
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Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by Jeff »

anvil1man wrote:Hi, I have a working MTX with CP/M SDX floppy disc controller that boots from the 3.5" drive and reads a BBC cumana 5.25" as drive C type 3 DSDD drive. I am looking at copying these discs and putting them onto the SD card, or at the very least copying the contents of the discs and backing them up. Not really quite sure how to go about this with the hxc2001 as never done anything like it before.
Try to read some disk with the hxc floppy emulator tool :

https://hxc2001.com/floppy_drive_emulat ... r_soft.zip

anvil1man
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue May 17, 2011 6:37 pm

Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by anvil1man »

Hi Jeff,

I had a play with it last night and think there (ie me) is a problem. I do not get the choice to select the drive (option ticked in settings) and it asks for a file and regardless what I select (I did put the config file on a clean sd card) it just says 'bad file' ?

How do you mean regarding reading the disk? Are you saying to get a PC running windows and then link up a 5.25" drive and try and read from the disk into the pc that way?

Jim

Jeff
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Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by Jeff »

anvil1man wrote:Hi Jeff,

I had a play with it last night and think there (ie me) is a problem. I do not get the choice to select the drive (option ticked in settings) and it asks for a file and regardless what I select (I did put the config file on a clean sd card) it just says 'bad file' ?
The user manual explains lot of thing:
https://hxc2001.com/floppy_drive_emulat ... Manual.pdf
anvil1man wrote: How do you mean regarding reading the disk? Are you saying to get a PC running windows and then link up a 5.25" drive and try and read from the disk into the pc that way?

Jim
Yes exactly.

anvil1man
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Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by anvil1man »

Latest:

I have managed to get some images from MTX discs through my PC. With these it seems only the hfe ones will work on the adapter(am I correct?) and I am trying to get it to boot at the moment:

Select boot disc image
Drive light comes on 'RA' appears on the LCD
Computer says 'NO' ;-) Actually it just says 'please insert boot disc'

It therefore looks like it is trying to read the image. I am a little confused about setting up software though as looking at the HxcFloppyEmu software SDsettings there is little info to set apart from the drive interface type (MTX is shugart comp) where as on the load raw image there is all sorts of thing like track, sectors, skew etc.

Any pointers will be appreciated, the manual is ok but for someone with little experience like me a walk through from start to finish on the basics would be very helpful if one exists?

Jim
Attached is an image I have captured.
Attachments
FDXSystemDisk1.rar
(162.07 KiB) Downloaded 756 times

Jeff
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Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by Jeff »

I have changed some settings into the image file.
Tell me which one is working.
Attachments
FDXSystemDisk1.zip
(382.76 KiB) Downloaded 643 times

anvil1man
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Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by anvil1man »

will do, just trying them out now.

Ta, Jim

anvil1man
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Joined: Tue May 17, 2011 6:37 pm

Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by anvil1man »

Sadly no different. I have attached another image, this I have just checked will boot of the current MTX system just in case.

Jim

Jeff
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Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by Jeff »

anvil1man wrote:Sadly no different. I have attached another image, this I have just checked will boot of the current MTX system just in case.

Jim
Please make a picture of your setup (floppy emulator)

anvil1man
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Joined: Tue May 17, 2011 6:37 pm

Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by anvil1man »

Am assuming this is what you are asking for.

Jim
Attachments
Hxc2001_Settings.jpg
Hxc2001_Settings.jpg (69.18 KiB) Viewed 15511 times

Jeff
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Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by Jeff »

Ok retry with the 250k files now (attached)
Attachments
FDXSystemDisk1.zip
(765.76 KiB) Downloaded 667 times

anvil1man
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Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by anvil1man »

same thing, it is trying to access the disc but does not see the boot track by the looks of things.

When I took the image I simply selected 40 track, double step but did not make changes to the raw settings, should I have before trying to capture the image?

Attached is some pages from the FDX technical manual which may be of use.
Attachments
FDX_info3.jpg
FDX_info3.jpg (101.15 KiB) Viewed 15509 times
FDX_info1.jpg
FDX_info1.jpg (203.15 KiB) Viewed 15509 times

anvil1man
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Joined: Tue May 17, 2011 6:37 pm

Re: Help with Memotech MTX disc format

Post by anvil1man »

forgot to add. Generally Memotech used three formats. Type 2 160k, Type 3 (most common) 320k and type 7 640k (both 5.25" & 3.5" drives used this format) the discs I am looking at for the moment are type 3.

jim

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