OSX (Apple mac) software for Amiga .hfe

[mjnurney]

hello

Is there any software to convert the Amiga ADF to .hfe to run on the floppy emulator?

not all of us use Windoze....

thank you

[Nightshop]

It would be great too !

[Jeff]

It would be great too !

In fact you can compile a command line tool for MacOsX from the linux sources with xtool.
My problem is that i don't have any MacOsX machine for the moment to make progress on this subject and a make a GUI version.
But this is in the road map.

Actually some MacOsX users use a "windows" emulator to make the software working.

[mjnurney]

i'll look in to compiling it with xtool later

is there any plan to have ADf as a drag and drop option? or will the hardware always require .hfe?

cheers

great work by the way!

[Jeff]

i'll look in to compiling it with xtool later

is there any plan to have ADf as a drag and drop option? or will the hardware always require .hfe?

cheers

great work by the way!

ADF drag and drop on the Batch converter is already supported

But no, i don't plan to put the ADF loader into the actual hardware.
(And if i add the ADF support, i will have to add all others file format actually supported ! No possible with a simple MCU...)

Here my point of view (i wrote this post some months ago on eab):

19 July 2010

Hi Jeff!
Thanks a lot about your work on HxC
I am still curious as to why different file formats cannot be supported and you need to convert. A little more in-depth explanation will clear people's doubts

Mainly Because :

A low cost MCU have low memory, and are not very powerfull.

Example:

The HxC Floppy Emulator and The SDiskEmul uses a PIC18F4525 MCU.
its Specifications are :

-10Mips MCU @ 40 Mhz
-48kB of Flash.
And the most problematic thing:
-3900 bytes of RAM

>Flash Size problem : This is very hard to implement all file format in the firmware (flash space problem).
The actual loaders of supported by the HxC Floppy Emulator (36 formats supported !) take 300KB of code.

>RAM Size problem: With less of 4Kb of RAM, hard to implement an gzip lib in the pic (ADZ format...) or directly managed complex format as IPF.

>Speed problem : In any case data must be converted to MFM/FM (all emulators does this) and for this you need time (and memory space). Making the conversion of an ADF file can be long. For example on SdiskEmul this take 20 seconds (and this is in ASM) …


Additionally I think that the pre-conversion isn’t a problem: In anycase you use a computer to copy image file to the SDCard. So conversion program or not, this doesn’t change nothing for me. On the contrary this make the device more reliable (final image file are verified – the mcu code implementation is simpler -> less potential bugs).

If the conversion program are well designed, this can be a powerful tool to managed floppies images. You can also create AmigaOS image file with some files present on the pc.
With the HxC Floppy Emulator software you can convert a complete tree of file images by a simple drag&drop.

Finally this conversion program make the hardware secondary (I think this important for the future...). I can change the MCU by another one, or an fpga without rewriting the whole thing.
So from the developer point of view the central point of the hxc floppy emulator is the conversion program, not the hardware.

This how I design the whole project, and this will not change in the future.
But I believe that MCUs will be powerful enough to directly digest the conversion tool latter.

Last words : We have sold hundred’s of floppy emulators, and I have no bad return from users about the conversion program.

(I have probably forget some arguments here )

Now the question is how make more transparent the conversion. If you some ideas don't hesitate to post them!

[mjnurney]

hi,

thanks for the info, i guessed that hardware limitations would be the problem and yes, if ADf was added then everyone would want there own file format added too. The list would be endless i guess.
Its a pity though as it would mean the GUI would not the important for file transfer.

Anyway great work!

[Jeff_HxC2001]

Its a pity though as it would mean the GUI would not the important for file transfer.

mhh i don't understand.?