Floppy emulator for an Okuma OSP7000L

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BenjaminTech
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:45 am

Floppy emulator for an Okuma OSP7000L

Post by BenjaminTech »

Hi all I hope you can help me.

I have an Okuma OSP7000L CNC machine where I am based.

As I work in the IT department, I had discussed with the department with the idea of swapping the floppy drive out with an emulator. I have tried two variants with no success.


The first emulator was a cheapo Gotek unit which only has two segmented displays. Despite various settings this never managed to get far in reading files and would always throw an error (was long ago so I can't remember).

The second Emulator which I tried today was a Lotharek HxC SD card floppy emulator (from this very site). This one, I had better success, in that I can get the okuma to start reading the file but upon attempting to 'use' the file it was struck with an error which was:
"330 floppy disk read/write ERROR 4C000046"
According to the Okuma manual 06 or 46 results in an error reading the head with 06 being head 0 and 46 being head 1.

I have altered many dip switch settings as per the guide and altered the config file half a dozen times and either get drive issues or that read error. if I get drive issues then the floppy emulator doesn't even engage, but with error 46 I can see the Okuma is trying to read the SD card (activity light comes on and I can see 'RA' in the display' .
I do see the activity light flash and the screen attempts to start the read then fails.

SD card is 2GB standard SD and formatted as fat32 as per HxC instructions.

I am now at a loss. Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Ben

Jeff
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Re: Floppy emulator for an Okuma OSP7000L

Post by Jeff »

Hello,

Try to set different interface mode on the emulator . Enter the embedded menu and try the "Shugart", "S950 HD", "IBM PC DD", IBM PC HD interfaces cfg modes.

BenjaminTech
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:45 am

Re: Floppy emulator for an Okuma OSP7000L

Post by BenjaminTech »

Thanks Jeff.

Will try this. The Okuma in question seems to run its own firmware (not dos based) but does seem to work with MS-DOS based files. (so the menu and manual says).
For record Shugart causes errors, PC ones I have better luck with.

If we crack this then I can tell you that any Okuma with DOS based support (not the OS just the file reading) will work with these settings.

I will keep trying. I did get a nugget that somewhere it said it only works with FAT 12... I shall test more.

Thanks for replying

BenjaminTech
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:45 am

Re: Floppy emulator for an Okuma OSP7000L

Post by BenjaminTech »

if this helps, I have attatched the settings of the original floppy and it's make.
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origflopmake.jpg
origflopmake.jpg (188.51 KiB) Viewed 1936 times
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origflopset.jpg
origflopset.jpg (105.34 KiB) Viewed 1936 times
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What each of the jumpers do if that helps:
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jumpers.png
jumpers.png (12.68 KiB) Viewed 1935 times
Here you can see DS0 is on, IF is on, RY is on, and T2 is on.
IF plus T2 is automatic switching mode
DS0 as we know is drive select 0
RY is the ready signal on Pin 34.

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