USB floppy drive to convert real floppies to .HFE

HxC Floppy Emulator Akai Keyboards/Samplers support
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belzrebuth
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Jan 07, 2020 9:52 am

USB floppy drive to convert real floppies to .HFE

Post by belzrebuth »

Hi,
Is there any way to use a USB floppy to extract real floppies to .img files..
Omniflop does not work with USB drives but is somehow possible to extract raw images or .img files and then convert them to .hfe for gotek use?
Thanks:)

keenerb
Posts: 65
Joined: Wed Feb 12, 2020 6:19 pm

Re: USB floppy drive to convert real floppies to .HFE

Post by keenerb »

I've used a USB floppy drive and linux to simply "dd" floppy disk images before.

I assume I'd be able to convert that dd output to an HFE image but I suppose I've never tested it before.

I doubt it works with copy protection though.

Jeff
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Re: USB floppy drive to convert real floppies to .HFE

Post by Jeff »

USB floppy drive dump are only valid if your disk is a 720KB (9 sectors per tracks) or a 1.44MB (18 sectors per track).
Anything else is not supported. (-> 10 sectors per tracks disk will not be dumped properly...)

This is not a question of tool, this is a limitation in the usb firmware of these drives.

belzrebuth
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Jan 07, 2020 9:52 am

Re: USB floppy drive to convert real floppies to .HFE

Post by belzrebuth »

Isn't the akai format 720kB?
So in essence I could just read the raw image convert that to .hfe and try if it works on the S900?
Is dd the only tool (I don't know if there's a DOS version) or I could do that with another tool?
Omniflop won't let me read a floppy for some reason..maybe I should try the 720kB option or maybe it needs its driver to work..
EDIT:
There's some info here about the akai format:
http://mda.smartelectronix.com/akai/akaiinfo.htm#2

Apparently it uses a 10 sector format so a raw transfer won't be valid as it seems..

Jeff
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Re: USB floppy drive to convert real floppies to .HFE

Post by Jeff »

belzrebuth wrote:
Tue Mar 03, 2020 3:12 pm
Isn't the akai format 720kB?
No, this is a 800kB format.
belzrebuth wrote:
Tue Mar 03, 2020 3:12 pm
Apparently it uses a 10 sector format so a raw transfer won't be valid as it seems..
exactly.

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