Gotek HxC and “Indexed mode” questions

[teevee]

I want to test a Gotek HxC inside an E-Mu Emax 1 (rack), Sequential Circuits Prophet 2002 and Kurzweil K2000RS. I understand from the documentation about “Indexed mode”, that you have to make the disks manually and name them DSKA0000.HFE, DSKA0001.HFE, DSKA0002.HFE..etc with the HxCFloppyEmulator software.

What is it that I want to do?
• I want to fully use my Gotek HxC drive with my devices (E-MU, Sequential Circuits and Kurzweil), use 999 images pr. USB stick.
• I want to use it for saving my own sampling work.
• I also want to download finished disks from the internet and use with my devices.

Questions:
• How do you setup 999 empty supporting disk-image files onto an usb stick for each device? (Is there an automatic way to export 999 supported format disk-image files onto a usb-stick)
o Does the devices have to “format” the disk-image, before they can be used?
• Can you both “read” and “write” onto the USB stick from the device?
• If I load “Disk image 0001”. work on it, change the number to “0003” on my Gotek drive and save. Will “Disk image 0003” then be replaced and will it be replaced with a .HFE file or the actual file format from the device (Example .KFZ if I used Kurzweil k2000)
• How do I use a disk I downloaded from the internet?

[mondo1976]

The devices don't have to format the disks beforehand. If you have a blank formatted floppy then use Omniflop to read it and then convert it to HFE. Somebody has likely already created a blank disk for whatever machine you're using though, if that's easier for you. For the Emax (at least) you can just copy an OS disk HFE to be used as a blank floppy as you'd want the OS on the disk anyway, in general. I'd highly suggest making sure your blank disk template has an OS on it so you don't have to do the whole "Copy Software" routine with the Emax.

Yes, you can r/w to any of them. Formatting won't work, but read/write will. Reading will almost always work flawlessly, but certain USB sticks are bad at writing, so don't be surprised if you get less than stellar results, especially with a USB drive that slow at small block sizes.

When you change disk numbers and resave (001 to 003 in your example) then it works just like a normal floppy. Whatever was on 3 is resaved with the memory contents of the machine (the altered version of disk 1, in this case). It doesn't rename the HFE files or anything, it just writes the contents that you wanted save onto whatever disk is selected at the moment you told it to save.

The Gotek doesn't (at present) work with native file formats (GHZ, KFZ, etc.) It only works with HFE. So no matter what you do, you're always going to have DSKA0000.HFE, DSKA0001.HFE and so forth when you're using Index mode.

To use any HFE for your machine (assuming the person made it properly) that you download, just rename the HFE to DSKAxxxx.HFE where xxxx is the disk number you want it to be.

I don't know of any automated scripts for renaming/cataloging disks. One of the drawbacks to Index mode is that the file names are basically useless for determining the contents of the disk.

Think of it this way: The HFE files are just containers. They'll remain the same file regardless of the contents. So DSKA0000.HFE will be there regardless of whether you format it, copy another disk to it, resave it to itself, etc.

[iwant]

while i cant answer your questions i do have a working emax plus image with a empty bank

you can copy this bank how ever many times you want and basically rename


you can find it in the comments section of my video.

https://youtu.be/bIxwV4cXE9Y

DSKA0000.HFE
DSKA0001.HFE
DSKA0002.HFE



i will be doing the same with the prophet 2000 also , this one is taking longer as its not working yet....


to answer one of your question, if you save to 003 then you will overwrite whats on 003, with the emax....you can then catalogue whats on each disc on a txt file....

[teevee]

The devices don't have to format the disks beforehand. If you have a blank formatted floppy then use Omniflop to read it and then convert it to HFE. Somebody has likely already created a blank disk for whatever machine you're using though, if that's easier for you. For the Emax (at least) you can just copy an OS disk HFE to be used as a blank floppy as you'd want the OS on the disk anyway, in general. I'd highly suggest making sure your blank disk template has an OS on it so you don't have to do the whole "Copy Software" routine with the Emax.

Yes, you can r/w to any of them. Formatting won't work, but read/write will. Reading will almost always work flawlessly, but certain USB sticks are bad at writing, so don't be surprised if you get less than stellar results, especially with a USB drive that slow at small block sizes.

When you change disk numbers and resave (001 to 003 in your example) then it works just like a normal floppy. Whatever was on 3 is resaved with the memory contents of the machine (the altered version of disk 1, in this case). It doesn't rename the HFE files or anything, it just writes the contents that you wanted save onto whatever disk is selected at the moment you told it to save.

The Gotek doesn't (at present) work with native file formats (GHZ, KFZ, etc.) It only works with HFE. So no matter what you do, you're always going to have DSKA0000.HFE, DSKA0001.HFE and so forth when you're using Index mode.

To use any HFE for your machine (assuming the person made it properly) that you download, just rename the HFE to DSKAxxxx.HFE where xxxx is the disk number you want it to be.

I don't know of any automated scripts for renaming/cataloging disks. One of the drawbacks to Index mode is that the file names are basically useless for determining the contents of the disk.

Think of it this way: The HFE files are just containers. They'll remain the same file regardless of the contents. So DSKA0000.HFE will be there regardless of whether you format it, copy another disk to it, resave it to itself, etc.

Dear mondo1976,
Thanks for the clear answer. I find this quite interesting.

Just a clearance about the tech process:
Normally the device would save its own format on the disk (example *.EM1 with E-mu Emax and *IMG with Prophet 2002). When the HxC Gotek drive receive a file from the machine, then it:
1. Convert the file format to .HFE
2. Rename it to DSKA0000 (Depending on what number the drive says one the LCD) (It wouldn’t make sense if it named the file from what you do example “Flute” because then it won’t be readable for the Indexed mode.
3. Replace the image, which is already there.

[mondo1976]

Just a clearance about the tech process:
Normally the device would save its own format on the disk (example *.EM1 with E-mu Emax and *IMG with Prophet 2002). When the HxC Gotek drive receive a file from the machine, then it:
1. Convert the file format to .HFE
2. Rename it to DSKA0000 (Depending on what number the drive says one the LCD) (It wouldn’t make sense if it named the file from what you do example “Flute” because then it won’t be readable for the Indexed mode.
3. Replace the image, which is already there.

No, your premise is a misconception. The Emax doesn't save an EM1 file onto disk, ever. All the Emax knows how to do is save its custom/proprietary data into a 3.5 DD floppy, formatted at 800K. Through tech magic, the Gotek makes the HFE file appear to the Emax as exactly equivalent to an 800K floppy (although the HFE file is bigger than an 800K floppy, due to extra info needed by the Gotek/HxC to pull of this grand illusion). Both the true floppy disk and the HFE are seen by the Emax as nothing more than a bunch of magnetic tracks which it can (hopefully) format, write, and read.

If you have an HFE that is emulating a 1.44M floppy instead of 800K (in the Emax/Prophet 2002 scenario) then it's just like sticking an HD disk into a real floppy drive. The Emax isn't going to be able to format it. The HFE has to be set up with an interface/format that the device understands and knows what to do with.

The Gotek does no renaming. You will have supplied an appropriate bin/container/floppy-slot (however you want to conceive it) by putting an Emax configured/compatible HFE onto the USB drive. All the Emax does is write to that HFE as a normal floppy. So if there's nothing at all on it, then you can't boot from it. You'd have to change to an HFE that has the OS in it, boot from that, use Copy Software, change to the HFE that is blank, then write the OS to the blank HFE.

Note: Although I say "blank" HFE, it's only blank so far as the Emax is concerned. The HFE itself will always contain an Interface / Disk configuration which is only relevant to the HxC Gotek. Only the Gotek sees/cares about how how the HFE is configured as far as the "container" goes. If it's set up properly then it's seamless and the Emax sees nothing more than an 800K disk being served by a traditional floppy drive via a Shugart pinout.

So... to get started you need one HFE that is configured to be an 800K Emax compatible floppy. It needs to have an appropriate OS on it. That HFE we can name DSKA0000.HFE. Then we need to create another 800K Emax compatible HFE. This can be entirely blank, same as a freshly formatted Emax disk would be. Then we can copy that to DSKA0001.HFE, DSKA0002.HFE, ad nauseum; this only depends upon how many disks you want. You can keep going to DSKA0999.HFE if you want.

That will give you one HFE you can boot from (in this example, you'll have to make sure the Gotek says '000' before it'll boot). The rest of the images can be selected by pressing the up/down buttons, but there will be no presets to load, nor an OS to boot from. You can sample something into the Emax, change to disk '001' and then save the preset. Now disk '000' is still the OS disk which can boot, and disk '001' has a preset but no OS.

The files on the USB will still look exactly the same from a Windows/OSX perspective. They'll still be called DSKA000x.HFE. They'll still be the same file size. But the Emax can see inside the files and know that 000 is a bootable floppy with an OS on it, and that 001 has a preset but no OS. It'll recognize 002, 003, etc. as being valid Emax formatted floppies, but they'll be entirely empty and ready for saving or copying to.

Now, as I said before, in real life you'd probably want to just make an HFE that contains your favorite Emax OS on it (no presets or anything, just the OS). Then copy that HFE over and over to DSKA0000.HFE - DSKA0999.HFE. Then ALL your floppy disks will be bootable, whether you've got '008' or '046' selected on the Gotek. That's a totally clean slate to work with. If you want to use the factory sample libraries or some custom presets or whatever, then they'll either have to be properly configured HFEs you get from another HxC user, or you'll have to rip real Emax floppies and convert them to HFE yourself.

The same basic concepts apply to the Prophet 2002, although the HFEs will need to have Prophet compatible formatting instead of Emax formatting. The easiest way to get an HFE with the proper formatting is to ask someone with an HxC for a blank formatted HFE and an OS HFE for that particular sampler/synth.