SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

HxC Floppy Emulator on Amiga support
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alfrank
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Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:43 am

SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by alfrank »

Hi!

I recently purchased a Rev. F SDCard HxC Floppy Emulator from lotharek and I'm having problems with it...

I mounted it in an external floppy drive enclosure, jumper for drive A set to ID0, which automatically becomes DF1 when connected to the Amiga.
I tested the following with two different Amiga 500 (one Rev. 3, one Rev. 5) and three different SD-Cards (a 2 GB SanDisk Ultra II Class 4, a 4 GB Samsung SDHC Class 4, a 16 GB SanDisk Extreme Class 10).
The firmware is 1.8.2.40, I used your preconfigured Amiga ZIP archive as a base and put some more HFE images (converted from ADF/DMS) onto it.

I boot the A500 from a physical 3.5" floppy inf DF0: containing XCopy Pro, then select an empty HFE-Image on the external SDCard-HxC (DF1:), select DF0 as the source, DF1 as the destination with verify on and DOSCOPY as the copy mode.

When I hit the start button XCopy begins to read from DF0 and writes to DF1 but shows verify errors very soon (sometimes as soon as the second track)!

When using two real floppy drives this works perfectly.

I even mounted the HxC inside the A500 as DF0 and it boots fine from it but can't write to it correctly.
The problem then even occurs when booting, reading and writing from/to HxC...
Last edited by alfrank on Sun Apr 13, 2014 11:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

Jeff
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Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by Jeff »

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=622&p=4826&hilit=xcopy#p4826

Please use Xcopy "THE Next Generation" with verify set to ON.
alfrank wrote: The problem then even occurs when booting, reading and writing from/to HxC...
?

alfrank
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Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:43 am

Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by alfrank »

I don't have XCopy "The next generation"...

And why doesn't the most popular Amiga disk copy program work with HxC? If I were a developer I'd use that as a testing reference...

:(

alfrank
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Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:43 am

Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by alfrank »

Jeff wrote:viewtopic.php?f=26&t=622&p=4826&hilit=xcopy#p4826

Please use Xcopy "THE Next Generation" with verify set to ON.
alfrank wrote: The problem then even occurs when booting, reading and writing from/to HxC...
?
HxC as DF0, XCopy HFE-Image selected, booting from that, reading it with XCopy (using RAM device), writing to empty HFE image gives the same verify errors...

Jeff
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Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by Jeff »

alfrank wrote:I don't have XCopy "The next generation"...

And why doesn't the most popular Amiga disk copy program work with HxC? If I were a developer I'd use that as a testing reference...

:(
Just because this will explode the cost device at least by 2...

BTW why do you need this ?

I can provide you the right xcopy program if you want.

alfrank
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Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by alfrank »

Jeff wrote:
alfrank wrote:I don't have XCopy "The next generation"...

And why doesn't the most popular Amiga disk copy program work with HxC? If I were a developer I'd use that as a testing reference...

:(
Just because this will explode the cost device at least by 2...

BTW why do you need this ?

I can provide you the right xcopy program if you want.
Why that? Isn't HxC supposed to be "Track mode based floppy emulator" and have "Amiga Write support" and "Low level format support"?

I use XCopy because I always used it back in my Amiga days.

And this was just my first test for HxC, which I also bought to easily make and transfer disk images of my original Amiga disks I still have.

alfrank
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Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by alfrank »

I found XCopy TNG and it works, but: this version uses standard Amiga DOS routines for copying (clearly to see by the message "remove all equal disks" after copying).

And that is just why I loved the old XCopy: it had its own floppy access routines and copied everything and anything, regardless of format, errors, etc...

By the way: this isn't my first SD-Card-Floppy for old computers: I also have an SD2IEC and a BMOW Macintosh Floppy Emu...

Jeff
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Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by Jeff »

alfrank wrote:I found XCopy TNG and it works, but: this version uses standard Amiga DOS routines for copying (clearly to see by the message "remove all identical disks" after copying).

And that is just why I loved the old XCopy: it had its own floppy access routines and copied everything and anything, regardless of format, errors, etc...
Here is the XCopy TNG :
https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_driv ... py_TNG.zip

The main problem with the others version is the very short timeout... Writing to flash ask some millisecond ...
I think that this could be patched easily, but the sources are needed here.
And the TNG seems to do the job right and seems to be compatible with the accelerator boards.

EDIT: i think that the XCopy TNG have also its own floppy routines.

alfrank
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Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by alfrank »

Thanks a lot for the quick replies!

PS: I thought one could use ADF / DMS files directly from SD-Card, but they aren't visible in the LCD-Menu unless I convert them with the Mac/Win Tool first. This isn't clear in the manuals or on the web pages or I didn't find the info... :wink:

alfrank
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Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by alfrank »

Jeff wrote:
alfrank wrote:I found XCopy TNG and it works, but: this version uses standard Amiga DOS routines for copying (clearly to see by the message "remove all identical disks" after copying).

And that is just why I loved the old XCopy: it had its own floppy access routines and copied everything and anything, regardless of format, errors, etc...
Here is the XCopy TNG :
https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_driv ... py_TNG.zip

The main problem with the others version is the very short timeout... Writing to flash ask some millisecond ...
I think that this could be patched easily, but the sources are needed here.
And the TNG seems to do the job right and seems to be compatible with the accelerator boards.

EDIT: i think that the XCopy TNG have also its own floppy routines.
Isn't a SD-Card (with PIC-controller) faster than a 25 year old floppy drive (250 kbit/s)?

As for the XCopy TNG floppy routines: it does correctly lock the drives from Amiga DOS which can be seen when switching back to Workbench while it's copying: "DF0:BUSY" "DF1:BUSY" while the old X-Copy just killed Amiga DOS...

Jeff
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Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by Jeff »

alfrank wrote:Thanks a lot for the quick replies!

PS: I thought one could use ADF / DMS files directly from SD-Card, but they aren't visible in the LCD-Menu unless I convert them with the Mac/Win Tool first. This isn't clear in the manuals or on the web pages or I didn't find the info... :wink:
The main page is about all HxC devices : SD & USB. The USB one support directly these images ;)

And you can read this on the page:

"HFE file format *.HFE File format used by the SDCard HxC Floppy Emulator"

and this :

"Track mode based floppy emulator (Full track pre-encoded in the HFE image file) "

and

"
This software act as the floppy server with the USB HxC Floppy Emulator.
This program also allows you to convert floppy image files for the SDCard based HxC Floppy Emulator.
Supports many input floppy image file formats: List of the supported floppy image formats.
"

Jeff
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Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by Jeff »

alfrank wrote: Isn't a SD-Card (with PIC-controller) faster than a 25 year old floppy drive (250 kbit/s)?
No point with the PIC. It's a sdcard write speed/latency problem. SDCard mean write speed is a way faster than floppy, BUT some write latency may appears during write sector. Here is one main behavior difference between magnetic & Flash media.
alfrank wrote: As for the XCopy TNG floppy routines: it does correctly lock the drives from Amiga DOS which can be seen when switching back to Workbench while it's copying: "DF0:BUSY" "DF1:BUSY" while the old X-Copy just killed Amiga DOS...
So this look better, isnt it?

EDIT : For reference here is the XCopy TNG software:
https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_driv ... py_TNG.zip

AW99
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Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by AW99 »

"Jeff", i have a question. Are the things you mentioned here
Jeff wrote:
Sun Apr 13, 2014 11:55 am

The main problem with the others version is the very short timeout... Writing to flash ask some millisecond ...
I think that this could be patched easily, but the sources are needed here.
And the TNG seems to do the job right and seems to be compatible with the accelerator boards.
still valid with the latest HxC-Firmware (i have not updated my HxC since a longer time now) and is this also valid, when a user has a Gotek with HxC-Firmware? Is still "X-Copy TNG" the best choice then for copying from a real disk to an adf-Image?

Please give me a short reply.

Jeff
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Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by Jeff »

On HFE files yes this still valid.

On ADF files all xcopy are supported, but ADF files don't keep protection.

AW99
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Joined: Fri Jun 12, 2015 8:37 pm

Re: SDCard HxC Rev. F gives Verify Error with XCopy

Post by AW99 »

Thanks for the fast answering. And is it possible on a normal HxC in the meantime, to use adf's directly, like it is possible on a Gotek with HxC firmware? I guess not and that they must still be transformed into hfe's, or not?

And because you mentioned that "adf files don't keep protection", does this mean that you still recommend, even on Goteks with HxC Firmware, to use hfe (_adf.hfe) files instead of using directly adf's? Or have you just meant, that adf files, in contrast to ipf files for example, can not contain copy-protections? I guess you meant this, right? When it comes to ipf's it's necessary to transform them to _ipf.hfe, cause ipf's can still not be used directly, correct?

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