Anyone familar with HxC Universal Floppy Emulator?

[Martin Hepperle]

Hi,

for testing I installed a "HxC Slim" inside a 9153 HP-IB hard-disk + floppy enclosure to replace the 3.5" SONY drive and it worked fine. I have not yet tried to replace one of the older SONY drives in the 9121/9122 boxes.

I also tried to replace a Tandon TM-100-2A 5.25" disk drive in my 9130A disk unit (for the HP 86A) and there I was not able to get a stable system. The emulator has problems with seeking over larger number of tracks and so far I have not resolved the issue.
I guess it is a result of the HP 86A not using a standard floppy controller but rolling its own communication which may lead to slightly different timings.
The symptom is that an INITIALIZE command fills the disk track by track as it should, but when it returns to the first track to write the volume and directory structures the HP 86A gives me a "ERROR 130 : DISC".
On the other hand the HxC emulator works in other systems like the Tandy, so there is still hope that some tweaking may succeed.
One caveat is to use fast enough SD cards. Slow cards lead to errors.

You can easily import any LIF image file into the system and store it on a SD card. Multiple images can be cycled through by pressing a button.

See also Document describing my experience

Martin