DOS ain't dead

HxC SD card floppy emulator / Virtual Floppy Drive / Flopper (Announce)

posted by Arjay, 07.05.2010, 17:27
(edited by Arjay on 07.05.2010, 21:28)

> > after that there will be no floppy disk manufacturer left in he market.
People will fill the gap where there are still needs. Indeed have you not seen the excellent HxC Floppy Emulator? See also this HxC site and the forum. I did recently spot that Lotharek (an official seller) is now selling HxC emulators via ebay as user lotharek1977. At the time of writing has has some listed under "SD CARD Floppy Emulator". Lotharek's homepage is http://atari.plof.pl/ and he has more info and pics here in Polish.

I sadly don't currently own one but can clearly see these devices are well designed and built, so yes I want one I have read a number of other peoples reviews giving the device good reviews. Ebay feedback is also very good. HxC has tested as a PC drive according to the PDF documentation but currently most people buying them are using them on machines like Atari's etc. Note: I have no business links with anyone involved with HxC.

Update: Just realized someone might comment re low cost SD to IDE adapters or compact flash adapter to IDE adapters. Also good but I like the look of the flexibility of HxC and the fact that HxC is aimed at being a direct HW drop in floppy drive replacement which for those of us with a selection of machines is particularly useful.


Ken Kato's Virtual Floppy Drive for Windows also works really well and comes with the GPL'd C++ source code. I doubt VFD will work with HX "as is" but maybe someone might be interested in porting VFD to DOS?

> One can emulate floppies using BOCHS (Pentium 3 and above) ... but no
> legacy DOS kernel can mount a floppy image itself
Indeed I am unaware of a DOS kernel allowing this and have briefly thought about it. To boot floppies under an existing DOS there is also Jeff's (DOSferatu) Flopper. It works well but needs the initial interrupt vector table to be captured first - that is obviously possible to do without a floppy drive (I touch on that in IVTUTIL's docs).

> it comes out one day, if ever (my periods of temporary death might not go
I hope you are ok? Certainly I look forward to seeing your finished work.

Complete thread:

• FYI: DEATH (again, after cca 30 years) - DOS386, 07.05.2010, 05:07 (Announce)
  • HxC SD card floppy emulator / Virtual Floppy Drive / Flopper - Arjay, 07.05.2010, 17:27
    • DEATH / HxC SD card floppy emulator / Virtual Floppy Drive - DOS386, 08.05.2010, 07:02
      • DEATH / HxC SD card floppy emulator / Virtual Floppy Drive - Arjay, 08.05.2010, 13:18
        • Other hardware floppy emulators - using USB sticks on ebay - Arjay, 08.05.2010, 16:43
        • DEATH / HxC SD card floppy emulator / Virtual Floppy Drive - DOS386, 13.05.2010, 03:51
  • FYI: DEATH (again, after cca 30 years) - Rugxulo, 08.05.2010, 13:35
    • FYI: DEATH (again, after cca 30 years) - Arjay, 08.05.2010, 13:55
  • floppyem.sys - config.sys Floppy Emulator device driver - Arjay, 08.05.2010, 18:03
    • floppyem.sys - config.sys Floppy Emulator device driver - rr, 08.05.2010, 21:12
      • floppyem.sys - config.sys Floppy Emulator device driver - Arjay, 09.05.2010, 00:39
  • FDD emulator - Vehudis, 09.05.2010, 08:46
    • FDD emulators - fakedisk (read-only) + DF-IFS (read/write) - Arjay, 09.05.2010, 12:27
  • FYI: DEATH (again, after cca 30 years) - roytam, 09.05.2010, 09:48