The HxC Floppy Emulator is a piece of hardware that can emulate 1 or 2 floppy drives using image files stored into an SD or SDHC card. More information about the design of this device on the HxC2001 site:
The HxC Floppy Emulator is built and sold by Lotharek and can be ordered here:
This project TRS80_HxC aims at developing a bootable utility allowing the TRS-80 user to pre-select one or two disk images into "slot" positions. The user can then select a slot in a list and boot the computer on it.
This tool can be used either as a bootable image (AUTOBOOT.HFE)
or an LS-DOS 6 executable (HXC/CMD).
It configures the HxC-2001 Floppy Emulator in slot mode, each slot referencing one or two disk images for drives A: and B: (or :0 and :1).
Currently, this tool can be run on TRS-80 models 4/4D and 4p.
A pre-release version (v0.1.2-alpha) can be found in the Releases section.
The SD Card must be formatted in FAT32/LBA. The partition type must be 0C.
This can be checked with the Windows tool DISKPART:
DISKPART> list vol
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 E DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 1 C BOOT NTFS Partition 56 GB Healthy System
Volume 2 I USBSANDISK2 exFAT Removable 232 GB Healthy
* Volume 3 G FAT32 Removable 14 GB Healthy
Volume 4 H USB DISK FAT32 Removable 115 GB Healthy
DISKPART> select vol 3
Volume 3 is the selected volume.
DISKPART> detail part
Partition 1
Type : 0C
Hidden: No
Active: No
Offset in Bytes: 4194304
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
* Volume 3 G FAT32 Removable 14 GB Healthy
DISKPART>
An HxC config file must also be present in the root folder of the SD card. This
can be created under Windows with the tool HxCFloppyEmulator.exe. If the Floppy
Emulator is installed to emulate 2 drives, check "2 drives emulation".
Save the config file to the root folder of your SD card as HXCSDFE.CFG.
Copy the AUTOBOOT.HFE file to the root folder on the SD card.
Insert the SD card in the Floppy Emulator and power on the system.
Select AUTOBOOT.HFE and let the system boot on it.
A welcome screen appears. Press any key to show the slot selector. At first, the list of slots appears empty.
We'll first select a system disk image for drive A: (or :0). Let's
press the A key. We get a choice of options:
S: select a disk image to use as A: drive;D: delete the entry from the list;C: change slot (return to the main selection menu).
We press the S key to select an image. We get a file selector, which allows us to browse the available .HFE files and folders on the SD card. After moving the cursor on a .HFE file, we have a new choice of options:
I: Information - show some information on the selected file, such as the number of tracks, the density (single or double), the number of sides, the stepping of the head between tracks (1 or 2 steps) and the Write-Protect status;W: Write-Protect - shows the current write-protect status, and allows to change it (by pressingYorN). PressENTERto keep the current setting. Note that this alters a flag in the header of the .HFE disk image file;ENTER: Select the file image for the selected drive (A: or B:) in the current slot.
Let's select a bootable disk image and press ENTER. The name of the
selected disk image is shown in the list of slots under the column
Drive A.
If the Floppy Emulator is installed in the system to emulate two
floppy drives, we can select another disk image to use as drive B:
(or :1). We'll repeat the same procedure as above but pressing the
key B instead of A. We'll see the name of another disk image under
the column Drive B.
We can now boot the system on the selected slot. If we press ENTER,
the first time we'll see Enter=REBOOT in the help line at the
bottom of the screen. If we press ENTER again, the system will
boot using the drive(s) in the selected slot.
If we power off the TRS-80, then power it on again, the system will
reboot on the AUTOBOOT.HFE, showing the slots selector, with the
cursor on the last used slot.
We can also use the buttons on the Floppy Emulator to cycle through
the configured slots (using the left and right buttons) and to directly
select AUTOBOOT.HFE (using the center button).
The maximum number of slots depends on the size of the HXCSDFE.CFG
file in the root folder of the SD card. By default, this number is
limited to 55 for a file size of 8 kB.
Another limitation is the number of image files per folder on the
SD card. The browser can show up to 255 files and folders. Hence
the maximum number of .HFE files is 255 minus the number of folders
(including the up-folder [..]) in each folder.
In LS-DOS 6, the tool can be invoked from the command line.
Copy HXC/CMD to an LS-DOS 6 formatted diskette image. To invoke it,
type the command HXC. The operation is identical as with the bootable
version of the tool.
HxC Floppy Emulator File Selector would not have been possible without
the contribution of the following people:
Jean-Francois Del Nero who designed that fantastic piece of hardware, the HxC Floppy Emulator.
Przemyslaw "Lotharek" Krawczyk from Poland, who builds and sells HxC Floppy Emulators.
Many thanks to them!
Created by Michel Bernard (michel_bernard@hotmail.com) - http://www.github.com/GmEsoft/TRS80_HxC
Copyright (c) 2023 Michel Bernard. All rights reserved.
This file is part of TRS80_HxC.
TRS80_HxC is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
TRS80_HxC is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with TRS80_HxC. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.