Epson serial floppy drives emulated with Arduino and SD-card

[fjkraan]

Hi All,

Recently I managed to get the PFBDK sketch from William Cooke working AND have it in a cool case. Currently I am working on extending the code to make it somewhat more flexible and maybe even more convenient.


The code is at https://github.com/electrickery/pxdisk_mega, more images are at https://electrickery.nl/comp/tf20/pxdisk/

Greetings,
Fred Jan

P.S. It is all a distraction for the Oval-simulator, but at least I'm working with the Epson's again .

 

[Fezzler]

I built one of these. Slightly different. But it can swap files and drive images. I think the BACKPACK (BPD+) sold by Hey Birt! also works with the PX8/HX20.

 

[fjkraan]

Hi @Fezzler,
Cool device, I hadn't seen it before (but I wasn't really looking). Build like a professional product with custom case, image management and firmware update build in. But alas closed source. OK if you just want to use the device, but not if you want to know how it works and maybe extend it. That is the fun for me .
Greetings,

 

[RetroHospital]

The backpack of Jeff / Stardust works with the px8 with an adapter board ( I have one )

Imho however It’s more meant for Tandy MT - making it work with Epson requires flashing the firmware and adapters - and then you need to reflash to use the M100 again - so it’s a bit of a pain .

 

[fjkraan]

To make the PFBDK more versatile, I created some CP/M programs for the PX-4 to manage the images mounted on the drives. It is quite minimal and not properly tested yet. But the nice thing is that the programs uses some custom created epsp commands added to the PFBDK firmware. PX-8 (or universal) versions will be added later.

PFDIR4 - display SD-card root directory
PFMNT4 - mount a SD-card image file to a drive
PFNEW4 - create a new empty image on the SD-card
PFWP4 - manage write protect flag of a drive

Fred Jan

 

[fritzeflink]

Does someone has a TF20 floppydrive and can test the disks I made ?
I used the one from electrickery as my old teledisk images are bad.
Thanks Fred Jan.

 

[fjkraan]

Hi Fritz,

I do have a working TF-20, but no longer a DOS-PC to run IMD... There is the Catweasle MK4 in a Linux PC with the proper drives that works with DMK2CW, but I forgot how to convert to that format. I'll check some more options....

But thanks for the opportunity to show off the new case for the PFBDK ;-).

 

[fritzeflink]

Hi Fred Jan,

I made the images for Werner Römer who will send them to Switzerland with some spezial cables for the PX8.
I even have a dos-system ( I like the real floppy drives including 8") with a catweasel mk1 so I could convert them to
dmk. Even under linux or windows there is the HxC emulator software which can covert to several formats.

As Werner has no TF-20 - i think he was in contact with you in the past - I made the disks and images.

The PFBDF looks great. It looks like it was made with plasticant - I played with in my child time.

 

[fjkraan]

Well, it is a toy, isn't ?

One other option was complete and test the Greaseweasle board. Started long ago, but bogged down by fake STM32-F1 boards. With genuine boards, it now works. The safer option is the custom Greaseweasle boards. I will get one now. More expensive, but proper buffering.

The HXBOOT.IMG written to a 40 tracks 5 1/4" drive boots the TF-20 and a PX-8 can display the directory:
COPY.UTL
PROTECT.BIN

The invisible BOOT.SYS and DBASIC.SYS are also present.

The PX8TF20.IMD also boots and contains PX-8 utilities:
C>dir d:
D: COPY UTL : PROTECT BIN : ASM COM : CRC TXT
D: CONFIG COM : COPYDISK COM : KERMIT COM : DDT COM
D: DISKCOPY COM : DL COM : DUMP COM : FORMAT COM
D: LOAD COM : PIP COM : STAT COM : SUBMIT COM
D: UL COM : XSUB COM : LSWEEP COM : PXQXNSWP COM
D: PXTEST COM : PXUTIL COM : VDE3 COM : VDE3 DOC
D: WS COM : WSMSGS OVR : WST COM : WSX BAS
D: WSX COM : NSWP COM
C>

Greetings,
Fred Jan

 

[fritzeflink]

Well, it is a toy, isn't ?

Yes and thank you very much ....