Help with HxC for CCS S100 System

[jgrant911]

I have a California Computer Systems S-100 system with dual 8" Shugart SA800/801 drives (picture attached) along with a newly purchased Lotharek HxC RevC Emulator. My objective is to be able to boot and run from either floppy or the HxC emulator.

My problem is that the 8" floppy drives have become unreliable (won't read disks) and now my only access to the system is via the CPM 2.2 MOSS Monitor. While I try to troubleshoot and hopefully repair the floppy system I am hoping there is some way to load a bootable version of CPM 2.2, compatible with the CCS system, onto the HxC Emulator. I must admit that my lack of familiarity with the HxC unit and how it works in the CPM environment is keeping me from making progress with this.

I do have my original CPM 2.2 floppy (and multiple copies) and have found some information on creating images for the HxC including possible CPM .IMD image files but I am not at all sure how to get from this to a working emulator. Here's the options I'm looking at:

1. Find a compatible CPM file and figure out how to load it and other programs directly to the HxC SD RAM (using my Windows PC). Not sure how to do this or if it is possible.
2. Get help from the local Vintage Computer community to transfer files to the HxC from a working CPM system. Also not sure how to do this.

It seems likely that someone on this forum has gone through a similar process and could probably explain the steps necessary to configure the HxC and get the correct files into it.

Let me know if you can help!

Thanks,

Jim G.

 

[jgrant911]

Update:

I had to leave this problem alone for quite a while (out of frustration and having to deal with other priorities). I got back to it a couple of months ago and eventually figured out (after much circuit probing and testing along with great support from Herb Johnson at retrotechnology.com) that it was mostly just bad floppies causing my problems. I created a batch of new boot disks and I am back on the trail of installing the HxC emulator. Not there yet, but learning lots.

Most people that attempt this seem to have luck using a Windows PC to program the HxC and transfer file to it. My Widows PC doesn't have a 34 pin floppy port so I am trying to use the HxC tools running on my PC to configure the appropriate files to load on the HxC SD card via USB to make it recognizable to my S-100's CCS 2422 Floppy Controller. Unfortunately the user instructions for the HxC are not very specific to this particular application. Hopefully I will eventually figure it out and be able to pass the info along to others in a similar situation.

Cheers!

Jim