exidysorcerer.net

Hi All,

I have connected the Exidy FDS disk controller to a Lotharek SD Floppy emulator using a 77 track single sided Exidy FDS CP/M disk image that was supplied by Exidyboy.

Well it works 100% and boots perfectly and also reads and writes.

Next step is to connect a real micropolis 77 track 100 TPI 5.25" drive unit on the same floppy cable as the SD Floppy emulator and try to copy/create a real 5.25" Floppy Disk image.

i.e. SD Floppy emulator drive 0 and 5.25" Micropolis drive 1.

I have some 34 way IDC to 34 way edge adapter PCB's from Blue Lava Systems. This will allow me to connect the SD Floppy emulator (34 pin IDC) on the original Exidy FDS 34 way edge floppy drive cable.
Regards,
John Halk

Thanks for previous work from ChickenMan, RedskullDC and exidyboy - I have managed to use Windows CPMTOOLS patched with Exidy 77 track FDS diskdefs to list and extract files from the raw disk image.

# Sorcerer FDS 5.25" SS DD 77T
diskdef exidyfds
seclen 128
tracks 77
sectrk 32
heads 1
blocksize 2048
maxdir 128
skewtab 10,11,20,21,30,31,8,9,18,19,28,29,6,7,16,17,26,27,4,5,14,15,24,25,2,3,12,13,22,23,0,1
boottrk 2
os 2.2
end

With the HXC Floppy SDCARD Emulator connected to the Exidy FDS disk controller - I am using an Exidy FDS .DSK image converted to .HFE disk format.

With using CPMTOOLS to extract files from the .DSK image using an Exidy FDS 77 Track FDS disk definition first requires the Exidy FDS CPC EMU (*.DSK) image to be converted to RAW format before you can successfully extract the files.

I am using HxCFloppyEmulator software on Windows to do the conversion from .DSK to .RAW format and to .HFE (and to .MFM).

I have not been able to add files to the RAW archive and then convert back to .HFE format with the HXC Floppy Emulator. So the CPMTOOLS file extraction is only one way at the moment.

I have come up with another method to successfully add files to the Exidy FDS .DSK disk format.

I am using Sorcerer MAME Emulation with Dreamdisk floppy disk controller CP/M support.

- Load MAME with Dreamdisk FDC support and attach a Dreamdisk CP/M disk image as Drive A:
- Using the Dreamdisk CP/M "setdisk" utility - I attach the Exidy Format Disk image as Drive B:
- I can then copy files from Dreamdisk CP/M format disks over the Exidy Format Disk mounted on Drive B:

The only thing to watch out for is that MAME can only R/W to a .MFM format disk image - .DSK images are read only.
So you need to use the MAME "floptool" utility to convert the Exidy FDS .DSK image to .MFM format and mount the .MFM format under Mame.

Floptool Container FM/MFM Table:
dsk r- - CPC DSK Format [dsk]
hfe r- - SDCard HxC Floppy Emulator HFE File format [hfe]
mfm rw - HxCFloppyEmulator floppy disk image [mfm]
td0 r- - Teledisk disk image [td0]
imd r- - IMD disk image [imd]

From above table only mfm format is R/W under Mame.

This allows MAME to R/W to the attached Drive B: FDS Image using .MFM format.

Last step is to convert .MFM format back to .HFE format using the HxCFloppyEmulator software for use on the Sorcerer.

It's quite a process but it works !

Regards,
John Halk