Floppy Emu Firmware Update: Mac HD Menu
I’ve added a new feature to the Macintosh/Lisa firmware for the Floppy Emu disk emulator: a menu for selecting disk images while running in Mac hard disk emulation mode. This is the mode that enables Floppy Emu to function as an HD20-type hard disk with compatible Macintosh models, with disk sizes up to 2 GB. Previously the hard disk image was always taken from a file named “HD20.dsk” on your SD card. If you had a few different hard disk image files, and wanted to select the right one for a given situation, you had to put the SD card into your Windows/OSX computer and rename the desired file to HD20.dsk. While this wasn’t a common need, it was not especially user-friendly.
Get the new firmware here: hd20-0.7F-F14.5
With the new firmware, the first time you run it you’ll see a hard disk image selection menu. The name of the chosen disk image file is saved in EEPROM memory, and will be used for all future sessions. If you later want to choose a different disk image file, the NEXT button will return you to the selection menu.
After choosing a new disk image for hard disk emulation mode, the Mac needs to be turned off and on (Floppy Emu will prompt you to do this), or you need to press the Mac’s hardware reset switch. That’s because the Mac doesn’t expect HD20-type drives to be removable media, and doesn’t recognize when the disk has changed. Without a reboot, it will blindly continue as if the original disk were still present, leading to unpleasant results.
I welcome your feedback on this change. Let me know if you run into any trouble.
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So far so good! 🙂
Thanks!
Kristian
How can I create an empty HD20 drive to test on a Mac Plus?
http://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/extras/blanks/ has some, or try the methods from section 9.2 of the manual.
I’m trying this command:
dd if=/dev/zero count=400000 of=MacPlus.dsk
It creates a 195 Meg file/HD. The Mac Plus when seeing it is trying to format it, but it does not mount. On the FEmu, the is a message showing the disk name (untitled) on the next line there is the word Goup followed by all lines of HEX values.
Does should I do the dd command with a specific block size?
Otherwise, I can see that I’m close to my goal 🙂
It may be easier to start with Gryphel’s blanks, which are already formatted. You could also format your zeroes file with Mini vMac before copying it to the SD card, if you suspect a problem with the formatting performed by your Plus. A real disk would always be some multiple of 512 bytes, so maybe 400000 is problematic. The group error means the Plus sent an invalid HD20 command.
After I posted my issue, I thought about the multiples of 512 bytes (maybe you should add this to your docs). So I modified my command to the following:
dd if=/dev/zero count=409600 of=MacPlus.dsk
Which creates a pure 200 Meg HD. After a few trial an error, the Plus finally was able to format it and it mounted on the desktop.
Within less than a minute I updated my Floppy Emu – everything is working fine ! A wonderful update making life easier !
Roland