FlashFloppy - new firmware for Gotek drives, open source

[ikonsgr]

Originally Posted by kaffer

Amstrad DSK images are not supported. This may change (for unprotected disks, at least).

Well, not a big deal, since you can batch convert dsk to hfe very easy and fast using hxcfloppyemulator utility!
And may i ask, do you intend to support 2nd drive functionality in the future, and how this is implemented in practice? You just put images to slots of both virtual drives and when a disk is needed by software it will automatically search both drives, or we manually "Select drive" using a combination of the 2 buttons on gotek drive?

Btw, you really seem to be "sucked into" this, new versions are coming in... "burst mode", i flashed gotek with 0.6 version and by the time i was ready to test it, you already uploaded 0.7!

[Higgy]

It is an easy utility. But quite often I have this situation where on my phone/tablet (Android) I see a game/demo on the web, for example on Indie Retro News and I download it. Being able to extract the image and copy it to my USB stick directly from the phone/tablet is great, rather than having to turn on my PC, wait for updates, get distracted, convert the file etc etc

Firmware updates are addictive

[Jeff_HxC2001]

Originally Posted by Higgy

It is an easy utility. But quite often I have this situation where on my phone/tablet (Android) I see a game/demo on the web, for example on Indie Retro News and I download it. Being able to extract the image and copy it to my USB stick directly from the phone/tablet is great, rather than having to turn on my PC, wait for updates, get distracted, convert the file etc etc

Firmware updates are addictive

Soon an online version will be available, compatible with any device having a decent browser

[demolition]

Next thing we need is then support for USB wifi dongles so it can check and download updates automatically.

[Jeff_HxC2001]

@kaffer :

Interesting to find some parts of the HxC Floppy Emulator libhxcfe into your firmware :

https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy...rc/image/img.c

https://sourceforge.net/p/hxcfloppye...stfileformat.h

Isn't there some copyright and license compatibility issues there ?

Sure than copy & past others projects is quite easy and make the "burst mode releases" possible and easier

[Keir]

Originally Posted by Jeff_HxC2001

@kaffer :

Interesting to find some parts of the HxC Floppy Emulator libhxcfe into your firmware :

https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy...rc/image/img.c

https://sourceforge.net/p/hxcfloppye...stfileformat.h

Isn't there some copyright and license compatibility issues there ?

Sure than copy & past others projects is quite easy and make the "burst mode releases" possible and easier

Sure that's an interesting one, I took the 'facts about img files' from a forum post where the numbers were posted without copyright notice. And of course all the actual code / moving parts are original, where necessary based off libdisk code in https://github.com/keirf/Disk-Utilities

I will think about how to represent the img layout hints in a way that is not as it turns out a duplicate of GPL code.

[Keir]

Originally Posted by ikonsgr

And may i ask, do you intend to support 2nd drive functionality in the future, and how this is implemented in practice? You just put images to slots of both virtual drives and when a disk is needed by software it will automatically search both drives, or we manually "Select drive" using a combination of the 2 buttons on gotek drive?

I don't know whether this will happen. But conceptually the Gotek would respond on two separate "drive select" lines as two logically separate drives. You would load an image into each drive: perhaps third button would in this mode be used to switch between A and B drives, for example. The host would then behave as if two separate real drives are connected, eg DF0 and DF1.

Tbh it's quite non trivial to implement, it's unclear how reliably two select lines can be managed in software (we only just get away with managing one!), it'll be extra confusing to configure and manage, ... I'm not really chomping at the bit to implement this feature when I have plenty on the todo list.

[demolition]

Perhaps a different solution could be to support 'containers', where one container could for example contain all 4 disks of a game and every time you press button 3 it will toggle the disk in DF0 between each of the disks in the selected container (1->2->3->4->1->etc). Thus, it will only emulate DF0 but it could be useful for multi-disk games as it would add a layer so you would first choose the game and then the subdisk. It would mean faster navigation and easier management of large disk collections.

The containers could just be text files with the image file names listed inside. It would be similar to having 1-level folder navigation, but it might be useful to isolate the two.

[jgilcas]

I do not understand very well the sense of emulation of two units, if for example I want to play monkey island 2 (11 discs) I select only those 11 discs in the selector and I am moving them with previous and next

[ch40s_engineer]

yeah, same here. I am not sure if the effort will lead to a feature which is used often. Selecting the disks from the HxC file selector is fast and easy.

[Mq]

There is no sense to create special features to manage containers of disk images.
As far as I understand, in the near future directory management will be implemented? Then You will be able to place disk images of one game in the separate directory and you have your container.

[Keir]

Originally Posted by Mq666

There is no sense to create special features to manage containers of disk images.
As far as I understand, in the near future directory management will be implemented? Then You will be able to place disk images of one game in the separate directory and you have your container.

Yes.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by demolition

Perhaps a different solution could be to support 'containers', where one container could for example contain all 4 disks of a game and every time you press button 3 it will toggle the disk in DF0 between each of the disks in the selected container (1->2->3->4->1->etc).

That's kind of how I thought it would be cool to have.
Having two drives has the point of having no swapping (or rather button pressing :P) on two disk games or less in games with more disks, but if it is a pain in the ass to implement, I would really just ditch it indeed.

If/when you implement folder support, once you are in a folder, you could maybe do what demolition said, and third (fourth?) button can cycle between images in the current directory.

[Keir]

Originally Posted by Akira

That's kind of how I thought it would be cool to have.
Having two drives has the point of having no swapping (or rather button pressing :P) on two disk games or less in games with more disks, but if it is a pain in the ass to implement, I would really just ditch it indeed.

If/when you implement folder support, once you are in a folder, you could maybe do what demolition said, and third (fourth?) button can cycle between images in the current directory.

Current plan: Direction buttons will cycle through images plus ".." to return to parent folder. It will be interesting to see whether this suffices for people vs implementing some form of containers/grouping as a first-class configurable entity.

[antiriad76]

Interesting Fact: The MIPS STM32F105 on the 17$ Gotek Device is running at about 70 Mips or pretty close to a 68060 @ 50Mhz.

[Keir]

Interim release v0.7.1a

Some HFE reliability fixes and support for HFEv3.

https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/releases

[Franchute13]

Originally Posted by kaffer

Interim release v0.7.1a

Some HFE reliability fixes and support for HFEv3.

https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/releases

Beer for kaffer !!!

[gizmomelb]

Originally Posted by kaffer

Interim release v0.7.1a

Some HFE reliability fixes and support for HFEv3.

https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/releases

HOLY SHEET!!! support for copy protected disk images? freaking awesome work!

[Keir]

Originally Posted by gizmomelb

HOLY SHEET!!! support for copy protected disk images? freaking awesome work!

The awesome work here was Jeff's, defining the new format and working out how to generate it. The required firmware changes for merely reading it were surprisingly small.

[Dic_Ray]

I'm really impressed by your effort to create an open source firmware for the Gotek floppy emulator. But I'm concerned about Jeffs intellectual property.

AFAIK has Jeff created the HFEv3 format. So is it safe for you and the community to offer support for it in your newest firmware? For sure Jeff spend a lot of time, work and money to develop HcX.

I hope he wouldn't stop it, because your free firmware make his one for the Gotek obsolete. What do you think about that?