- #Does a usb floppy emulator disable the 2nd floppy drive how to
- #Does a usb floppy emulator disable the 2nd floppy drive drivers
- #Does a usb floppy emulator disable the 2nd floppy drive full
- #Does a usb floppy emulator disable the 2nd floppy drive Pc
- #Does a usb floppy emulator disable the 2nd floppy drive plus
#Does a usb floppy emulator disable the 2nd floppy drive full
Since the code had to fit into the system ROM, they never implement the full HP-IB standard and normally expect a certain timing behavior of the drive they are talking to. They are responsible for loading an operating system from mass storage into R/W memory during the process of bootstrapping, and are usually part of the system firmware. Most delicate are so-called system boot loaders. Even the Viper cards (HP's measuring coprocessor cards) are running with HPDrive. Also many instruments which use HP-IB drives as mass storage.
But Series 80, 200, 300, 100 seem to work pretty well, too. However, since my personal focus is mostly on the HP 9845 series in combination with the emulation of the standard drives which are supported by this system, in general this is what is most thoroughly tested. Due to its generic design, it is now supporting many combinations of host systems and HP-IB drive emulations. HPDrive is by far not restricted to HP 9845 computers.
#Does a usb floppy emulator disable the 2nd floppy drive drivers
CS/80 and SS/80, which were successors of the AMGIO command set, are widely implemented, however since documentation of CS/80 and SS/80 hard drives in general doesn't include a description of certain drive side routines (so-called "utilities") and functionality is hard to guess, utilities - as far as they are used by host drivers - may or may not work.
Those protocols were quite popular at the time of the 9845s, and even the systems which followed the 9845s like the series 80 or series 200 systems mostly supported AMIGO based drives like the 9895A, the 82901 or the 9121. It now supports the AMIGO, the CS/80, and the SS/80 command sets, early semi-device-independent peripheral controls used over an underlaying HP-IB connection. HPDrive runs as a console application under Linux, Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10. The result was a mass storage emulator program: the HPDrive utility.
#Does a usb floppy emulator disable the 2nd floppy drive how to
So I decided to do all that work, scanning all the HP-IB commands which go forth and back between a 9845 host and the peripheral, checking out the manuals which describe higher level HP-IB based command sets like the AMIGO command set, finding out how to low level program those GPIB boards under modern operating systems and whatever was needed to get this task done. But it can be quite useful, especially if you don't own other mass storage in working condition. The emulator can work with much higher speed than the original drives.Ĭertainly, an emulator will never really replace the feeling with a real vintage drive, reading real vintage floppies, making all that noise, and drawing lots of power.The emulator can be configured to simulate different types of drives, firmware revisions and media.The emulator can use binary image files as replacement of real mass storage media, so direct archiving is simplified.
#Does a usb floppy emulator disable the 2nd floppy drive Pc
#Does a usb floppy emulator disable the 2nd floppy drive plus
At the PC side, only a suitable IEEE488/GPIB interface card is needed, plus the emulator program itself. Since the 98034A interface is the only peripheral interface which is directly supported by the 9845 operating system (besides the 98041A disk interface), it is probably a good idea to build this emulator for use with an HP-IB connection. If you can't find a 9895A drive or any other mass storage in working condition, emulating a real vintage drive on a conventional PC is an attractive alternative. If you own one, a floppy disk drive like the 9895A is certainly a good choice, of course in combination with the appropriate 98034A/B HP-IB interface. Since today most of the built-in tape drive systems fail (and because using those tape drives as storage - even if they do work - is not recommended anyway), another type of mass storage peripheral is needed. If you got a working vintage computer system like the HP 9845 you probably want use some mass storage as well.