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The HxC Floppy Emulator Firmware Customization

With this page you can customize the HxC firmware for STM32 or ARTERY AT32 based floppy emulators (Gotek and all clones)

Fill up the following form to customize the firmware. The firmware will be recompiled/rebuilt following your requests and sent to the provided email some minutes later.
This is a fully automated and free service so don't hesitate to play with it ! :).

Note: Once your new firmware is flashed you may need to clear the drive internal settings to use some of your default settings : Press the right button at power up to clear them.

If you get any problem or question please contact us too ! (Visit the "Contact us" page.)

Standard firmware : HXCFEUSB_Gotek_HxC_firmware.zip
Releases notes : USB_HFE_hxc_floppy_emulator_firmware_release_notes.txt
User manual : User manual.

Last update: 2024-03-20 21:59

Firmware base code version : v5.2.1.6a

Hardware modifications/extensions support

Rotary Type

Misc / Default setup

Default Step sound setting

Default standby timeout

Sound step volume

Default auto select delay

The USB stick write swap file is a new feature currently under test.
This help Artery/AT32 Goteks with small internal RAM size (32KB vs 64KB) to have better reliability with big sectors,tracks and format write operations.

If you want to test the Gotek IO lines you can enable the following option.
The drive will automatically toggle all outputs and show you all inputs state.
See the release notes for more details.

Reversed ribbon message timeout

General screen setup

Default backlight standby timeout

Default text scroll speed

Default characters per line

OLED Screen setup

Here you can setup the OLED support : Change the I2C address, select the model, change the text font.

OLED Model

Text font

Minimum row alignment

Screen top margin

Screen left margin

Max number of text lines to display

Default screen contrast

Default screen background

I2C bus speed

On screen display support (OSD overlay)

The HxC firmware for Gotek now support the On Screen Display !
You can now select images and see the drive status on the machine's screen without any additional software and at any moment
No need to have LCD/OLED anymore.

Basically you only need 2 wires and a resistor to connect the Gotek to the machine video signals : One wire is used for the CSYNC video signal (Composite Sync), the other wire for the red, green (prefered) or blue signal.
One resistor must be put in serie on the color signal between the gotek and the machine.
You can use a value between 220 and 470 ohms for the resistor

This was currently tested on Amiga 500, Amstrad CPC 6128 and Atari STE machines, but should work with any machines having a composite sync signal.

On machines without CSYNC signal available you can enable the additional input for the VSYNC signal.

Please check the manual/instructions for more details !

CSYNC/HSYNC source pin

Screen / resolution type

OSD Start line

Standby splash screen

Power up splash text Line 0

Power up splash text Line 1

Page 0 Line 0

Page 0 Line 1

Page 1 Line 0

Page 1 Line 1

Page 2 Line 0

Page 2 Line 1

Page 3 Line 0

Page 3 Line 1

Page 4 Line 0

Page 4 Line 1

Page 5 Line 0

Page 5 Line 1

Page 6 Line 0

Page 6 Line 1

Page 7 Line 0

Page 7 Line 1

7 segments display splash screen

First digit

Second digit

Third digit

File image formats support

Raw file image family preference

User defined raw file image/disk format

You can define here a raw file image/disk geometry.

Number of track

Number of sectors

Number of sides

Encoding

Sector size

Track first sector ID

Inter-sectors spacing (GAP3)

Sectors interleaving

Sectors skew per track

Sectors skew per side

Bitrate (bitcells)

RPM

Floppy Interface mode

File extension

Direct access / host control support

The host machine can send special commands and access to the whole flash media through the floppy interface thanks to the direct access protocol.
This support is needed by the Atari ST / Amiga / Amstrad CPC HxC File selector and others specials tools.
Note : If needed, follow this link to download the direct access protocol documentation.

Firmware identification

FW Version ID

Track access

Default number of sectors

Sector size

Encoding

Bitrate (in kb/s)

Inter-sectors spacing (GAP3)

Sectors interleaving

USB Stick folder to FAT/DOS virtual floppy auto-mount

This feature allows you to directly put your files in a stick's folder and mount this folder as a FAT/DOS floppy disk.
See the release notes or the manual for the usage details.

Empty FAT/DOS image path

Mounted FAT/DOS image path

USB Stick Image-less mode

The HxC firmware is able to emulate floppy disks directly from the USB Stick partitions.
This mean that you can easily exchange files without the need of any floppy image
with machines supporting the common DOS/FAT file system.
You need to prepare the USB stick to use the Image-less mode.
Some USB stick files are available in the Image_Less_Mode folder in the firmware archive.
You can write them with rufus or dd or any other tool.
When this feature is enabled, the firmware is also compatible with the original Gotek "Batch Manage Tool" software.
Please have a look to the documentation for more details !

USB Stick format function built-in disk image

Config user interface

Here you can disable the embedded configuration functions (config files/menus/...).
This may help to reduce the risk of user’s mistake in some critical/sensitive environments.

HXCSDFE CFG

Autoboot/File selector file name

STARTUPA Image

STARTUPB Image

User Interface mode

Indexed mode filename prefix

Note : You can specify a full path in the above file names and prefix if you want to change
the configurations files and indexed images place on the usb stick.
examples : /configurations/HXCSDFE.CFG, /floppyimages/DSKA****, ...

Floppy interface

The non-gated mode is a workaround to the software based floppy bus gating.
When enabled the output lines are driven permanently.
This fix issues with some machines (Korg Trinity and some others).
Note: This mode shouldn’t be enabled for machines with more than one floppy drive unit.

Default Write protect

Head settling time

Motor ON - Ready delay

Motor input line

Floppy Interface mode

Advanced pin 2 configuration

Advanced pin 34 configuration

Bitrate override

Read emulation pipeline buffer size

QuickDisk Support

When the QuickDisk mode is enabled, the Gotek become a QuickDisk floppy drive emulator.

Please note that in this mode all normal floppy file images format support are irrevelant and are disabled. Only a specific QuickDisk image format is currently supported.

In this mode the Floppy port pinout change.

Please check the manual for more details !

Only set the following options if needed by your machine:

Apple II Support

Build order

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HxC Floppy Emulator project Legal Mentions (C)2006-2024 HxC2001 / Jean-François DEL NERO