anyone ever used a floppy drive emulator?

[volg4]

saw these on ebay and wondering if anyones used one before?
looks like its plug and play and can emulate 100 floppies on a USB stick

looking at picking one or two up if they work, for use in an akai s01 and a yamaha rm1x

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290794335720

cheers 

[Big Chris]

Hi!

I haven't had any experience with those floppy drive emulators, but I do have a HxC emulator in my Roland MC-50 sequencer. The kind of ones that you've linked to are pretty crude by comparison, and I have heard that they aren't very useful for music gear as they only emulate a PC floppy drive. The drives in most music gear tends to be a bit quirky, but the HxC can be configured to handle most variations.

There's a guy from Poland on eBay who makes the HxC emulators in various form factors. The actual design of the board and firmware programming was by a French guy, and he essentially "open sourced" it so that anyone could build them royalty free. The Polish guy makes them so well that he's pretty much eclipsed all the other people making them.

HxC homepage:

http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/

According to the compatibility list, the Akai S01 is supported!

Chris

[Circuitbenders]

Those ebay ones won't work in any akai as far as i know. I think they were originally designed for use in sewing machines and ancient CNC machines, but i could be wrong about that. Theres a few people around the net who have tried them in samplers without success. The Hxc ones will work, but they cost more than buying a sampler, or another RM1X

[volg4]

nice one! thanks for the replies guys...
those hxc ones are a bit more expensive but look like the business

hows that working out on the mc-50?


i know what you mean about prices paul, just picked up an akai S01 for £11, it was £15 for postage!! :>)

[Big Chris]

hows that working out on the mc-50?

Works really well. I took a chance when I saw that the Roland W30 was supported, since that's essentially an MC50 and S330 sampler with a better screen. Cost wise, it was actually cheaper than the CF card reader I fitted to my Akai S3000XL once I'd factored in the cost of cables, as the HxC just connects straight onto the existing floppy cable.