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Frog floppy emulator


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Me thinks that if half the time spent posting here had been spent filtering the fixtures files down to ones required, then the problem would have been solved days ago!

 

I have to say as soemone who first had a sirius that the Frog with a floppy was great step forwards. Say ten years ago usb memory sticks were hugely expensive compare with a 3.5" disk.

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Me thinks that if half the time spent posting here had been spent filtering the fixtures files down to ones required, then the problem would have been solved days ago!

 

I have to say as soemone who first had a sirius that the Frog with a floppy was great step forwards. Say ten years ago usb memory sticks were hugely expensive compare with a 3.5" disk.

Not to mention extremely unreliable (could lose contents easily). Of course things are different now and the classical piece of unreliable hardware is the diskette - but at the time it was still in common use (and incidentally still is for computerised machinery). The original IBM PC (1981) had only diskette storage - no hard disk - and many others of the same period used the same or even cassette tapes!

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  • 1 year later...

I've got one of those USB Floppy emulator units previously mentioned to replace the original floppy in a Fat Frog.

 

Unfortunately, like a pillock I've lost the software CD that allows you you correctly format a USB stick.

I don't suppose anyone has the formatting software they could let me have a copy of?

I'd be very grateful!

 

TIA :)

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  • 2 years later...

So here we are in 2018, and I've just decided to replace the floppy disc drive in a much-used Fat Frog at a Suffolk theatre. Every show has different lighting needs and backing up show files to a flash drive is still important to us.

It's also useful to have personalities for a selection of LED and common intelligent lights.

I trawled through this useful thread (chortling at Tom Howard's rants) and took the plunge in April 2018. Everything has worked with the USB replacement, and it's a slick solution and upgrade for a reliable Zero 88 product.

1/ Buy a FDD Emulator, in this case a '3.5" 1.44Mb floppy drive MFM to USB flash disc emulator + CD Black' on E-bay from 'factoryselling100'. It took just over a week to arrive, came from the Far East and cost just £15.26

2/ Buy a USB flash drive

3/ Put something soft and padded on a workbench to protect the sliders and buttons, and lay the Fat Frog upside down.

4/ Remove the six screws holding each end profile and put to one side (carefully!)

5/ Remove the large black screws on the base (there are 24 screws total including the ends!). The front curved panel comes away, the rear is attached to sockets.

6/ Carefully lift the base up, tilting it to the back of the desk and supporting it. Take care of the ribbon cables and earth bond. It's handy to have two people to do this.

7/ Unplug the two ribbon cables to the floppy drive, tilt the base of the desk down to unscrew and remove the drive (four screws you hope you won't need again, but keep them in case)

8/ Tilting the base up again, fit the two ribbon cables to the emulator, hold it in position, then tilt the base down to fit the four self-threading screws (supplied with the emulator) to fix it in place. The holes should line up perfectly.

9/ Now is a good time to fit a new CR2032 battery - you'll see it gleaming on a circuit board, about the size of a 10p coin. Easily obtained from most retailers, as it's not a specialist battery.

Note that if you've had problems with data loss or the desk clock loses its time when you turn it off, the CR2032 battery has died. Don't wait until it does, replace it while you've got the Frog on the operating table.

10/ Carefully refit the base of the desk ensuring no ribbons or other cables are trapped. Align the screw holes and insert but don't tighten. Fit the rear and front panels and ensure they're aligned.

11/ Fit the end metal profiles, ensuring they line up with the panels each side, which fit in grooves in the end profiles. Insert the screws but don't tighten yet.

12/ Tighten all the base screws, then the end profile screws - checking before you do so that the front and rear panels are correctly located.

13/ The Frog can now come off the operating table and be turned right side up. Reconnect power and peripherals - keyboard, monitor, DMX

14/ Using a PC or laptop running Windows and the software mentioned earlier in this thread, partition your USB stick into 100 "floppies" of 1.44Mb. It actually appears that you don't have to do this, but we did so the Fat Frog didn't get confused. This process only takes a short time. http://www.ipcas.com...n-download.html

15/ If you're not running Zero 88 Fat Frog OS v10.12 (2009), it's worth downloading it from their site (under 'Legacy Desks'), popping it on your new flash drive and upgrading your desk. The process is described in detail earlier in this thread. One thing - it's worth putting the new OS on Partition 10. The reason: when you put the USB into the desk and power it up, the emulator defaults to '00' on the emulator display (actually Floppy or Partition 1), but you can swiftly select Partition 10 by pressing one button on the emulator so the desk sees that first as it boots up and will recognise there's new software available. Follow the directions on the LCD screen, not the monitor as it doesn't show anything during an upgrade!

16/ Once you've upgraded, select 00 on the emulator and test saving a show to disc by recording some memories and going through the normal process of saving to floppy disc - except you're now saving to a flash drive.

It will be recorded as Show 1. You can't add a show title. Now record a few more (different) memories and save those as Show 2. To test everything is working with the USB, go back and load Show 1 from disc, it will over-write Show 2 on the desk. Everything working as you expect?

17/ If you're feeling super keen you can download selected fixture personalities on a PC or laptop running Windows and put them onto one or multiple Partitions ('Floppies') on the USB, starting with 11. You can also have someone even keener write a personality for a specific new piece of kit which won't be in the fixture personalities list for legacy ("OLD") desks. Depends how desperate you are. Of course, the original Fat Frog personalities are still in the desk b ut there aren't many of them.

18/ Take care of your Fat Frog and it will continue to give service for another ten years. Considering ours was made in 2005, it's looking remarkably perky as it's just had a software and hardware upgrade to flash drive.

19/ Tip: If you want to test the faders, buttons and encoder wheels, turn the desk on while holding the F1 button down. Different flash buttons between 1 and 14 give you different test options.

20/ Many venues still use a Fat Frog or other Frog console with a floppy drive, and may be worried about swapping it out for a USB flash drive. Don't be! Go for it. You're out of warranty anyway...

 

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  • 3 years later...

Hi there

Now I realise that this is a (very) old thread but am hoping that someone out there has got the time and patience to read this and maybe help. A couple of years ago (pre-lockdown) I acquired a second hand fat frog for our local group. The desk appeared to be working fine so, following the advice in earlier posts, I also purchased an emulator to replace the FDD. Everything then went into Covid melt-down, the venue was closed and I never got as far as doing the conversion. Needless to say I've now picked this up again but have a couple of questions.

Firstly, I physically swapped out the two drives without any problem. I also attempted to partition a spare USB stick as previously advised. This didn't go entirely to plan as I couldn't re-create the 1.44MB blocks (8MB seemed to be the minimum size the partitioning software would allow in Windows 10). Reading other posts I'm not sure that this in itself should be a problem but I'm open to correction.

I then went on to fire up the Fat Frog. The new USB drive lit up reassuringly with a green LED above one of the buttons and the digital display showing three zeros. The red LED remained off. (I'm assuming this illuminates when the drive is being read or written to).

My first question is whether I should be able to scroll through the numeric display, using the buttons on the emulator, without a USB stick plugged in. If that's the case then I think I may have a faulty unit as the display remains firmly fixed on 000.

Secondly, how critical is it that the disk is partitioned into strict blocks of 1.44MB.

I did try to address the USB stick from the frog (I) to format the disk and (ii) to store some simple show settings but neither action worked because the drive was not found.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated

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On 4/28/2018 at 1:46 AM, UKTheatreTech said:

I trawled through this useful thread (chortling at Tom Howard's rants) and took the plunge in April 2018.

I've still not let it go, it still winds me up.

I always thought those USB emulators would only read and write at the size of floppy disks, so my guess is you may have to use another formatting tool to create many 1.44MB partitions. One of the main reasons I never did ours was as it didn't actually fix the problem of the partitions being too small to fit any files off the Zero88 website from.

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Thanks guys but I still need to know if I should be able to scroll through the drive numbers on the emulator without a flash drive plugged in. In other words are the buttons on the emulator independent of the desk. I’m sorry if it seems a stupid question but I need to establish first of all whether I have a faulty unit or not.

Thanks

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16 hours ago, anydm said:

Thanks guys but I still need to know if I should be able to scroll through the drive numbers on the emulator without a flash drive plugged in. In other words are the buttons on the emulator independent of the desk. I’m sorry if it seems a stupid question but I need to establish first of all whether I have a faulty unit or not.

Thanks

I think the answer is "Yes - you do need a flash drive plugged in" - how does the emulator know how far it can scroll on any given flash drive without having accessed the MBT on the device (which does hold the size information). In truth, the emulator probably hasn't fully initialised with no device plugged - it's down basic power up routines but can't do much else until it "sees" a device present.

Think trying to access a flash drive on your computer when that flash drive isn't actually plugged in...

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Thanks so much Ian. The problem therefore seems to be with formatting the flash drive which I don’t seem to be able to partition in the required format. If I simply plug in a usb stick (with no 1.44MB partitions) it isn’t found by the fat frog. Same happens when the stick is partitioned in 8MB chunks. So until I can configure the stick in the necessary 1.4MB partitions I don’t think I’ll be able to prove the emulator’s working 😟

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13 hours ago, anydm said:

Thanks so much Ian. The problem therefore seems to be with formatting the flash drive which I don’t seem to be able to partition in the required format. If I simply plug in a usb stick (with no 1.44MB partitions) it isn’t found by the fat frog. Same happens when the stick is partitioned in 8MB chunks. So until I can configure the stick in the necessary 1.4MB partitions I don’t think I’ll be able to prove the emulator’s working 😟

It's also worth bearing in mind that the USB stick needs to be formatted in FAT32 format (NTFS likely won't be understood by the emulator) and a block size of 4096 (the most efficient block size in FAT32 with no disc management). I'm guessing that the emulator itself does the partitioning management but I still wouldn't use sticks larger than 8Mb.

FWIW - I have a few floppy drives from Zero88 desks in spares stock and a small supply of new floppy discs if you want to go really retro :P

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