Whizzzy

I have tried 2 different flash drives, one has 1G and the other 512M. Both behave exactly the same in terms of inconsistent file reading.

Hi Peter, Thanks for the input on this. Yes I did use exactly the same emulator, ordered from i889900 in Hong Kong and also used the partioning software from the ipcas site as you have linked to. As you say the 32 and 4 way connectors can only really go in one way and the fact that the emulator is working about 75% of the time indicates that it is not a connection issue. I have tried a couple of different flash drives, one being a Kingston so I don't believe it is an issue with these either. As mentioned in the earlier post everything works fine and all files can be accessed if I just look in the partitions where I know files are stored but as soon as I try to access any partition where no files are stored then this is when it all goes pear-shaped. Ok, you could say that I should just stick to looking in the partitions where I know files exist but in the heat of the moment it will be easy for me or someone to search other partitions and unwittingly end up in the position where the desk will need to be re-initialised to get up and running again. So I am convinced something is happening between the emulator and the desk when a .cft of .isf file can't be found. The desk is running on firmware V13.3 and OS V10.12.1 if that has any bearing on things. Colin

The activity on this tread seems to have gone a bit quiet so I would like to share my recent experiences in trying to replace the floppy dive with an emulator. Like a previous OP I ordered one of these from the far east on Ebay. Arrived in about 10 days or so but without any datasheet or instructions on the various options provided by several internal jumper settings. Swapping the floppy drive out with the emulator was a straightforward exercise and on advice earlier in this thread I changed the Bios battery as well. So far so good. I then downloaded one of the partitioning applications and attempted to format the flash stick into a number of partitions which is where I encountered the first issue as my normal home pc is still running with Vista. After a number of aborted attempts it was clear this wasn't going to work so changed to an old laptop running Windows XP. This worked ok and so using an old 512Mb stick I partitioned it into 50 sections. At this stage I haven't had chance to test if the application will run under Windows 7 or 8 so this is something to be aware of. Knowing how fussy the Fat Frog can be in reading floppies which have not been formatted on that device I then proceeded to format the first 10 partitions of the flash drive using the Fat Frog. The flash drive was then transferred back to the laptop so that a number of fixture and show files could be saved. This is fairly straightforward but again with an earlier comment you must remember to consciously save the files in each partition, if you simply copy and paste the files over then exit the application the files will not be saved. I stored a number of different fixture files and show files into the first three partitions on the flash drive, remember that partition 1 is actually '00'. The flash drive was then transferred to the FatFrog. Across the three partitions some files could be read and some were not visible; this transpired to be a problem with my file naming convention and it was due to using a truncated file name rather can keeping it short and within the character limits of a DOS file. So tip No.2 is keep the file names short and without spaces, etc. The third issue I encountered and which still remains is that if I select the floppy emulator to partition 4 (03) and no file is stored in that partition the Frog tries to read the file and naturally reports back that no files can be found. If you then change the emulator back to partition 1 or 2 where I know files are stored then the Fatfrog again reports back as 'no files can be found' even though I know that both show and fixture files are stored in those partitions. What is also odd is that when the enter button is pressed on the FatFrog in order to initiate the file search it reports back immediately that 'no xxxx files found' instead of the usual "Reading Drive - Please Wait". The only way to recover this situation is to power down the Frog and re-initialise everything which is a bit of a pain. At this stage the only work-around I can see will be to store a random or dummy fixture file (.cft) and show file (.isf) in every partition on the flash drive so that even if no wanted files are stored then at least the emulator doesn't go into this state where it seems to be buffering the file access. If anyone has any suggestion on how to overcome this final hurdle then it would be good to hear from you.