Frog floppy emulator

[jonhole]

3 hours ago, ianknight said:

a small supply of new floppy discs if you want to go really retro

You mean you've 3D printed the save icon?! 😉

[ianknight]

20 hours ago, jonhole said:

You mean you've 3D printed the save icon?! 😉

No... I actually have a stock of TDK floppy discs...

"One mans rubbish is another mans gold"

[anydm]

I seem to have made some progress on this insofar as I've now been able to format the USB pen drive into 100 x 1.44MB 'floppies'. However the FF still does not seem to be able to communicate with the emulator nor, as suggested by Ian, can I scroll through the 'floppies' on the emulator digital readout with the USB plugged into the emulator. I'm now at a bit of a loss!

[ianknight]

19 hours ago, anydm said:

I seem to have made some progress on this insofar as I've now been able to format the USB pen drive into 100 x 1.44MB 'floppies'. However the FF still does not seem to be able to communicate with the emulator nor, as suggested by Ian, can I scroll through the 'floppies' on the emulator digital readout with the USB plugged into the emulator. I'm now at a bit of a loss!

You're making some progress then :)

Because it's a Frog - I think it would be vital to have the USB stick plugged in before you power up the desk otherwise the emulator might not initialise fully and read the MBT on the stick.

The Frog "polls" the floppy drive as it boots by doing a read of track 0 sector 0 - which is how the update bootloader gets loaded for the update software but the desk doesn't then bother with the drive until you do a Load/Save Show operation. It might be that unless the emulator "knows" a stick is plugged in as it initialises it will return a "Disk not present" code when it's sent a drive operation. (This is why on PC's with "plug n play" that a drive always spins up when a disk is inserted - that's the OS getting a message that it needs to read the disk to make it ready for use).

Also - check on the emulator for a keyway on the large IDC cable - if there isn't as keyed connector on the emulator (some drives don't have a connector body just the pins) - it may simply be an upside down cable.

[anydm]

Thanks again Ian. Unfortunately I’ve tried booting the desk with and without the pen drive plugged in, both to no avail. I’ve also noticed that the green (power?) led comes on at power  up but goes off after a few seconds. The red led, which I’m assuming is the drive busy light, doesn’t come on at all.

[anydm]

Should also have mentioned that the data cable is definitely plugged in correctly as it does have the alignment pin on one side.

[ianknight]

4 hours ago, anydm said:

Thanks again Ian. Unfortunately I’ve tried booting the desk with and without the pen drive plugged in, both to no avail. I’ve also noticed that the green (power?) led comes on at power  up but goes off after a few seconds. The red led, which I’m assuming is the drive busy light, doesn’t come on at all.

I wouldn't expect the busy light to come on unless you were doing a file save/load operation - it's probably connected to the same data line as on a normal floppy. The green LED is about what I'd expect with the initialisation sequence...

I'm almost out of idea's not being next to the desk - how confident are you about opening a PC? If it's a relatively old PC - it might well have a Floppy connection - I'd be trying the emulator to ensure it is actually working?

Sorry but that's about as far as I can manage without being next to the desk - old age and so on 😛

[anydm]

I do have an old pc base unit in the loft which I opened up the other day. (I don’t have any problem with doing this kind of stuff). The only issue is I don’t still have all the (plug in!!) peripherals such as mouse keyboard etc. The pc has a floppy drive which I disconnected and replaced with the emulator. This however was before I’d been able to format the pen drive and not surprisingly when I fired up the pc I got the same results as when I first tried it in the FF. I’ll have another go now I’ve sorted the pen drive but, as I say, it’s only effectively energising the emulator as I can’t really do anything else via the pc without all the peripherals. Thanks again for all your help.

[anydm]

Finally bit the bullet and ordered a replacement emulator. Took 10 days from china, 10 minutes to install and, hey presto, I've got a working system!! The only thing I can't figure out now is why, when I download a fixture type from the Zero88 on-line library, it appears on the USB 'floppy' as an IFT file, when the fat frog only seems to recognise CFT files. Any advice on what I'm doing wrong??

[kgallen]

IFT and CFT are different.

If you just want some fixtures to read in during patch then use IFT. 

CFT is a composite file of 20 fixtures that is used to reprogrammed the Frog’s ‘Common’ fixtures which are the 20 fixture types held by default on the desk when it’s factory reset.

[ianknight]

1 hour ago, anydm said:

Finally bit the bullet and ordered a replacement emulator. Took 10 days from china, 10 minutes to install and, hey presto, I've got a working system!! 

That's fab news!! Nice one 😄

[kgallen]

I did link to the thread where we discussed CFT and IFT but it’s not showing in my post above. Trying again:

 

[anydm]

Thanks so much guys for all the invaluable help. I’m now fully up and running with the floppy emulator. Let’s just hope that the old Fat Frog lasts for another few years. I can’t see us affording a replacement for it any time soon ☹️
Best wishes 

Andy

[ianknight]

17 hours ago, anydm said:

Let’s just hope that the old Fat Frog lasts for another few years. I can’t see us affording a replacement for it any time soon ☹️

If you look after it - you should be ok for a while - replacement faders are available, I have fader caps & remember to replace the battery (if it's a CR2032) or keep an eye on it for leaks if it's the 3.6v soldered in type. However (with my old sales hat on), I would start a little replacement fund going just in case or take a look at something like a Chamsys dongle for the future.

It sounds like you have fixtures so a cheap manual preset desk won't be an adequate replacement and FLX will be a bit of a reach...

[kgallen]

19 hours ago, anydm said:

Thanks so much guys for all the invaluable help. I’m now fully up and running with the floppy emulator. Let’s just hope that the old Fat Frog lasts for another few years. I can’t see us affording a replacement for it any time soon ☹️
Best wishes 

Andy

Nah it’ll last forever. Mine’s 16 years old and as good as new (or as bad depending on your point of view! 😆). Floppy still works perfectly. Just keep on top of that battery as @ianknight says.  Hopefully it’s a CR2032 in which case I’d recommend replacing even a branded type every 2 years, 3 at most.

Worth getting a login on the Zero88 forum if you haven’t already got one.

https://zero88.com/forum/forum/10-frog-range-mk1/