As promised here is the first part of the progress, this will show the HXC Floppy emulator related hacks.
The Emulator itself is the HXC REV C version from Lotharek’s. I love the design of this board, it is very clever and has everything I needed: removable display, adjustable brightness, fixing points at ST’s position and soldering points for external buttons.
Floppy cable: this was not long enough because I had to turn it around to be able to plug into the emulator, so I had to extend it. I carefully removed the top plastic of the header, then the cable and used longer piece of cable from the one I had available. Using a screwdriver I pushed the cable to fit between the pins to make contact. Be careful, the top plastic brakes easily, I managed to break one end so it is super glued. Make sure your cable works before moving on.
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Power: power connector is only extended and modified because I use its wires to feed other voltages to different parts. I used the 4pin “socket” from an old FDD panel to make the male connector and soldered another fdd power lead to it but also made the connectors for the other cables.
Let’s stop here for a moment. I wanted to use connectors wherever it is possible. The easiest way for me was to buy these prototyping jumper leads. When you cut them half way and solder the wires to the 2 points you want to connect you get a nice colour coded connection. When I needed a longer run I simply used 2 of them but 40 wires leave you plenty.
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Mounting the board: The board has the holes in the right position so I only needed to find the right spacers to get the correct height for the SD card socket. I used 35mm black spacers (ebay) and 50mm M3 bolts. Please note that the top right leg of the floppy drive is a copper spacer so you need to drill a hole through the bottom case. This height will leave you just enough space for the floppy cable.
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Modding the top case for SD card: I used a black piece of plastic to mark the position for the opening but also to hold the filler, this is glued to the inside of the case. I applied the car body filler with hardener to fill the old floppy opening. As you can see this is not my strongest skill however once it’s sanded down it doesn’t matter how ugly it is. Make sure you cover the bits you don’t want to lose. I taped down the floppy icon to protect from the filler and sanding. Do not rush. I had to remind myself couple of times to calm down and not to rush. Once the filler is dried I used different size of files to shape the opening until it was good enough for me.
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