Here are some notes from my adventure fitting a Casio FZ10m sampler with a Lotharek HxC Floppy Emulator. Essentially, it is meant to replace ageing floppy drives, especially in retro computers, embedded systems and vintage digital music equipment. The version installed here uses SD and SDHC cards for storage.
Here is the device that will be installed in the place of the existing floppy drive. The build quality appears to be very good. The dip switches on the top which arrived in this configuration, which appears to work correctly. Note the connectors for the floppy data cable and power.
Before we start, I should note that this is a chronicle of my experience with the installing the floppy emulator. It is not a step by step guide or a replacement for general experience working around electronics. Please take care if you decide to use any of these notes in during your installation. Unfortunately, I cannot take any responsibility for damages that may arise from use of this information.
Before I do anything else, I make sure the power is removed from the device. I began by removing the 5 screw on the back of the device and the six screws on the sides. My FZ10m unfortunately does not have rack ears, so there may be more screws to remove if the ears are present. The cover lifts off to reveal many circuit boards.
In the picture above, the topmost board handles individual outputs. Below that, the mainboard appears to hold the CPU and filter chips. To the right is the power supply and transformer. Near the front of the mainboard are two cables connecting to the graphical display.
Finally, the gray cable for the existing floppy drive is connected to the mainboard on the left hand side. This cable snakes up from below the mainboard. This is something of an issue, as it usually would mean we need to remove all these boards to get to the floppy drive. Peeking below the mainboard, note the orientation of the floppy data cable. The entire device sits on rubber cushioned rails, which unfortunately preclude any attempts at removing the screws holding the drive in.
I decided I would try to remove the drive mounting assemble as a whole instead of removing all the circuit boards above it. Moving to the bottom of the device, the assembly is held in with four screws circled below in blue. My plan was to remove these screws then slide the device forward to remove it out the front. Screws circled in red hold the plastic front on the device. I removed these first, then disconnected the display cables to avoid any damage. The entire front panel could then move up and sit on top of the mainboard. Additional connections made removing it entirely difficult.
The screws holding the drive assembly on are tricky to remove. See the diagram below to get a sense of what is going on with this sandwich.
The lower washer-lock washer-nut group is hidden inside the rubber bar. The gaskets fit into hollows in the rubber bar. At very top is a visible nut. This must be restrainted to remove the screws from below. I had the device overhanging a table to make this easier, not unlike a car on a lift. Carefully, long pliers were used to hold the nut in place while the screws were removed. As it receded, each piece of hardware was removed as not to be lost. The screw in the back right corner is the hardest to reach. If the lower nut assembly is spinning inside the gasket, then a little downward pressure can be applied to the screw head with a flat driver or similar.
After the screws were removed, I disconnected the ribbon cable from the mainboard, leaving it attached to the drive. I was able to slide the assembly out of the front. It helped to temporarily disable the plastic mounts as circled on the mainboard above to have more room to work. Once it was out, the rails were removed and the swapped with the HxC. Take care to keep the orientation the same as the two rails are different. One rail has a rubber stop for the mainboard.
Given the lower nut assembly that sit in the gasket, getting the assembly back in was tough going. Here is the empty bay waiting for the assembly. I attached the power cable to the HxC at this point. The data cable was threaded back through, but not yet reattached to the mainboard.
The lower nut assembly was assembled with the rest of the screw dangling below. This leaves as much clearance as possible for inserting the drive mount rubber bars over the nuts. Once in place, the screws were tightened just until the screw head could be seen above the gaskets.
The next bit was tedious. I began with the hardest to reach area in the rear right, building the washer and nut assembly up slowly. Once this was in place, the rest of the screws were much easier to replace. The mainboard plastic mounts were secured, the display cables reattached and the front panel secured.
The HxC sits a little low in the drive bay. The bezel for the floppy drive is molded into the front panel, so cannot be removed. In operation, this is not really an issue and the buttons are still easy to press. I'm very happy with the finished result.
To address the configuration of the HxC, I used some configuration settings I had found previously on Casio FZ forums. The file is provided below. I used a normal sized 2GC SD card. The configuration file HXCSDFE.CFG was placed in the root directory, along with an empty disk image called STARTUPA.HFE. This empty file is configured to load on startup. If the FZ10m does not have a card to load from, it will get stuck trying to read the drive infinitely. This solves that issue.
Resources
Download HXCSDFE.CFG.
Download STARTUPA.HFE.
Casio FZ-1 and HxC Floppy Drive Emulator discussion
Lotharek HxC Floppy Emulator
Lotharek's general site