Memotech FDX and SDX Disk Images

COPYRIGHT NOTICE - Please read.

Very few of the programs here have been formally released into the Public Domain and copyright is still held by the original authors and publishers. However, after all this time, I imagine that very few of the authors would object to people using the software or me distributing it. Even fewer of the original publishers still exist. However, if you are the holder of the copyright to any of this software and object to its being here, please let me know and I will remove it.

Introduction

The Memotech FDX and SDX systems came with a number of system specific CP/M programs, most of these can be downloaded from the Memotech Software Catalogue Downloads page.

These days, with the demise of the floppy disk and the unreliability of old media, it can be a challenge to obtain and use CP/M software. Exchange of programs and data, even between systems of the same type, can be difficult, particularly if physical media is involved, so disk imaging is a good solution. Teledisk was a program released by Sydex in the 1980s which could compress the structure and data on a floppy disk and create an "image" of the disk for archiving or transfer purposes, the image could subsequently be reconstructed onto another floppy disk. Teledisk, and similar tools, require a legacy (not USB) floppy drive to be able to read and write disk images.

A selection of disk imaging tools can be found on my MTX Tools page

Floppy disk emulators, such as the HxC SD  Floppy Drive Emulator, offer a good solution for replacing or complimenting the legacy floppy disk drives on Memotech disk systems. The HxC uses disk images stored on SD card to emulate the original floppy disk and associated PC software is used to create the required disk images for the HxC and can also export disk images in a variety of other formats.

Recent Files

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Disk Library

I am starting to build a library of disk images for the Memotech FDX and SDX disk systems and will add the first images here shortly. If you have any that you would like to contribute, please get in touch.

The default file format used by the HxC is ".hfe", a custom file format written by Jeff for the emulator, it is openly available and details can be found in the HxC document at the bottom of this page. This format is only used by the HxC floppy disk drive emulator so the image files are only directly useable by people with HxC hardware. However, the PC software can be used to convert images between various other formats, including Teledisk and ImageDisk. Teledisk was widely used to create floppy disk images and some Memotech disk images are available in Teledisk (.td0) format, but TeleDisk is not free software and its current status is a bit of a grey area, in any event, the HxC software can import, but not export images in TeleDisk format. It can though, import and export images in ImageDisk (.imd) format, written by Dave Dunfield, ImageDisk is Freeware.

There are also advantages in using ImageDisk (or Teledisk) format for archiving or exchanging files, the HxC format does not use any form of compression, and even a Memotech Type 07 (620kb) disk image is almost 2 megabytes in size. The ImageDisk file format compresses the same image down to 213kb - around 10% of the size of the .hfe file. Of course, the .hfe image can also be compressed with WinZip etc., which brings the image size down to around 183kb.

Depending on how many (few?) I manage to source, I plan on posting images in ".hfe" format for owners of the HxC Floppy Drive Emulator (if you don't already have one - I suggest you think about getting one) and in ImageDisk format for others. The download files will be .hfe format files and .imd files compressed with WinZip. The HxC Floppy Drive Emulator software can export the .hfe disk image in RAW format which is compatible with Andy Key's MFLOPPY format if you want to use any of these images under MEMU, REMEMOrizer, etc.

Update: On reflection, if anyone does want to make use of the images here, it is likely that they will be using one of Andy Key's platforms such as MEMU or REMEMOrizer. If that is the case, then RAW format images, compatible with MFLOPPY, would be the most useful, so the later images posted will also be available in RAW (.img) format too.

The HxC websites have a "Quick Install" file which contains 100 "pre-formatted" images for the most common emulated disk formats, not surprisingly, the Memotech formats are not amongst them. I have created a set of files for the two most common Memotech formats, Type 03 and Type 07, and made them available below, in blank and bootable versions.

Only having the three buttons, the HxC User Interface is a little unwieldy, but you can rename these images on the HxC itself or on the PC before you save them to the SD card, It is also a good idea to split up the files on the SD card into a number of sub-directories for ease of navigation. Those of you with an HxC, you should be able to load these images to the SD card, along with the HxC Configuration file, set the switches on the Memotech disk controller to the appropriate "drive" type, connect up the HXC and start copying files between your real Memotech disk drives and the SD card.

I find it useful to make all of my disks bootable with a small number of CP/M utilities on them, these disk images contain startup.com, config.com, stat.com, pip.com and rcheck.com, in addition to the named applications. This does reduce the available disk space, but I find it more useable and using Type 07 reduces the impact of the lost space.

(*These files are also on the bootable "blank" disks below.)

Title	Description	".hfe"	".imd"	".img"
Blank Disks (Type 03)	Memotech Type 03 Empty disk images (100)		-	-
Blank Disks (Type 07)	Memotech Type 07 Empty disk images (100)		-	-
Bootable Disks (Type 03)*	Memotech Type 03 Bootable disk images (100)		-	-
Bootable Disks (Type 07)*	Memotech Type 07 Bootable disk images (100)		-	-
SDX System Disk	SDX Type 07 System Disk with NewWord etc. Courtesy of Andy Key			-
		coming	soon	-
	FDX Type 03 System Disk (Twin drive FDX) Original format supplied with twin drive FDX
FDX System Disk (Type 07)	FDX Type 07 System Disk (Twin drive FDX) Original format converted to Type 07			-
	FDX Type 03 System Disk (Single drive FDX) Original format supplied with single drive FDX	coming	soon	-
	FDX Type 07 System Disk (Single drive FDX) Original format converted to Type 07	coming	soon	-
	SDX Type 07 System Disk Original format supplied with "old" type SDX	coming	soon	-
FDX Tape to Disk (Type 07)*				-
	FDX Tape to Disk Transfer v1.2 Original format converted to Type 07
	mtximages\Tape_to_disk_label.jpg			-
				-

 

 

Applications
Title	Description	".hfe"	".imd"	".img"
NewWord (Type 07)				-
	NewWord v2.02 (NewStar), shipped with FDX
SuperCalc (Type 07)				-
	SuperCalc v1.12 (Sorcim), shipped with FDX
WordStar 3.00 (Type 07)	WordStar v3 (Micropro), configured for FDX			-
dBase II (Type 07)	dBase II v2.4 (Ashton Tate), configured for FDX
Programming
Title	Description	".hfe"	".imd"	".img"
Turbo Pascal 2 (Type 07)	Turbo Pascal v2 (Borland), configured for FDX
Turbo Pascal 3.00A (Type 07)	Turbo Pascal v3 (Borland), configured for FDX
Utilities
Title	Description	".hfe"	".imd"	".img"
MEX 1.14 (Type 07)	Modem EXecutive - Terminal program
User Contributed
Title	Description	".hfe"	".imd"	".img"
ZASM	Z80 Opcode Assembler by Bill Brendling (Needed to build Bill's other programs below . . .)	-	-
PCB Drawing Tool (screenshot)	Layout tool for home brew PCBs by Bill Brendling	-	-
PIC/EPROM Tools (screenshot)	PIC and EPROM Tools  by Bill Brendling	-	-

 

CP/M Library
The images in this section are from my small collection of generic CP/M software, there is a range of utilities, programming tools, applications, etc. These days, there are many places on the web where you can find these, and a wide range of other CP/M software, but as I was converting the disks for myself, I thought I might as well post them here. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of structure to this collection, they were archived in more or less the order that I collected them and were crammed into the available space on the Type 03 floppies (320k) that I used at the time. Many are archived and/or compressed with a number of different CP/M programs, it would have been better if I'd only used one, but they are probably in the formats that I originally obtained them. The different file formats include "LBR", "LZR" and "?Q?", if you don't already have it, you will need to find the associated utility to reconstitute the original files, it will be in the Library - somewhere :-)  DELBR.COM is used on many images, it is on Disk 01. You will need to open up the text files to see what is on each image.
Title	Description	".hfe"	".imd"	".img"
CP/M Library 01 (Type 07)	Various CP/M Programs     -    open text file for listing			-
CP/M Library 02 (Type 07)	Various CP/M Programs     -    open text file for listing			-
CP/M Library 03 (Type 07)	Various CP/M Programs     -    open text file for listing			-
CP/M Library 04 (Type 07)	Various CP/M Programs     -    open text file for listing			-