Original drive
The Emulator I uses a 5.25" single-sided Shugart 400-series drive (40 tracks, 35 used, ~180 KB). It connects over the raw Shugart interface from a Z80-based floppy controller.
Modern replacement (HxC)
The HxC floppy emulator officially supports the Emulator I (since 2010):
- Use a straight, non-twisted ribbon cable (a twisted PC cable causes a continuous whine).
- Native .HFE images; place the OS/boot image in the SD folder with your disk images.
- See emxp.net/HXC.htm for jumpering and the EI disk-image set.
Because working EI floppy media and drives are now very scarce, SD emulation is the practical way to keep an EI usable.