Is mkimg.x still the only way to backup a disk on an X68000 itself? I'm looking to back up some games I have, but some of them aren't 2HD according to the program and it only accepts that. I can't seem to find any other info other than spending a lot of money on a 5.25" drive and a greaseweazle module. Any advice would be appreciated!
Use DPACK (requires the 9-sector driver to be loaded) Search for the old XX Files R release thread for details. Games that aren't 2HD are usually 2HS or 2HDE format, and Human68k can't read these without the driver. DiveOn 2016 for example is 2HDE format.
Thanks so much! That did the trick. The disks ended up being 2HC format (Silent Mobius). Is there anything I'd need to do afterwards if I wanted to test it on an emulator? The file size seems to be smaller than what the emulator expects.
2HS and 2HDE images tend to be very delicate and corrupt easily if you export them out of hdd image, wrong file size typically indicates corruption.
A safe method is to make an image of your CF/SD card then load that image in an emulator. Now have the emulator make a new .d88 disk image and mount it in the emu's floppy drive. Then load the 9-sector driver and run it's format tool to format the .d88 as a valid 2HS disk. Finally you can use DPACK to write the image back to the new .d88 disk. Just like on real hardware.
Thank you a lot for the info and steps. I was able to replicate this with 2HD type disks, but the 2HC type that Silent Mobius uses had no luck. Probably some copy protection if I had to guess. I think I have found a lead on an undumped game so I was just trying to cover my bases in case it wasn't 2HD and wanted to have a dump of it for preservation.
Yes this method will not fix copy protection issues. A lot of later doujins used 2HS. 2HDE seemed to be used less, but Xak 2 (Takeru machine exclusive) did.
I recommend DPACK over MKIMG for normal 2HD images as well, you can just rename .2HD to .XDF and emulators are happy with them. There have been a few times that MKIMG gave me corrupted dumps, but DPACK has always been perfect.