nfg.forums

Thanks for the info. I haven't tried working at it in a bit, but I did find some leads I'd like to try and was planning to share the steps here if it worked out. I'll give yours a go since it's pretty simple next time I take a stab at it. Thanks for the write-up!

Hi,

I don't know if you've found a solution since your post, but since I had similar needs, I'll share my experience:

mTCP's developer reported recently that mTCP does not work on PC-98 machines. I've lost the related post, but I think it was on Vogons.

I tried the TEENE route. TEENE implements a full TCP/IP stack for Ethernet cards on DOS PC-98 machines, and uses packets drivers to talk with the hardware.

The self-extracting archive you've found on Buffalo's website contains a packet driver, namely \pktdrv\lgypkt.com.

The simplest TEENE setup would be the following (if it works, you can put it in your AUTOEXEC.BAT):

REM start the packet driver, here configured with default settings
A:¥TEENE¥LGYPKT 0x60 3 0x00D0
REM set up the TEENE configuration environment variable to point to your TEEN.DEF file
set TEEN=A:¥TEENE¥TEEN.DEF
REM start up TEENE
A:¥TEENE¥TEENE.COM

At that point, if your TCP/IP configuration in TEEN.DEF is correct, you'll be able to ping your PC-9821 from another computer. I'm not sure TEENE supports DHCP, you might need to setup up a static IP address.

TEENE does not come with any "client" for anything; I found a compatible FTP client on http://www.abk.nu/~kattyo/freesoft.htm#prog_ftp, look for KFTP006.LZH.

About LSL.COM and IPXODI.COM, you'll only need them if you intend to use a Novell Netware client... or if you cannot find a packet driver for your Ethernet card (it was my case).

The .DOS file you configured in config.sys is the driver for Microsoft LAN Manager, yet another MS-DOS TCP/IP stack (among other protocols); if you use TEENE, you won't need it.

For reference, my TEENE configuration (TEEN.DEF) is the following:

;TEEN v0.36 定義ファイル(Ethernet 版用)

; ';' 以降はコメントであり、無視されます。
; シングルクォート(') で囲まれた文字列中に ; を書くことはできません。

;行頭の数字は書き替えないでください。

[TSR]
102 $0F ; Hardware type, use $0F for PC-9801/PC-9821

[ETHERNET]
<NETIF>
400 172.30.98.1 ;IP Address
401 255.255.255.0 ;Subnet mask
402 172.30.98.255 ;Broadcast address
;403 ;(未使用)
404 172.30.98.254 ;Default gateway IP address

[RESOLVER]
100 10 ;タイムアウトまでの時間(秒)

300 '172.30.98.254' ; Primary DNS resolver IP address. Keep the address single-quoted.
;301 '' ;If needed, you can unquote this line and set a secondary resolver address.

; the remaining lines were left as-is


both buttons & leds connector from X68k are 2.00mm pitch.
I bought all components that i hadn't in my folders from aliexpress and ebay, so no BOM to share, but they're all easy to find. Be aware only to 74lvc245, i got some fake ones in the past

Great project!
I order my PCB via FusionPCB by uploading your GERBER-X68KFDPI2.zip.

anywhere Parts List ?
1 x 74LVC245
1 x MicroSD Connector
1 x Buzzer
1 x 1N5817
6 x R330
3 x R4k7
2 x R10k
2 x LED:Green
2 x Tactile SW

LedFD0 / LedFD1 Headers with pitch 2.0mm
and other Headers with pitch 2.54mm OK?

So I was talking with some folks the other night and it was brought to my attention that I never did a broad release for this.

Basically I got tired of what a mess the original Master Disk is (no shade to eidis, I'm glad it exists) and I redid the whole thing from scratch using DSHELL (the interface for Dennou Club diskmag) and included as much useful stuff as I could fit on the disk.

Besides a bunch of helpful diagnostic stuff and a couple of bootloaders (SxSI and BM) for immediate use I put some stuff in LZH archives that are also useful but need to be decompressed and stuck on an HDD or something. This is an exercise for the user.

I also included some explanations of common file formats and how to use some the tools included in the archive. There is a description of the important options in SWITCH.X and what their defaults are and their behavior.

Please be patient when it boots, it takes a little while. It decompresses the usable tools from an LZH into a RAM disk. This saves space on the disk and ensures that everything works even on machines with only 1MB of RAM. Also understand that this disk is full (48K free). There is no room for anything else. If anyone thinks that it's missing something really important please let me know and I'll consider making a second disk to go with it.

I hope you all like it and find it useful. My only request is that if you sell it please only charge for the disk and shipping. I did this because I love this community and it's important to me that we share freely!

Download here!

Quote from: tugs on March 22, 2025, 02:24:52 AM

Quote from: incrediblehark on March 18, 2025, 07:53:26 PM@tugs The only games that shouldn't save your progress are the ones loaded by 2hdboot. What is your hardware setup for the hard disk? I'll test it out today. Please double check for me as well. Start a new game (name entry) play and force a game over and go through those screens back to the title. When you power down the X68000 and start back up, there should be a name entry there. If you start a new game and reset before the game initiates a save process, there will be no entries when you return to the game. If you still aren't seeing a save file after trying this out then there is an issue.


EDIT: I just tested on my system and Akumajou saving works normally.

Quote from: LowDefAl on March 20, 2025, 06:15:38 PM

QuoteAs akumajo, like more or less all the games included with SCSI Image, is loaded through an emulation of floppy disk drives, i wonder if this is not a limitation of this mechanism (emulating the floppy disks disallows the ability to save things about the game)

For the record Akumajo has a hard drive install option on the original floppy disc and so is designed to save to HD.

Just to confirm what Shark says, I believe the game only saves at a game over.

Hi guys,

Thanks for the testing and replies !

I don't use any on disk installation . I boot on my bluescsi , launch the game through LHES and the !start.bat associated to Akumajo . It seems that !start.bat is using some kind of binaries to emulate floppy disk drives and launch the game.

My understanding right now, is, that, to have the ability to save the game, I need to use hdinstall binary to install akumajo on disk (for instance on partition 1 of drive 1 of bluescsi)

Have you tested the method I described? The game is installed using the hdd installer (RA960 folder on C:) and 2hdsim runs for disk A only because akumajou expects that disk in floppy 0 when running from a HDD install. I believe there's a patched version that removes that check but I'm not using that in my image. It should not affect saving in any way.

I can try on other hardware and with bluescsi v2 to try and recreate the problem if it is in fact not saving for you. 

I got my first FM-TOWNS II, i knew it was not working but i'd like to understand what is wrong and if it could be fixed.
At power-on, after few seconds i got an error message on screen, that i translated in something like "system error, press reset!":

some time the screen has some garbage, but same message:

I tried to boot from cd, bluescsi2, floppy, but it seems that the FM-TOWNS don't even try to boot.
I already changed the battery, i wonder if it's the SRAM (IC18) or the PROM (IC22) that are faulty and stop the boot routine. I already ordered a new SRAM, while the PROM MB8541p i'm afraid it's not replaceable (it has a label with "03" upon, is public the code programmed in the PROM?)

Any suggestion?
Are schematics available (i didn't find them)?
Thank in advance

Quote from: incrediblehark on March 18, 2025, 07:53:26 PM@tugs The only games that shouldn't save your progress are the ones loaded by 2hdboot. What is your hardware setup for the hard disk? I'll test it out today. Please double check for me as well. Start a new game (name entry) play and force a game over and go through those screens back to the title. When you power down the X68000 and start back up, there should be a name entry there. If you start a new game and reset before the game initiates a save process, there will be no entries when you return to the game. If you still aren't seeing a save file after trying this out then there is an issue.


EDIT: I just tested on my system and Akumajou saving works normally.

Quote from: LowDefAl on March 20, 2025, 06:15:38 PM

QuoteAs akumajo, like more or less all the games included with SCSI Image, is loaded through an emulation of floppy disk drives, i wonder if this is not a limitation of this mechanism (emulating the floppy disks disallows the ability to save things about the game)

For the record Akumajo has a hard drive install option on the original floppy disc and so is designed to save to HD.

Just to confirm what Shark says, I believe the game only saves at a game over.

Hi guys,

Thanks for the testing and replies !

I don't use any on disk installation . I boot on my bluescsi , launch the game through LHES and the !start.bat associated to Akumajo . It seems that !start.bat is using some kind of binaries to emulate floppy disk drives and launch the game.

My understanding right now, is, that, to have the ability to save the game, I need to use hdinstall binary to install akumajo on disk (for instance on partition 1 of drive 1 of bluescsi)

QuoteAs akumajo, like more or less all the games included with SCSI Image, is loaded through an emulation of floppy disk drives, i wonder if this is not a limitation of this mechanism (emulating the floppy disks disallows the ability to save things about the game)

For the record Akumajo has a hard drive install option on the original floppy disc and so is designed to save to HD.

Just to confirm what Shark says, I believe the game only saves at a game over.

I made a floppy version
*There is a capacity limit, so I think there are missing files

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hoJAHq6oTVZKqfPqy1U6gO6bVC0cjnk_/view