3,5" floppy driver hacks on x68000 ?

[pro7]

we all (..the few) know that it's shame to get 3,5" support on a x68000  (because heavy prices too on these 3,5" 68030)

could someone try translate and know if there are ideas there ?

http://arch.jpn.org/.museum/x68k/about.html#1-fdd

from google traduction, seems it's non standard what they did?

[pro7]

  it seems someone has made a trick !

i saw message from the seller on assembler forum,  i really hope he will make big pictures of the pinouts.. and what is in this switchbox (or was just for swapping between msdos/x68000 use)    . that would help people with defective x68000 floppy drives a good way to use them again !

http://cgi.ebay.fr/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt...hlink:middle:fr

[NFG]

the switchbox no doubt controls 1.44MB / 1.2MB modes.  1.2MB is the same capacity as the 5.25" disks, and is the format many japanese computers and the XVI Compacts used.

That looks an awful lot like a teradrive floppy drive.

[viletim]

Always wondered what that setting was for...

[Taken from a BIOS support website. I'll save people the trouble of downloading the ads, spyware, etc]

Floppy 3 Mode Support

Common Options : Disabled, Drive A, Drive B, Both

Quick Review

For reasons best known to the Japanese, their computers come with special 3 mode 3.5" floppy drives. While physically similar to the standard 3.5" floppy drives used by the rest of the world, these 3 mode floppy drives differ in the disk formats they support.

Unlike normal floppy drives, 3 mode floppy drives support three different floppy disk formats - 1.44MB, 1.2MB and 720KB. Hence, their name. They allow the system to support the Japanese 1.2MB floppy disk format as well as the standard 1.44MB and 720KB (obsolete) disk formats.

If you own a 3 mode floppy drive and need to use the Japanese 1.2MB disk format, you must enable this feature by selecting either Drive A, Drive B or Both (if you have two 3 mode floppy drives). Otherwise, your 3 mode floppy drive won't be able to read the special 1.2MB format properly.

However, if you only have a standard floppy drive, disable this feature or your floppy drive may not function properly.

So a PC floppy drive may well work. That is, if it was made for the japanese market at around the correct time period.

[pro7]

japan-games did some good shots of the pinouts  :lol:  (except the floppy one we'll have to deduce more about which wires are pointing) .   let's hope someone who has actually a defective floppy drive  digs in it      (i will only have my x68 in some months <_< )

http://www.japan-games.com/x68000_Floppy.zip

the fact is.. perhaps or i guess, there's need too of a software to run this hack.    yes  the mode3 is present in some pc computers too.

Lawrence i'm sorry i only seen two minutes ago that Sig68  was dedicated to x68000.. you can send this thread there or i dont know,  because it's more hardware problem related.

[Broken]

Hi at present one of my x68000 floppies is bust (the first one drive 0 I think) and was wondering if it would be worth it to go inside the x68000, take apart and manually clean the faulty floppy from the guide on this site. I don't want to break or effect anything else during this process. Does anyone know what the chances of the faulty floppy working again if I manually cleaned it? I tried some cleaning disks but they didn't do the job.

Also I read the stuff on the 3 mode floppies which was interesting and I sort of got the jist of it but there may have been some things I misunderstood and one or two things I didn't properly get. I wasn't too sure about the set up of the 3 mode 3.5 inch floppy drive in relation to the rest of the equipment. Also I read that the 3 mode 3.5 inch floppy drive can be set to 1.2 mb mode (5.25 inch) but how does the 3.5 inch drive actually enable use of 5.25 inch disks when one or both of your 5.25 inch drives are bust? Anything would be sound.

 

[NFG]

I don't know if there's a fix for X68 floppies.  I've had a few in my time that flat-out refused to work.  I didn't try vigorously cleaning them though, it might be worth a shot.