Another PC-98 is Up and Running!

[98digger]

Hello, NFGGames Forum!

I am pleased to announce that my PC-9821 Ce2 is up and running! A while ago, I posted about motherboard trace damage and several issues with finding a power transformer. I would like to say that I have resolved both of those issues; I used an MG Chemicals green overcoat pen to cover the exposed traces, and I recently acquired a VT-500J, which is outputting the 100v needed by the PC-98.

The transformer (http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41aOzg2dJ7L._SX450_.jpg) was confusing to set up; currently the "input voltage" switch on the back is set to 100v, the 100v outlet on the front is one of those "universal" ones. Strangely enough, the outlet is on its side (neutral is on the bottom), with what appears to be a grounder screw to the left of it (it would be on the top if it was right-side up). I don't have a Japanese power cable, so I used a generic computer one and plugged one of those "cheater plug" things (removes the ground prong and replaces it with a "U" connector wire; commonly used with amplifiers apparently). If I did anything wrong with setting up the converter, please tell me.

Anyways, it booted right up and started launching Windows 3.1, so I left it to boot and afterwards hit reset so I could mess with the BIOS. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember the BIOS keystroke (hold in help on startup), so it attempted to boot back into windows. It failed to do this, however, and I got the "Please insert system disk" error. The hard drive then started making odd noises, which I recognized as the sounds of a failing hard drive, so I attempted to boot a few more times. It still failed to boot, so I removed the drive. Currently, I am planning on hunting down some DOS floppies and a CF-IDE adapter along with a Transcend CF 2GB card.

So, currently, the PC-98 is set to boot into N88-BASIC until I can find the DOS disks. I tested some N88 commands; the computer had no problems while doing this.

The monitor, however, makes horrible static noises upon shutdown (also buzzes slightly while running). I don't know if this is normal for old CRT monitors, or if it has something to do with the voltage transformer or something, but other than that the monitor works fine, which is good, because many Ce2 monitors are failing from the pictures I've seen online.

I have some questions here about DOS and how to get it running:

1. Will version 3.3 run the Touhou games? If not, which version should I buy? (I'm looking for something around $60 or less if possible)

2. What type of CF card adapter+cables will I need to use the CF card with the PC-98? (Please link to ebay/amazon)

3. Will DOS be able to format the CF card on its own or do I need to set it up in Windows (my main PC has Windows 2000)?

4. Once DOS is installed, how would I send files to the partition on the CF card using Windows?.

Anyways, thanks again NFG Games Forum! Aside from Tokugawa Forums, I think this is the only other English board about the PC-98. At the moment, I'm wiriting up a guide on buying a PC-98 to hopefully increase interest in it (and in this forum) and also to denounce the myth that they "cost $1,000" (many people seem to think that after seeing the Sodick PC-98 on eBay). The guide should be ready by this week or sometime next week.

Thanks again,
-98digger

[SkyeWelse]

Glad to hear that you got your Ce2 is up and running now after the trace damage. Moving a series of large, heavy duty metal support cages atop of a motherboard can sure be dangerous if you are not careful. If anything, this issue has made me try to be extra careful going forward when dismantling it. My Ce2 has all the screws out of it currently since I still plan to recap it at some point and I'll put it all back together again once I'm sure everything works well enough. The pen that you used to help cover the exposed traces seems like a nice solution to note for later in case an accident like this happens to someone else (or myself, gulp). ^^;

I've not seen a transformer like the one you showed a picture of, but yeah if you didn't already have a Japanese power cable, it's pretty difficult to find one that fits the 3 prong recess in the back of the PSU leading to a 2 prong plug. This is what I use and I find it much easier to deal with.

Okay, so I've actually not tried out installing Windows yet, but as I understand it our Ce2 models should be able to run Win 3.1. without any issues. I have a Viper-Multi setup with a Am5x86-133 CPU, so my Ce2 can run at around 83 Mhz, so I should possibly try to see if Windows 95 will work as well, but I believe I was told that Win95 should only be run on machines with around 100 Mhz or more.

But it looks like the first step in your case is to get DOS working again, as well as a working harddrive. I think that if you haven't already fixed this issue yet (It's been awhile since your last post about this...), it would be easiest to simply get a CF card to IDE adapter (most I've seen on eBay will work fine, although I have two types that I ordered from eBay and one of them actually requires that I put the IDE ribbon cable in reverse (which basically is forcing it into the plastic rim the opposite way since one side has a hole for the tab and the other side does not. If it doesn't work right off the bat, try switching / reversing the the pins of the ribbon cable and you might see success.

In my CE2, I currently have two CF to IDE adapters and two CF cards, a 1GB/2GB Transcend, which work fantastic. On the 1GB I have Kobushi's DOS 3.3 image for running older games (Falcom) attached to the IDE BUS in the back/center where the CD-Rom would normally plug in, and on the 2GB in the front IDE BUS which is much more accessible I have Kobushi's YAHDI disk image. I think that's really the easiest way to get DOS working quick and easy, and from there you can install Windows 3.1 from Disk. I also have a IDE splitter cable that allows me to hook up the DOS 3.3. CF Card and a CD-Rom, however I usually leave it disabled since even though I was successful in getting a CD-Rom/DVD-Rom to work (with Kobushi's help, I think there is a thread all about it on these very forums) it still takes quite awhile to boot up the system, enough time to go make coffee and come back, so I usually leave it disconnected.

Let's see your questions next:

1. I'm not sure, but Kobushi's YAHDI image has Touhou 1-5 working well enough in Dos 6.2, so I'd try that first. It's even got a menu to select which one you want to play.

2. I mentioned this in the above paragraphs, but as for cables, I believe any IDE cable should suffice. You may need to make or find an adapter for a mini-molex to mini-molex for the front IDE BUS though and that might be a small challenge.

3. I'm not sure, but it looks at it as though it's a real HDD parition. I even get a menu that shows up when I first turn the computer on that allows me to select between either my DOS 6.2 or DOS 3.3. paritions. It's probably best to just format it in Windows.

4. The DOS 6.2 installation should, or at least the YAHDI image does. The DOS 3.3 will not be able to be used directly with Windows, but if you have two CF cards in there like how I have mine setup, you can certainly copy files over from the DOS 6.2 CF Card to the DOS 3.3 CF card using a File Manger.

Hope you were able to get this to work!

-Thomas

[PepAlacant]

I have a CF disk image with DOS 6.20 ( yahdi image ) with lots of games, TOUHOU and Totsugeki Mix patched for CANBE and some games installed. There is a partition of an installed WIN95 and some free space.

I can share if you want.

[SkyeWelse]

Hi PepAlacant, I would be interested in that actually if you would like to share. I've never played Totsugeki Mix before, but I'm curious to know about this patch you are referring to for the CANBE series. Are there also other games that do not work unless they are patched as well?

-Thomas

[98digger]

Hello,

Sorry I haven't been able to update this thread in a while. I've been managing r/pc98 in the meantime and fixing several PC-98 Wikipedia pages.

Basically, my PC-9821 Ce2 is, other than the Floppy Drive which I mentioned in another thread, fully functional. The hard drive had failed when I first turned it on, and part of the boot loader was corrupted as a result. Some of the Windows 3.1 data somehow ended up replacing boot loader data. So, I  imaged the drive, and used a hex editor to repair the boot loader (using a blank MS-DOS 6.2 image as a template) at the beginning of the image. This fixed the MS-DOS 5 partition, and most of the contents of the drive remained in-tact. The Windows folder has several corrupted files, which prevent Windows 3.1 from working, but MS-DOS works completely fine.

My PC-98's current hard drive is a 2GB Transcend Compact Flash card. The DOS partition for some reason can be read by Lubuntu (my main PC's OS), so I can drag and drop stuff onto it pretty quickly. When the floppy drive was working, I formatted several disks to the PC-98 format; turns out even my Power Macintosh G3 can read them. I created an emergency DOS boot disk as well.

The motherboard has experienced no problems at all at this point; everything is working as it should.

In regards to the Windows install, I could post a picture of the hex code that was copied to the beginning of the disk, so that maybe you guys with Windows 3.1 could show me where it goes on the disk image, but I think that might all be too complex. I am currently looking into Windows 3.1 install disks on Yahoo! Auctions.

Also, I am having this issue with Lotus Land Story, which I posted on the main Touhou forum. I have no idea what the message in Japanese says, but I'm sure the problem is probably something obvious:

https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,18723.0.html


Thanks, 
-98digger

[gabby32]

Lotus Land Story
Not enough free memory.

[SkyeWelse]

98digger, I'm testing Lotus Land Story on my Ce2 with 20480KB RAM off a 2GB Transcend CF (Kobushi's YAHDI Dos 6.2 image) and it plays it just fine. Just finished the first stage in test.

A friend on Twitter recently linked me to your PC-98 guide and I wanted to thank you for writing it. I'm not really a Reddit user, but I read the entire article and it was full of great information for folks looking to get into PC-98 games and hardware. It's really well written and has a wealth of good information, even stuff I had not learned yet.

One thing I wanted to ask you more about from that article is the mention of possibly being able to hook up a Zip Disk to use with a PC-9801 (provided it has a HDD where the IOMEGA drivers could be installed to). Does this act as a CD-ROM ISO where files can be transferred from it only, or can it write back to it and or information in it as an actual FDD as well?

-Thomas

[gabby32]

Lotus Land Story
You used to run the game from PC98HDDV1_5? In this collection improperly installed games. This is rubbish.
The game should be re-installed.

[98digger]

Ok, so I have some good news.

I was able to get Lotus Land Story running (finally). Turns out, for some reason GAME.BAT isn't working correctly anymore. I re-loaded my disk image onto the drive, re-downloaded the Touhou 4 demo, and tried a bunch of other things, but for some reason GAME.BAT is broken. Fortunately, GAMECB.BAT (an alternative batch file included in Touhou 4 for CanBe 98Multi computers) just so happens to work. This is kind of odd, because my PC-9821 Ce2, although being part of the 98Multi series, predates the CanBe series. Again, just a few months ago, Lotus Land Story was running fine with GAME.BAT, so I don't know why it suddenly can't use it now. However, at least the problem is solved. 

In the meantime, I've been examining the broken NEC Windows 3.1 install. Previously, I mentioned that the original HDD (Quantum ProDrive) malfunctioned and copied data over the bootloader (beginning) of the hard disk. Here is an image of what this looks like in my Hex editor:



If anyone here knows where this misplaced data at the beginning of the disk image belongs, please post about it here. 


Thanks,
-98digger

[SkyeWelse]

That's cool that you got it working, but to answer your question, I did not use the Lotus Land Story from the HDD 1.5 image. I have two different setups. I have the one that Kobushi had previously installed on the YAHDI image working fine in Japanese, and I found a separate image of all 5 games online that I applied the English patches to and these were then uploaded to a new YADHI image that I'm currently working on along with Caius. This did not run the game initially however because once these files had been patched and placed onto the HDD image, Project Neko II could read and play the game just fine, but the Ce2 could not. The reason for this I found, was due to the transfer of the file names that are required to be run that consist of Japanese file names were not transferred as Japanese file name to the CF card. So what was showing up in File Manager was a bunch gibberish characters.

In order to fix this issue I enabled Japanese text mode by calling JON in DOS, and using CTRL + XFER to enable Japanese characters such as hiragana/katakana and renamed each of these files directly in Kanji looking each one up to compare to the original file names. Once I fixed the issue with the file names being restored to the original Japanese for all 5 Touhou games, there is now a working and tested set of Touhou 1-5 in Japanese and Touhou 1-5 in English on the new YAHDI image. This was tested in both Neko Project II and on my Ce2 and they all work fine.

I have a question about how you repaired the boot loader for the image you made of your original harddrive. My HDD did the same thing when I first got the Ce2 and I was never able to boot from it again. However, my deskop will recognize the drive as a Quantum drive when trying to look at it in Windows BIOS settings. I've ordered a Sabrint iDE HDD to USB adapter that I hope to use soon to make an image with Win32DiskImager and I'd very much like to follow your steps with how you repaired yours if you don't mind.

I'm not an expert with text editors and I'm no programmer, but I am pretty proud of myself today for renaming each of the images I'm working with so that it shows the name of YAHDI DUO A and YAHDI DUO B, as well as YAHDI DOS3, when loading them up in a boot partition selector. It's nice to finally have a label to identify it instead of just "Dos 6.2" for both images by default.

I haven't mentioned why I'm working on multiple images, but I hope it will make more sense once it's ready to be shared.

-Thomas

[SkyeWelse]

So my Sabrent adapters arrived today and I successfully imaged the disk, but not with Win32DiskImager like I would have preferred to use. Instead, Windows could see the drive and see the total disk space as unallocated, but would not allow me to assign a drive letter to it, which was what Win32DiskImager needs in order read an image. Instead I used a program called Aomei Partition Assistant and just did a sector-by-sector copy to a 2GB flash card that I had on hand that wasn't using. After writing it to that, I could then at least image the entire 2GB Flash stick as a new .img file using Win32DiskImager at that point, writing a 2GB image, which could be read using DiskExplorer with the RAW PC98 HDD Image settings that Kobushi went over in the YAHDI thread.

The result was still a broken bootloader and chain (I got several cluster and chain errors when attempting to open the image or do anything with the files) but I was at the very least able to see what was on there as a starting point.



I guess in my case at least it probably wouldn't be worth it to try and repair this any further since it looks like the owner previous wiped the drive with nothing but Dos 6.2 on there. At least I now have piece of mind that I wasn't missing out on anything neat to play with. : )

-Thomas

[98digger]

I have a question about how you repaired the boot loader for the image you made of your original harddrive. My HDD did the same thing when I first got the Ce2 and I was never able to boot from it again. However, my deskop will recognize the drive as a Quantum drive when trying to look at it in Windows BIOS settings. I've ordered a Sabrint iDE HDD to USB adapter that I hope to use soon to make an image with Win32DiskImager and I'd very much like to follow your steps with how you repaired yours if you don't mind.

Hi SkyeWelse,

I created a tutorial for you on how to repair PC-98 disk images:


https://imgur.com/a/SagkF


Hope this helps,
-98digger

[SkyeWelse]

Thank you very much for the guide 98digger. I'm sure I followed all of the steps exactly, but it didn't work out for me. It could be however due to how the image was originally copied. Could you elaborate more on the steps that you took to actually make the original image backup from the HDD? I'm using a Sabrent IDE to USB interface to connect it to the PC, but perhaops I just don't have a good program to make an image of it. As I mentioned earlier, even though Windows can detect the drive, it will not assign a letter to it and Win32DiskImager seems to want a drive letter to read from.

Thanks again!

-Thomas

[98digger]

Thank you very much for the guide 98digger. I'm sure I followed all of the steps exactly, but it didn't work out for me. It could be however due to how the image was originally copied. Could you elaborate more on the steps that you took to actually make the original image backup from the HDD? I'm using a Sabrent IDE to USB interface to connect it to the PC, but perhaops I just don't have a good program to make an image of it. As I mentioned earlier, even though Windows can detect the drive, it will not assign a letter to it and Win32DiskImager seems to want a drive letter to read from.

Thanks again!

-Thomas

To image the PC-98's hard drive, I first got an old computer with an IDE interface running Lubuntu (a Linux OS). Lubuntu has a built-in program called "Disks" (I think it's from GNOME); "Disks" doesn't need a drive letter to be assigned to a hard drive, as far as I know. It can image partitions and entire disks, and restore them as well.

So, basically I took the PC-98 hard drive, plugged it into this computer, and booted Lubuntu. Lubuntu then allowed me to image the entire hard drive (took less than 5 minutes, too). After the image file was created, I copied it onto a flash drive and moved it onto my main computer (also runs Lubuntu), where I fixed the hex code and got it to work.

If your PC-98 hard drive has a broken header/bootloader, "Disks" will recognize the hard drive as having an "unknown" partition on it.

Btw, "Disks" is very usefully in writing image files to CF cards. 

Link to the Lubuntu website: http://lubuntu.net/

Note: Lubuntu can actually read a PC-98 file system, so I've been able to simply drag and drop stuff onto the CF card's PC-98 partition, rather than having to go through Disk Explorer.

Post about Linux's compatibility with the NEC filesystem here: https://www.reddit.com/r/pc98/comments/3977yr/nec_dos_file_system_support_found_in_cfdisk/



Hope this helps! 
-98digger