Imaging Floppy Disks Question

[Shentok]

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!

[SuperDeadite]

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.

[Shentok]

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.

[SuperDeadite]

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.

[Shentok]

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.

[SuperDeadite]

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.