X68000 FDD Repair?

[EC]

I recently had 2 XVIs' FDDs go kaput in one way or another. Does anyone know a way or can point to a FAQ to repair these things? Thanks in advance!

[NFG]

I've never figured out what fails in the drive, typically I just replace them.  Obviously this is a short term solution, eventually we'll run out of drives...

[EC]

I've never figured out what fails in the drive, typically I just replace them.  Obviously this is a short term solution, eventually we'll run out of drives...

I'm assuming you are taking them from other X68000s then? Any spare ones for sale?!  

[NFG]

Unfortunately the drives are the most valuable part of the system, the computer's  nearly useless without drives.  I could prolly help you score a system on the cheap, email me if you want to discuss that.

You know what shocks me is how heavy those damned drives are.  The ones in the Pro system are even worse, they're contained in massive aluminum shells.

[EC]

Unfortunately the drives are the most valuable part of the system, the computer's  nearly useless without drives.  I could prolly help you score a system on the cheap, email me if you want to discuss that.

You know what shocks me is how heavy those damned drives are.  The ones in the Pro system are even worse, they're contained in massive aluminum shells.

Actually, I have the XVI HD booting from an external SCSI HDD and there's an external MO DD connected to that as well so games can be booted from there but I liked having working FDDs....

[NFG]

It takes a great deal of effort to slap your floppies into a MO drive.  Working floppies are the single most required option for the average user's X68000 enjoyment.

[Computolio]

I bet someone, somewhere in Japan knows, or knows where to start regarding wiring up an ordinary PC-style drive. The drives can't be totally and completely different from the Shurgart bus stuff that rules the computing universe. I'm betting the controller chip is almost exactly the same (or behaves the same), and the extra functions (i.e. soft-eject) are controlled by extra logic/lines.

   I mean, if PC drives can read the disks, then they certainly aren't as weird as C64 or Apple ][/Mac drives, which use completely different controllers and can vary the rotational speed of the disk.

   Either way, the task of creating an adaptor lies squarely in advanced homebrew territory, and such a solution will only begin to appear when the prices for replacement floppy drives gets ridiculous enough to justify the cost of developing such a device.

   The X68000 is pretty much the only computer ever made that has soft-eject 5.25 drives, isn't it?

[NFG]

As far as I know, yeah, the X68 is the only system with soft-eject floppies.

While you could possibly use PC drives, you'd have to mangle the front of your X68 case to make room for that big twisty door lever, or drill a hole for the eject button.

[Computolio]

A while ago I found this guide(in Japanese of course) to disassembling and cleaning the drive mechanism. Probably not much help at this point, but it's something.

[Broken]

Hi I tried to translate this guide but no luck. Do you know any good translators online?

[Computolio]

    According to this Japanese blog entry, It looks like some drive failures are caused by dead capacitors.

[Akir]

Hey, most every old Apple Mac had soft-eject floppy drives. The difference is that they were all 2.5" DD or HD floppys.

I've been thinking about something, though. Most games run on top of Human68k, so it might be possible to write a TSR program to act as a virtual drive for floppy images.

There are a lot of flaws with this idea, though. First, you need an HDD to load the images off of (good luck finding anything SASI nowadays...), then you'd need a lot of memory to hold at least two diskettes in ram and have the program data as well.... Heck, it probibly isn't even worth it.

[NFG]

Yeah, all old Macs had soft-eject floppies (3.5" not 2.5") so that's not remarkable.  What IS cool is that the X68000 is the only - as far as I know - soft-eject system for 5.25" floppy disks.

[Computolio]

http://kobaold.hp.infoseek.co.jp/old/fdd/

This site MIGHT have some info on how to hook up a 3.5 drive without the need for a special driver, but I can't really be sure.

Hey, most every old Apple Mac had soft-eject floppy drives. The difference is that they were all 3.5" DD or HD floppys.

I've been thinking about something, though. Most games run on top of Human68k, so it might be possible to write a TSR program to act as a virtual drive for floppy images.

There are a lot of flaws with this idea, though. First, you need an HDD to load the images off of (good luck finding anything SASI nowadays...), then you'd need a lot of memory to hold at least two diskettes in ram and have the program data as well.... Heck, it probibly isn't even worth it.

    I think I remember seeing a program somewhere that would mount floppy images in a virtual drive (proving you had enough RAM I guess) while I was rummaging around. Not sure if you could boot off of said virtual drive, though.

    Also, finding appropriate hard drives and getting them to work wouldn't be as difficult if we had some more info on SxSI (and HumanOS) translated.

[Computolio]

    The program is called 2HDBOOT. I have no idea how to make it work; automatic translation isn't much help. It does look pretty interesting, though.

[Magic Knight]

    The program is called 2HDBOOT. I have no idea how to make it work; automatic translation isn't much help. It does look pretty interesting, though.

I use this, it works well, as long as you were able to make a bootable image in the first place.

The first step is to make an image file. For this you need mkimg.x, it's downloadable at http://retropc.net/x68000/software/disk/floppy/2hdsim/index.htm

Usage is: mkimg <switch> <drive> <filename>

Generally I put the floppy disk in drive B (the hard disk is drive A), and type:

mkimg b: fantzone

for Fantasy Zone, you can use any filename for any disk.

Then you use 2HDBOOT to mount the disk. For Fantasy Zone, I use:

2hdboot -$1 -afantzone

and Fantasy Zone then boots from the hard drive. The -$ parameter specifies the amount of memory needed, sometimes if you don't include it the game won't boot. The -a parameter tells the program to put the image in virtual drive A:, see below for a two disk example.

I made two disk images of Kyuukyoku Tiger (called kt1 and kt2), and to mount the disks, I use:

2hdboot -$1 -akt1 -bkt2

Here's another example: I've installed Strider Hiryuu to hard disk, made an image of the system disk, and to load it, I use:

2hdboot -$2 -astrider1 where -$2 tells the program that I need 2MB of RAM.

Note that some games won't let you make an image of their disks, for instance, I couldn't make images of Final Fight or DaiMakaiMura. What's more, I couldn't make copies of these games using The File Master either, despite having the correct parameter files.

I'll look into it more, the documents explain it all, though you need to be able to read Japanese of course.

[Magic Knight]

I use this, it works well, as long as you were able to make a bootable image in the first place.

The first step is to make an image file. For this you need mkimg.x, it's downloadable at http://retropc.net/x68000/software/disk/floppy/2hdsim/index.htm

Usage is: mkimg <switch> <drive> <filename>

Generally I put the floppy disk in drive B (the hard disk is drive A), and type:

mkimg b: fantzone

for Fantasy Zone, you can use any filename for any disk.

Then you use 2HDBOOT to mount the disk. For Fantasy Zone, I use:

2hdboot -$1 -afantzone

and Fantasy Zone then boots from the hard drive. The -$ parameter specifies the amount of memory needed, sometimes if you don't include it the game won't boot. The -a parameter tells the program to put the image in virtual drive A:, see below for a two disk example.

I made two disk images of Kyuukyoku Tiger (called kt1 and kt2), and to mount the disks, I use:

2hdboot -$1 -akt1 -bkt2

Here's another example: I've installed Strider Hiryuu to hard disk, made an image of the system disk, and to load it, I use:

2hdboot -$2 -astrider1 where -$2 tells the program that I need 2MB of RAM.

Note that some games won't let you make an image of their disks, for instance, I couldn't make images of Final Fight or DaiMakaiMura. What's more, I couldn't make copies of these games using The File Master either, despite having the correct parameter files.

I'll look into it more, the documents explain it all, though you need to be able to read Japanese of course.

To follow on from this:

I managed to make image files of many of my games, and I also copied many that I downloaded over to my X68000 (via CD). I found that most of the boot disks from the Internet didn't work, i.e. they didn't pass the security check.

Most games that use either 1MB of RAM or two disks, or both, ran fine when loaded into memory with 2HDBOOT. Games which I have installed and therefore only need the boot disk, but which require 2MB, also run ok (e.g. Akumajou Dracula).

My machine has 4MB of memory, so when trying to boot games with more than two disks, or those that require 2 disks + 2MB of memory, they couldn't fit. In this case, I had to use the hard disk drive as virtual memory. So for instance, for Thunder Blade, I use:

2hdboot -$1 -Athunderb1 -Bthunderb2 -Athunderb3

Note that the difference is to use capital letters for the drive assignments. In this case, I'm telling the program that disk 1 and 3 go in drive 0, and disk 2 goes in drive 1.

This is the command I use for World Court:
2hdboot -$2 -Atennis1 -Btennis2

and again, it loads up fine.


One thing to be wary of is that sometimes I find that the machine sometimes has its memory value set back to 1MB and I have to use switch to reset it.

Overall, it's a great way to load your programs. It's obviously much quicker to load games (Super Hang-On finishes loading 86 seconds quicker), plus games which require lots of loading in-game like Mid-Garts, Marble Madness etc. become far more enjoyable. And lastly, of course, your original disks are stored away safely.

The only problem is finding bootable images. I use File Master to make copies of the disks, and then make image files of the copied disks. The older the game, the more likely this process will work. Many newer games are hit-and-miss, they may work and they may not, usually not.

[Computolio]

    I can't seem to make 2HDBOOT work at all. My current guess is that it doesn't work with SXSI.

[Magic Knight]

    I can't seem to make 2HDBOOT work at all. My current guess is that it doesn't work with SXSI.

What do you mean by SXSI? I use SUSIE as a device driver for my CD drive and I can boot game images from that. What error message are you getting?

[Computolio]

    SxSI is the driver that allows SCSI hard drives to work on SASI-based machines. It uses a special bootloader installed in the SRAM to load the driver and I'm guessing this is conflicting with some of the stuff 2HDBOOT does.
Some games will throw up an error, presumably because I only have 2MB RAM. Other games will fade out the screen, restart and give me the Generic Error.

[Magic Knight]

    SxSI is the driver that allows SCSI hard drives to work on SASI-based machines. It uses a special bootloader installed in the SRAM to load the driver and I'm guessing this is conflicting with some of the stuff 2HDBOOT does.
Some games will throw up an error, presumably because I only have 2MB RAM. Other games will fade out the screen, restart and give me the Generic Error.

Ok, I know what the SxSI driver is now. If the games are fading out the screen and restarting, then 2HDBOOT is working, the error message is probably the game telling you that you need the original disk. Try loading an image of Gradius, that should work as it doesn't have copy protection, or a doujin game such as Chourensha 68k.

[Computolio]

    I've tried a couple of disks and games that have no protection and the result is the same.