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3.5 DIY floppy drives?

Started by sharp, June 23, 2014, 04:20:55 AM

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sharp

I saw an external 3.5 floppy drive for sale that seemed to be home made.
Does anybody know about this? It seemed to rely on a driver file on the x68k side of things, "expfd.x".
It would be awesome if someone had the DIY info.

eidis

 Hi Sharp !

I think that some time ago Caius and Lydux were trying to connect DIY external floppy drives to X68000 and even succeeded.

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis
X68000 personal computer is called, "X68K" or "no good good" is called, is the PC that are loved by many people today.

BlueBMW

I've got two external dual 3.5" floppy drive units but I couldnt get them to work right on a compact I was trying to use them with.

caius

Yes, connecting a regular 3-mode 3.5 FDD to X68000 is pretty simple.The driver "EXPFD.X" is needed to get them recognized by the system but keep in mind you can boot from them (though a SRAM version of the driver do exist).Personally I'd go for the HxC SD floppy emulator, I installed it on my CompactXVI along with a small board that emulates some FDD extra-signals.

BlueBMW

So if I have a system where the floppy drives dont work is there a way to use these external drives to boot games etc from?  Can I add the drivers to the disks or do I have to get it on the system ahead of time?

sharp


eidis

 Hi Guys !

Can anyone please confirm that this SRAM version of  "EXPFD.X" allows booting from DIY floppy drives ?

SRAM常駐型 Expansion Floppy Disk Driver version 0.12
http://nfggames.com/X68000/Mirrors/x68pub/x68tools/DISK/FLOPPY/S_EXPFD.LZH

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis
X68000 personal computer is called, "X68K" or "no good good" is called, is the PC that are loved by many people today.

caius

Quote from: eidis on June 23, 2014, 05:35:14 PM
Hi Guys !

Can anyone please confirm that this SRAM version of  "EXPFD.X" allows booting from DIY floppy drives ?

SRAM常駐型 Expansion Floppy Disk Driver version 0.12
http://nfggames.com/X68000/Mirrors/x68pub/x68tools/DISK/FLOPPY/S_EXPFD.LZH

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis

Yes, it works.I tried some time ago with two Samsung SFD-321B 3-mode floppy drive and I was able to boot from these by installing in this driver in SRAM.

eidis

 Hi Caius !

Is it possible to boot such games from them like Motos, Flying Shark, Aquales or others which have their own proprietary file system ?

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis
X68000 personal computer is called, "X68K" or "no good good" is called, is the PC that are loved by many people today.

caius

Quote from: eidis on June 23, 2014, 08:06:33 PM
Hi Caius !

Is it possible to boot such games from them like Motos, Flying Shark, Aquales or others which have their own proprietary file system ?

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis

I didn't remeber if I tried thee games but I think there should be no problem.This attached is the diagram.

eidis

 Hi Caius !

Your diagram is very good. Could you please share the media detect and soft eject faker circuit diagrams as well ? ;)

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis
X68000 personal computer is called, "X68K" or "no good good" is called, is the PC that are loved by many people today.

caius

#11
This attached is the circuit engineered by Kitahei88, all credits go to him.The circuit works pretty well , I had only some issue with LEDS and I solved by using a 74ALS74 instead of the 74LS74 (the first one on the left of the schematics).Here is the old page where I go it:

http://kitahei88.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-47.html

http://blog-imgs-57.fc2.com/k/i/t/kitahei88/blog_import_52451d8b67b88.gif

eidis

 Hi Caius !

Awesome ! This information deserves a Wiki article.

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis
X68000 personal computer is called, "X68K" or "no good good" is called, is the PC that are loved by many people today.

caius

Quote from: eidis on June 23, 2014, 10:19:52 PM
Hi Caius !

Awesome ! This information deserves a Wiki article.

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis

Wait, this circuit is for using HxC SD floppy emulator in a X68000 but it's not for real external FDDs.For this purpose there are other circuits but I never tried them since the EXPFD,x (or SRAM version) driver was enough for me.