3.5 DIY floppy drives?

[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

[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]

Awesome! Thanks caius.

Here is where I saw the FDD.
http://page5.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/e145651598

[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

[caius]

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

[caius]

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

[caius]

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

[caius]

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.