SxSI-SCSI HDD Image v3.02

[spectreman]

For those interested in testing with their own MIDI, you can find a complete list of compatible games for X68000 and other systems at the bottom of the page.

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_MT-32-compatible_computer_games

It should be noted that the list does not include the modified versions of Space Harrier and After Burner with MIDI support.

Feel free to experiment with the potential of this wonderful HDD image.

[ateam]

For those interested in testing with their own MIDI, you can find a complete list of compatible games for X68000 and other systems at the bottom of the page.

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_MT-32-compatible_computer_games

It should be noted that the list does not include the modified versions of Space Harrier and After Burner with MIDI support.

Feel free to experiment with the potential of this wonderful HDD image.

Great list, thank you for sharing

Turns out I had this bookmarked, but somehow "lost it", haha...

[ateam]

I bought one of Regis' 8MB RAM + MIDI two-in-one cards for my XVI, as it's tested to work nicely in 16mhz mode and also supports Mahou, After Burner, etc.

https://www.polykubos.fr/en/vintage-computers/1-8-x68000-sram-midi-board.html

I then discovered Valis II wouldn't boot (and I'm in 10mhz mode given the reports of issues with this game in 16mhz). Works fine from floppy though.

I then reinstalled my 8MB Gal's Panic and to my surprise, same error! In Japanese it basically says there was an error and the system must reset.

The same is was working fine with my Expert, and I could have sworn it once worked fine on my XVI as well.

Both are using Henkan internals, and both have 10MB RAM total (2MB internal + 8MB expanded).

Before I try an older version of the HDD image, does anyone have any insights? Am I totally misremembering Valis II ever working from 2HDBOOT on XVIs?

Thanks in advance 🙂

EDIT: Okay, this is weird... I went to test my Expert where I definitely played this game multiple times, and now I see the same error! Guess I'll try older versions of the image to see if that changes anything.

EDIT 2: Well, the v2.x images produce the same error. Confusion level intensifies...

EDIT 3: My only guess is that somehow I have just a little less RAM than is needed for the 2HDBOOT method and Valis II. On my XVI, I tried both the original Gal's Panic 8MB card, as well as Regis' 8MB RAM + MIDI combo board. No luck. On my Expert, I'm using the Etarikashikoshi 8MB RAM + MIDI board and haven't yet tried putting an 8MB Gal's Panic board back in to test. I've tried "HIOCS /R" to potentially free up some RAM, but unsure if there are any other techniques I can use to do so.

[incrediblehark]

@ateam - first of all, thanks for testing the Poykubos RAM + MIDI card and reporting your results! Saves me from needing to order one

As for the Valis issue, I think I know the error you are referring to, I'm assuming its the generic system error that I've seen before - not on Valis, but in other circumstances while testing hardware/software.

Could you tell me if you've added/removed anything in your autoexec.bat or config.sys files? Wondering if there's any type of conflict. I don't think this is a RAM issue - you'd most likely see a bus error or similar type of message.

I doubt this will solve it, but could you try running LINER on each of the valis floppy disk images? I'll see if I can recreate the error on my end, I'll have to revert to an older image as I'm in the process of an update and my working disk has been altered from what is publicly available.

EDIT: One other thing to try - could you see if clearing your SRAM might resolve the issue?

[ateam]

@ateam - first of all, thanks for testing the Poykubos RAM + MIDI card and reporting your results! Saves me from needing to order one

As for the Valis issue, I think I know the error you are referring to, I'm assuming its the generic system error that I've seen before - not on Valis, but in other circumstances while testing hardware/software.

Could you tell me if you've added/removed anything in your autoexec.bat or config.sys files? Wondering if there's any type of conflict. I don't think this is a RAM issue - you'd most likely see a bus error or similar type of message.

I doubt this will solve it, but could you try running LINER on each of the valis floppy disk images? I'll see if I can recreate the error on my end, I'll have to revert to an older image as I'm in the process of an update and my working disk has been altered from what is publicly available.

EDIT: One other thing to try - could you see if clearing your SRAM might resolve the issue?

Thanks for chiming in!

So LINER had no effect, all images were already contiguous.

Regarding SRAM clear, for convenience do you know if there's an SRAM-clearing utility on the v3 Master Disk linked in your tutorial? If not, I can use one of the official ones. I didn't see SRAM_CLR, SRESET, or SRAMSET on the v3 disk.

EDIT: Okay, I used the EX version of Master Disk, used "SRAM_CLR CLEAR", reinstalled bootloader, and now Valis works on my Expert! Will do the same on my XVI and report back. Thanks, @incredibleshark!

EDIT 2: SRAM clear solved the issue on my XVI as well.

[kanjiology]

Anyone with a SCSI card in their unit, could you let me know your Switch.X settings please.

[3rdman01]

I think holding CLEAR on boot would also wipe out the SRAM. This command doesn't work on my Expert II but I think it would on the XVI.

[ateam]

I think holding CLEAR on boot would also wipe out the SRAM. This command doesn't work on my Expert II but I think it would on the XVI.

Yes, it's a feature on the XVI, as far as I can tell. Not Expert, like you said.

Because I only had a few minutes to attempt this fix, I just went with the method I knew that worked by using the SRAM_CLR tool, haha.

[alessiman]

I can't seem to find the New Zealand Story from the list of floppy games you can create under c:/floppygames with the current version.  I was 99% sure this use to be here in a previous version

Can someone please confirm i am not going mad

[incrediblehark]

I can't seem to find the New Zealand Story from the list of floppy games you can create under c:/floppygames with the current version.  I was 99% sure this use to be here in a previous version

Can someone please confirm i am not going mad

You are right, the game has since been patched to work on SASI and SCSI machines so it's included in the action folder and removed as a writable floppy to save space.

[alessiman]

I can't seem to find the New Zealand Story from the list of floppy games you can create under c:/floppygames with the current version.  I was 99% sure this use to be here in a previous version

Can someone please confirm i am not going mad

You are right, the game has since been patched to work on SASI and SCSI machines so it's included in the action folder and removed as a writable floppy to save space.

Thank You!

[rezb1t]

So I'm a big fan of Aquales, and was always disappointed that the game reboots after beating any Stage off of HDD. Well after a lot of time and effort, I managed to create a patched AXMAIN and ENDING that should defeat all of the copy protection plaguing Aquales. I played through the full game beginning to end 3 separate times off the HDD image to test, and found no issues.

Attached is a floppy disk image with the modified AXMAIN and ENDING executables. Boot into incrediblehark's HDD image in this thread, mount the floppy disk image, and copy over AXMAIN and ENDING into D:/Action/Aquales(E)/AQUALES, making sure to overwrite the older files.

From there, reboot your X68000 holding Shift, select the Aquales CONFIG.SYS when prompted, then boot Aquales normally. You should be able to play through the entire game and view all the cutscenes.

Let me know if anyone encounters issues and I will try to address them.

[incrediblehark]

@rezb1t this is awesome! Thank you for fixing this! I will test it out on my end and incorporate into the image. it's great to finally have a 100% working from HDD version of aquales. I think I've played that first stage a hundred times by now in my testing

Guess I should stop dragging on getting an update out.

Edit: just wanted to add for anyone interested. The BEEP rerelease of Aquales is the exact same game, down to the individual files. so any rumors of these disks lacking copy protection are false.

[spectreman]

@rezb1t Congratulations, it really works well at 16MHz (it will be a bit fast) and 10MHz.

It would be nice if something could be done for Cyber Core; on the hardware side I have done many tests with different RAM models and addresses, but the audio glitches remain if you have more than 8MB of RAM.

Unfortunately, as you will know, if the RAM is reduced to less than 10MB, Valis II will no longer work in 2HDboot mode.

[rezb1t]

I think I fixed the Cyber Core issue, at least the fix worked for a quick test on my system. Attached is another disk image with a patched Y.X, copy over to the Cyber Core folder on the HDD and overwrite the old Y.X.

This one is really weird. There's a PCM address table in the executable that seems to be all correct, but it gets overwritten at runtime by.. something(haven't figured out what yet) and the invalid value 0x00808080 ends up in the table. Later on this value gets used as a source address to copy memory to the PCM hardware via DMA. This happens no matter how much RAM you have... but if you have more than 8MB, the DMA ends up reading uninitialized data which comes out as harsh and unpleasant audio. If you have 8MB or less RAM, I think it just reads all 0s which is completely silent.

Anyway this behavior is completely broken and I did try to figure out a more proper fix, but ended up just going with a quick hack that falls back to a known good entry in the table if the address is equal to or larger than 0x800000. This seems to work, but I don't have enough familiarity with this game to know for sure that I didn't break anything.

Testing would be appreciated, let me know if you find any issues.

EDIT: Tested over a couple of levels and everything seems to be in order!

[incrediblehark]

@rezb1t Amazing! Thanks for the quick fix!

I'm sure it's not as popular but Castles has a similar issue where the game will not progress past the intro if you have more than 8mb ram installed. I wonder if it's doing something like that.

[spectreman]

@rezb1t I tried three levels of Cyber Core, and I didn't encounter any problems, both at 16MHz and at 10MHz, even using different RAM.

What can I say? Congratulations again and thank you!

For those who aren't familiar with Cyber Core, it has 8 levels; during the game, you need to collect power-up orbs of the same color as your spaceship, up to a maximum of three power-ups.

[rezb1t]

Fixed Castles!

Basically, the game tries a DOS malloc call, asking for 8MB of memory. It expects this call to fail and return the amount of memory that can be allocated, which it can then allocate and continue on. As for why the game fails when this call succeeds, I'm not entirely sure. But I'll leave that for another day.

According to this page:

https://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=x68000:doscall

"If LEN is greater than 0x1000000 it is always an error and it is possible to check the maximum number of bytes that can be reserved."

So I just replaced the constant 0x800000 with 0x1000001 and everything appears to be working.

[incrediblehark]

@rezb1t you're awesome! Thank you again! Looking forward to adding all of these fixes to the image.

[UD2]

I bought one of Regis' 8MB RAM + MIDI two-in-one cards for my XVI, as it's tested to work nicely in 16mhz mode and also supports Mahou, After Burner, etc.

FYI the RAM doesn't operate at full speed in 16MHz mode, the I/O slot bus always runs at 10MHz. If you don't want slow memory past 2MB, you need a RAM expansion that goes in the slot near the CPU. These only go up to 8MB (6MB module + 2 onboard) but in practice that's fine because nothing actually needs more than this.

[ateam]

FYI the RAM doesn't operate at full speed in 16MHz mode, the I/O slot bus always runs at 10MHz. If you don't want slow memory past 2MB, you need a RAM expansion that goes in the slot near the CPU. These only go up to 8MB (6MB module + 2 onboard) but in practice that's fine because nothing actually needs more than this.

Very interesting, thanks for the info!

By the way, you actually do need more than 8MB if you want to load certain games from this HDD image (e.g., Valis II) due to the extra RAM they consume with virtual floppy mounting. Granted, those are just a handful of titles.

[kamiboy]

I do have a sasi machine here, but I don't have a CF solution for it, other than an external MO drive.
I am considering buying one of the newer CF or sd card solutions and mounting it internally, externally if it is small and unobtrusive enough. If and when I do I'd gladly test drive any experimental image that could free sasi owners from having to boot off of any floppies.

Just wanted to follow up that I put together a small SASI bootable partition meant for setting up SxSI drivers. I have no way to test it and know if it is fully working though. Things I'd like to know:

1. Does it boot on a system without working floppy drives?
2. Does the SxSI install work ok? (And do normal SASI users have to boot from floppy every time?)
3. Does the SRAM CLEAR function work properly? (Clear the ROM boot area and reset SWITCH.X)
4. Any other suggestions / issues / etc?

Anyone who is willing, please give this a shot.

SxSI Enabler v1.00:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XthdjXQiPrpRFIWaNSOY0uswYbQRQLqq/view?usp=sharing

I finally got me a BlueSCSI for my SASI machines and want to test this functionality. However, I believe the hdd image you provided needs to be in .hda format, but is currently in .hdf format which I don't think will work with bluescsi. Correct me if I am wrong, but renaming the hdf file to hda will not work for bluescsi, which is why I have not managed to get it to work on my machine.

Any chance you could provide an hda version so I can answer all the questions?

[Hissa]

@rezb1t
I'm very happy to hear this, as I also love Aquales. I was truly impressed when the demo played after clearing the first stage and the game progressed to stage two. Thank you very much.

@incrediblehark
Thank you for verifying the BEEP version of Aquales. I apologize for any trouble caused by my insufficient understanding of Japanese.

Recently, yunkya2 released a tool called XDFBOOT, which is very similar to 2HDBOOT. When I tried it, CHOUJIN, which did not work with 2HDBOOT, ran successfully.
At the moment, it only supports up to two disks, and there are some inconveniences such as write operations not being reflected, but I'm looking forward to future improvements.

[rezb1t]

@rezb1t
I'm very happy to hear this, as I also love Aquales. I was truly impressed when the demo played after clearing the first stage and the game progressed to stage two. Thank you very much.

@incrediblehark
Thank you for verifying the BEEP version of Aquales. I apologize for any trouble caused by my insufficient understanding of Japanese.

Recently, yunkya2 released a tool called XDFBOOT, which is very similar to 2HDBOOT. When I tried it, CHOUJIN, which did not work with 2HDBOOT, ran successfully.
At the moment, it only supports up to two disks, and there are some inconveniences such as write operations not being reflected, but I'm looking forward to future improvements.

Just tried XDFBOOT and it works really well! Thanks for letting us know. And no problem, happy to have helped!

[incrediblehark]

I finally got me a BlueSCSI for my SASI machines and want to test this functionality. However, I believe the hdd image you provided needs to be in .hda format, but is currently in .hdf format which I don't think will work with bluescsi. Correct me if I am wrong, but renaming the hdf file to hda will not work for bluescsi, which is why I have not managed to get it to work on my machine.

Any chance you could provide an hda version so I can answer all the questions?

@kamiboy thanks for following up! I'll see if I can get a working file for you as soon as I'm back from the holiday break. I have a SASI machine I can test with too, I just forgot about this image...

@Hissa thank you for sharing that info about XDFBoot! I'll have to go through and try it for any games I couldn't boot before. We're getting closer to all games working from HDD!

[kamiboy]

Great, my own attempts to create a bootable SASI hda image that works have been an abysmal failure. Either I don't know which tools to use or SASI does not work on BlueSCSI, not sure. Hopefully you can crack the code.

[aotta]

Great, my own attempts to create a bootable SASI hda image that works have been an abysmal failure. Either I don't know which tools to use or SASI does not work on BlueSCSI, not sure. Hopefully you can crack the code.

The bluescsi image works plug and play on all my Sasi x68000, i think your issue is in setup the x68k for booting from hd. Double check the bootset.x chapter in the guide https://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=x68000:hard_drive_on_sasi_machine

[kamiboy]

I think you are confused as to what we are trying to achieve here.

On a related note, after almost ten years of sitting in a closet I got hold of a working main board for my dead CZ-600 and to my mild horror I saw the NiMH battery I had replaced on it back in the day had already started to leak again. Luckily it hadn't managed to kill the 69mhz crystal yet, crises averted.

I promptly dragged my ACE out of the closet and removed its battery as well. These things are ticking time bombs and the alternate battery solutions for these machines are too clumsy for my taste.

I think a SRAM independent BlueSCSI solution would be a great alternative to SRAM battery dependence for SASI users. Even the non leaking batteries drain quickly if one is not using the given machine often, forcing a reliance on working 40 year old floppy drives to reload the SCSI drivers into SRAM. A precarious prospect indeed.

[BlackVega]

Great, my own attempts to create a bootable SASI hda image that works have been an abysmal failure. Either I don't know which tools to use or SASI does not work on BlueSCSI, not sure. Hopefully you can crack the code.

Bluescsi doesn't support SASI images. Use ArdSCSIno instead

[neko68k]

I think a SRAM independent BlueSCSI solution would be a great alternative to SRAM battery dependence for SASI users. Even the non leaking batteries drain quickly if one is not using the given machine often, forcing a reliance on working 40 year old floppy drives to reload the SCSI drivers into SRAM. A precarious prospect indeed.

You could hypothetically install FRAM instead of SRAM and not worry about the battery except for the RTC.

In the process you could do the big SRAM mod and then do nothing with the extra space.

I've got a 2032 in my PRO that spent the better (worse) part of 3 years in storage and it still holds an acceptable charge. YMMV I guess. It's not especially difficult to put whatever battery holder wherever you want in there. I never got around to it but I have all the parts for the SRAM (not FRAM) upgrade and sticking a 123A in there instead of a 2032 that should last an eternity (YMMV).

[aotta]

I replaced in all my 3 X68K (ACE HD, Expert and CZ600) the original battery with a LIR2032, installed with coin cell holder wired far from the M/B.
I'm not afraid of any leakege.
And, Bluscsi2 works perfectly with SxSI.
And, i use my X68KFDPi2W (or my FDX68) instead of floppies, old 40 floppy drives are definitively not affordable!

[kamiboy]

I think a SRAM independent BlueSCSI solution would be a great alternative to SRAM battery dependence for SASI users. Even the non leaking batteries drain quickly if one is not using the given machine often, forcing a reliance on working 40 year old floppy drives to reload the SCSI drivers into SRAM. A precarious prospect indeed.

You could hypothetically install FRAM instead of SRAM and not worry about the battery except for the RTC.

In the process you could do the big SRAM mod and then do nothing with the extra space.

I've got a 2032 in my PRO that spent the better (worse) part of 3 years in storage and it still holds an acceptable charge. YMMV I guess. It's not especially difficult to put whatever battery holder wherever you want in there. I never got around to it but I have all the parts for the SRAM (not FRAM) upgrade and sticking a 123A in there instead of a 2032 that should last an eternity (YMMV).

I had thought of going the FRAM route, but to my knowledge there are no Known solutions for the X68000 as there are for the Saturn for example. It would be the ideal solution if possible.

Bluescsi doesn't support SASI images. Use ArdSCSIno instead

I was wondering about this, is this confirmed?  I suppose I don't see any reason why SASI support could not be added via a potential firmware update for the Blue, I guess no one has ever asked for it.

I replaced in all my 3 X68K (ACE HD, Expert and CZ600) the original battery with a LIR2032, installed with coin cell holder wired far from the M/B.
I'm not afraid of any leakege.
And, Bluscsi2 works perfectly with SxSI.
And, i use my X68KFDPi2W (or my FDX68) instead of floppies, old 40 floppy drives are definitively not affordable!

You put a Lithium ion rechargeable battery instead of an NiMH? Is the recharging circuit in the X68000 really appropriate for a lithium ion battery?

Seems a bit dodgy, but perhaps I should go this route if I cannot get the SASI booting to work.

[BlackVega]

I was wondering about this, is this confirmed?  I suppose I don't see any reason why SASI support could not be added via a potential firmware update for the Blue, I guess no one has ever asked for it.

It works and it was confirmed by me

[kamiboy]

It could work in the short term, but cause the battery to fail in the long term. I guess time will tell. I may give this a go, so far it is the solution that appeals to me most.

Bluescsi doesn't support SASI images. Use ArdSCSIno instead

Any places that sell ArdSCSIno in EU, or do I have to manufacture one myself?

[ateam]

Any places that sell ArdSCSIno in EU, or do I have to manufacture one myself?

If you have a BlueSCSI v1, you can flash it with ArdSCSino firmware yourself.

• https://github.com/erichelgeson/BlueSCSI/wiki/Flashing-(Advanced)
• https://github.com/ztto/ArdSCSino-stm32

You'll need to buy a cheat USB STLink and install a piece of software, but it's very easy. I did it to one of my v1 units recently for some testing.

[aotta]

Since release v2024.10.26, BlueScsiv2 added new profiles for X68000 SASI and SCSI (i suggested the correction to the Repo, i'm the author of the fix : https://github.com/BlueSCSI/BlueSCSI-v2/pull/102 - some SASI commands were misinterpreted by the firmware, while in ardscsino they were ignored).
So, there's no need to use an old and no more updated FW, if your BlueSCSI doesn't work, there's something wrong in your setup @kamiboy , all other people use BlueSCSI V2 with no issue, in both SASI and SCSI X68Ks!

[kamiboy]

My BlueSCSI works fine once I install the SCSI drivers. I have not been able to get SASI drive emulation to work though. Most likely because I don't know how to make an appropriate SASI BlueSCSI image. I have not found any working BlueSCSI compatible SASI images available for download, nor any reports of anyone booting from a driver free X68000 machine from a SASI image.

If BlueSCSI does support this functionality then it is just a question of making a bootable SASI image. Hopefully the OP will be able to figure it out.

The largest supported SASI drive size is 40MB is more than enough to contain Human68K and all tools and drivers to enable SCSI support on boot.

I will likely modify my SASI drive image to just load the SCSI drivers on each boot via autoexec and config.sys, foregoing the SRAM installation altogether. Then I can ignore the SRAM battery altogether, and have a setup that works no matter what.

[aotta]

Ah, now it's clear, sorry. You're looking for a way to boot emulated sasi drive "natively" without using the bootsec.x tool!
I don't think it's possible, at least in X68k "not hd", but curious to read any comments!

[kamiboy]

I do also have an Expert HD, I would like to get native booting working on it via an internal SD solution of some sort. Either BlueSCSI or the Ard one, whichever actually supports SASI enough to boot from.

I am bot sure whether there is any differences between an HD and non-HD X68000 in terms of their bios.

Either the HD models have special bios functionality for booting off of their internal SASI drives, or more likely, all models will boot off of a SASI drive if it is detected on their SASI connector.

At least on the HD model I see the cable that goes to the external SASI connector is the same that goes to the internal HDD connector, so from the point of view of the machine it doesn't matter where the drive connects from.

I imagine this was always like that from the very first CZ-600 model. I believe that even though they came without room for an internal drive, external SASI drives were available for purchase, though I have never seen one, so they must be rare, but I read mention of one somewhere.

If so there is a good chance any X68000 SASI machine will boot off of a connected SASI drive on boot, without any special drivers of configurations.

[LowDefAl]

I believe the IPL's are the same between versions, the only thing that changes besides the case logo is the drive mount and the cable. Oh and the drive of course but those are usually long gone.

Frankly at this point the community needs to stop using SRAM for SxSI support on pre-Super's. Good for testing and playing wth the machine short term but there is a better solution as long as you open the case, and lets face it you have to do that to add these things anyway.

Even setting aside the issue with the battery, the SxSI driver won't help if your floppy drives don't work. Also you can't use the hd features as it was designed for - installing your own games to HD often requires booting while holding opt.1 , which is also the key that disables booting from SRAM. Quite an issue.

Exbios and IPL 1.6 both have SCSI drivers built into the bios, no need for SRAM drivers. you build/write the roms to EEPROM, insert them into the empty sockets on the main board, change the jumper to boot from them instead of the factory roms, and you can eliminate most of the potential issues and work arounds and head banging because device A won't work in mode B with driver C.