Seob Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 To replace my broken diskdrive inside my philips vg8234 msx2,i bought a usb floppydisk emulator. It can be jumpers as a 720kb 3.5" disk drive. It can also be jumpert as 1.44mb 3.5" , 1.2mb 5 1/4" and 720kb 5 1/4". I now need to make a cable to use it inside the msx2, since that uses a 14 wire cable instead of a 34 one. When it's finished i will post my findings here. . 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seob Posted February 15, 2015 Author Share Posted February 15, 2015 Got it working. Had to set a few jumpers. Jumper 3 for setting it into 720Kb 3.5" mode. Jumper 5 for setting the ready signal. And Jumper 6 to get rid off disk offline messages after switching disks. It did work without setting jumper 6, but you had to type in files 2x to read the disk. The finished cable. The gnd's that wheren't needed on the 34 pin side i just cut off and put a shrinkwrap around it. The drive plate had to be altered also. Broke off the old taps that hold the drive in place since they where to narrow. I jut used professional double sided tape to fix the drive onto the plate. The jumpers that need to be set are unterneath the topcover. You have to unscrew the top to get access to them. Drive in place and hooked up with a usb thumbstick. I used the software that is available on the ipcas website: http://www.ipcas.com/support/usb-floppy-emulation-download.html to format the stick into 720Kb diskimages. Then i used the software to write *.dsk files to the different folders. The only thing i haven't fixed yet is the fact that it tries to autoload the first folder always. I tried to leave this folder empty but then my msx got into a booting loop. I now have a image into this folder that needs a 256Kb msx, so it boots, give a error that i have to little space, and than i can use the system. Loading a image is easy if there is a autoexec.bas in the selected folder. Just select the folder you want and press reset once. The system preformes a soft reset and starts booting the diskimage. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 Great! Does this serve 256 byte sectors? I know some of these units are fixed at 512 bytes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 The other thing is how to select image? I guess you just cycle through with the buttons and need to remember which number corresponds to what's on there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seob Posted February 16, 2015 Author Share Posted February 16, 2015 (edited) Don't know how it is handeling sectors, so i cannot give a answer. You cycle trough the images using the buttons. I use a spreadsheat to keep track at what number a diskimage is stored. Edited February 16, 2015 by Seob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 Nice! I've got a 8235/00 that I multiple times tried to get to read double sided disks, including replacing ROM and extra wires to the motherboard. Since I don't really own many MSX formatted floppy disks, perhaps I should try to repeat your mod, since I believe the floppy drive currently installed will need some further modding to get it to work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seob Posted February 16, 2015 Author Share Posted February 16, 2015 I also have a nms8250, with working diskdrive. I formatted a disk on the msx, then i put it inside my pc and put a diskimage of a msx game on it. Put it back in the msx and i can load games. But it all depends on the diskimage. Not all images will work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaytonaUSA Posted February 18, 2015 Share Posted February 18, 2015 Wow, this is a great mod! You should be really proud. I've been semi-interested in the msx, but finding the disks has been one major reason why I've been turned away. This would be great to do on one with an already faulty drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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