Posts tagged 'floppy'

Getting Kermit onto the MBC-555

My Sanyo MBC-555 has been a good little computer, but it’s not especially useful. I haven’t been able to get software onto its strange disk format, and the software I do get can’t be run under DOS 1.25. If I want to test out a prototype serial card, I need to get Kermit onto the computer, and the best way to do that is to be able to write it to some disks.

The Floppy Flops (Travelling to Tokio, Part 2)

In the previous part of my adventure with the 386-based NEC PC-9801RA2, we covered the existence of Artdink’s game Tokio, talked briefly about clone PC-98s, bought two computers, and built a replacement power supply PCB for one of them. That was a lot of work! So now we finally get to play the game, right? Right?!

Amped Up For Artdink (Travelling to Tokio, Part 1)

Despite not being able to understand more than preschool-level written Japanese, I decided to get in on the “importing games from Japan” craze. Of course, I jumped in at the deep end and decided to pick up an Artdink-made city simulator with lots of cultural and regional in-jokes. Also, the city is in space. Did I mention that my PC-9821Ap2 can’t run it?

NEC's Tetris Processor

Tetris is a classic time-waster, both in and outside of the office. What good is any computing device if it can’t play this game? Tokyo System House certainly thought so, and ported it to the NEC mini5 line of CP/M-based word processors. Let’s preserve it for future generations and then see what it’s like!

Call In The PROs When You Can't Flop (X68000 PRO Part 3)

With a new power supply and the entire insect population of Honshu removed from its case, the swamp-bogged X68000 PRO can finally start up, but can it boot floppy disks? In this exciting conclusion to the series, we’ll jump through a frankly ridiculous number of hoops – many of them ultimately proving to be unnecessary – in order to make some disks and find out.

That name again is Mr.PC

Get ready to step into the cyberpunk future of the mid-late 1980s, and don’t forget to bring your boxed wine. NEC pulled out all the stops on this, their final PC-6001 computer. I have to pull out even more stops to get the disk drive to work.

Dual Goteks in the PC-8801mkIISR at last

In my previous entry, I found out that my old IBM PC “DOS” floppy adapter was not sufficient when trying to read from two drives at once. Somehow, they confused the floppy controller enough that nothing could be read from the second drive.

Attempting dual Goteks in the PC-8801mkIISR

I got another couple of Gotek floppy emulators from China, and now the SR has dual floppy drives. Unfortunately, I can’t use them both at the same time.

PC-8801mkIISR opening and Gotek setup

I’ve been wanting to get back to the SR for quite some time. I figured the Gotek adapter PCB and the HxC-flashed Gotek would be a direct drop-in to the new machine, and I was right.

Sony HB-101 and NEC PC-8801mkIISR pickup

Japanese Santa dropped by my house earlier this week and left behind a back-shredding 40lb box of microcomputer goodness. Let’s investigate.

Mini-updates 2 - A501 battery, PC-98 Gotek update, SparcStation 1+ debugging

I’ve been up to a bunch of little projects while waiting on parts and time for the big jobs, so here is another mini-update on three of those projects.

PC98 - New floppy board, sound 'fixed,' more testing

Now that the PC98 can load a game off a flash drive, there’s a lot more parts of it I can test. Today, I spent a few minutes putting together a new revision of the floppy board and inspecting the computer.

Floppy adapter board works for the PC98!

After I designed the first version of my PC88 floppy board, I thought it would be fun to put one together for the PC98 as well. Why do I need an adapter for a computer that already has 3.5” floppy drives? The PC9821AP2 I own has a 26-pin floppy drive connector, like a mid-90s laptop, and most standard IBM PC style floppy drives have 34.

Revenge of the PC-8801mkII floppy adapter board

In the last entry, I found myself with a working adapter board to allow a 3.5” floppy drive (like a Gotek) to work with the NEC PC8801mkII. This liberated me from having to source, organize and maintain 5.25” floppy disks, and opens a large library of software for this computer without having to hunt through the used market. However, like all good things, there were a lot of bugs with the old adapter.

PC-8801mkII floppy adapter board

I wanted to get a Gotek working on my PC88, and after seeing that there were a lot of Japanese hobbyists who had managed to get an HxC floppy emulator working, decided it must be possible - even if not simple.

PC-9821AP2/U8W - day two

I only had a short amount of time to play with the computer today, but thanks to a very knowledgable friend, I got a known-good DOS 6.2 image with some disk utilities written to a floppy and booted.

PC-9821AP2/U8W - day one

Months ago, I won a PC-8801mkII and a PC-9821AP2/U8W off Yahoo Auctions. They arrived, but life got busy, and so the blog hasn’t been updated in quite some time. What better way to bring it back than a deep-dive into a computer whose language I literally do not speak or understand in even the slightest way?

Posts tagged "floppy"