Finally wrote my doc on retuning FDS drives...

[rbudrick]

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AXZ37MV2

There's the .pdf. I've been meaning to do this for a very long time. After many folks saying there was no real scientific way to retune the FDS's drive head, I refused to accept that. This method has worked for me on every drive I tested it on.

Mods, if you feel this should go in the tech section, feel free. I just felt that since this seems to be a common topic of discussion in many forums, that it would be seen by more eyes and help more people here. That, and every FDS owner will eventually have to deal with this and there has never really been any help out there for it.

Enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions.

-Rob

[madman77]

Nice doc, but you should replace that blurry picture. Does your camera have a macro setting?

There are a lot of different things to check to get an FDS drive reading properly, if you just replaced the belt, make sure that the disk spindle is alinged properly as detailed on the jfgoods site. From what I can tell, this ensures that the disk is read from the correct starting point. Motor speed is another consideration, but unless you have a game doctor and copymaster, there's no real scientific way to tune it properly. This method is probably your next best bet.

[blue lander]

Cool, I'll have to try that on my Twin Famicom once I get a new belt for it.

[rbudrick]

Well, I didn't try it on a Twin, but I can only assume it uses the exact same mechanism, so it should work. As for the blurry pic, I tried. My camera sucks. But yes, this doc is to align the head to the correct starting point. Yes, I forgot about the disk spindle alignment. Perhaps I should have added a blurb about that. Totally forgot about it.

As for the motor speed, yes you can use the Copy Master FDS disk to adjust this, which requires a Game Doctor (I use the Turbo Game Doctor 6, the best "copier" from the era), but it's really just a preference, as it adjusts what speed the motor reads disks at. I prefer the middle speed of five, which seems right in the middle of the road and works every time. Copy Master is a very useful program as it allows copying of disks. In combination with FDS Loader, you can rewrite disks too. FDS Loader is supposed to natively have the functionality to rewrite disks, but I don't know anyone that's gotten that feature of the program to work The author wrote it for his drive that he made his own write mod for. Best bet to rewrite disks that I've used is the CopyMaster/TGD6+FDSLoader combo.

-Rob

[sharc]

oh man, this is a tremendous help since i know the old girl will go on me sometime and there's precious little help available for working on the system. this kind of stuff is a boon to fds owners, thanks!