Hoping for your help w/ a Famicom Disk System project

[Simplynes]

Congrats Zach, which diagram is upside down in the doc? Still haven't got mine working.

[rbudrick]

simplynes,

Just make the cable as it is in the docs and then try the cable upsiide sown in the system. The diagram of the front of the adapter plug is backwards.

-Rog

[lewellyn]

I was wondering: If I were to obtain a Sharp Twin Famicom, this whole thing is kinda moot, right? I'm still on the lookout for a disk system to try all this out on...

I think I have a solid lead on both a Sharp Twin and a regular FDS. (Lucky me! ) As soon as I have one in my grubby mitts, I hope to add myself to the list of successes!

[Simplynes]

Thanks Rob/Zach after spending hours on end remaking a cable three times that didn't need fixing to begin with it's finally up and running.



woooooooooooohooooooooooo.

[Zach]

Congratulations, Simplynes!

So if your cable working for reading AND reprogramming disks? So far mine reads just fine, but still won't reprogram using either of my drives!

[Simplynes]

No it wont reprogram but I don't have a white label system, it just freezes the computer when I try. Only my twin famicom has the drive with the copy function but I don't really want to swap the drives around unless I have to.

[rbudrick]

Congrats, Simplynes!

Concerning the Twin Famicom:

http://nesdev.parodius.com/cgi-bin/w...5&Old=allposts

Simplynes, tell us more about this disk (does it work?):

http://simplynes.emucamp.com/hacker.html

I've never seen the disk image for this (you mention there that it is uncopyable). Do you think fdsloadr could dump it? They're so rare, It'd be awesome to have that backed up...it'd be a shame to lose it to history once it dies.

By the way folks, I'm currently researching another way to grab images from FDS disks using a very different sort of solution. I"ll let you know when I have more details...

Oh, and the whole white label thing went out the window when Zach found that his pink label system had the 7201 chipset in it, so that's what you need to look out for. However, that link above adds another piece of the puzzle. AN500R drive? That's the first I heard of that....

Zach, any luck with the reprogramming tips (or I hope they were) I PMed you? If you get it working, let us know your serial numbers on your drives...it may be a hint as to what numbers (at least below that number in production) would have the correct chipset.

Zach, do you see any hint of the model number of the drive unit inside? Does it say anything like AN500R on it? I'll check at home tonight what model mine is, if listed somewhere...

Simplynes, did you get a chance to examine what chip is on your drive unit? Is it the 3206 or the 7201?

-Rob

[Simplynes]

That hacker page is pretty old but most the info is correct. The hacker cannot copy itself luckily fdsloadr had no problems dumping the image.

AN500R is the first or at least an early model twin famicom which pretty much guarantee's a 7201 chipset. I have three standalone disk systems but as hacker doesn't load on any of them I presume they all have the 3206 chipset. I will test them with fdsloadr though just to make sure.

[rbudrick]

Simplynes,

I'd like to test that image on my machine too, if possible. Could you email that my way to rbudrick at hotmail dot com? Zach, I'd bet this would be helpful for you to test this image too, since you have a 7201 drive.

I came across some info on the Disk Hacker program. Apparently there were verions 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and Disk Hacker II.

Check out these links. I post the google caches in some cases because babelfish.alatavista.com will only "translate" them and not the original pages.

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache...=en&lr=lang_ja

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache...=en&lr=lang_ja

Now here's a site that I believe explores that whole serial number issue (jackpot?). Check out the hyperlinks on that page, I believe it also talks about how to defeat the copy protection:

http://www02.so-net.ne.jp/~disk/hazu.html
http://www02.so-net.ne.jp/~disk/zu1.html

Oh, and I keep finding info about this program that goes hand in hand somehow with disk hacker, called Disk Keeper (don't know jack about it):

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache...=en&lr=lang_ja

And what the hell is this?

http://ogw-a.hp.infoseek.co.jp/disk-list/disk0141.htm

It reminds me of one of Chris Covell's programs that allows you to see the file names on an FDS image...in fact, that's exactly what it looks like...

Now, I was talking to lewellyn, and I was telling him how much my Japanese sucks. I know about enough to be dangerous, and that's about it. Is there anyone who speaks Japanese fluently on this forum able to help out with this (translating these web pages, etc?).

I"m even willing to pay someone to translate alot of this stuff! Especially these:

http://nesdev.parodius.com/fdscopy.zip
http://nesdev.parodius.com/fds-copytool2.zip

Talk soon. :-)

-Rob

[rbudrick]

Oh yeah, simplynes, where do you find the model number on the drive (an500r)?

-Rob

[rbudrick]

Hmmm, one of those links has a program called Disk Hunter that appears to be a Game Genie-like program for the FDS...


-Rob

[Simplynes]

My hacker disk has versions 1.2 and 1.3 didn't even know there was a 1.1 or version 2. Would be nice to know if version 2 works on all systems or not. As for Disk Keep it looks like either a Hacker clone or for backing up saves?.

The model number for the Twin Famicom is on the top of the system near the cartridge slot.

[rbudrick]

So it actually says AN500R on the outside of the system?

Hmmm, wonder where it would be on Nintendo FDS.

-Rob

[rbudrick]

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache...=en&lr=lang_ja

Here's a cache of that link that I didn't know what it was. I had to find a google cache in order to attempt a translation. It is called" Hammer Editor." I've heard of it before but never really knew what it was. I guess it allows you to edit addresses in your disk. Unlike Game Genie, these don't erase when you turn them off! You'd better know what you are doing if you use this so you dont permanently screw up your disk. :-)

-Rob



-Rob

[Simplynes]

Has anyone made any progress on reprogramming disks?

[rbudrick]

Yeah, good question. Zach, any luck?

By the way, last night I translated a bit of those instructions on how to do a mod to a 3206 machine (Zach, the P is after the 3206 also, by the way). And one section said something like, "If the IC is FD3206, then it is newer protected version. If IC is FD7201, then it is ?strong?." Well, you get the gist. 3206=bad, 7201=good. So, it's sort of a confirmation....I hate translating...it's so slow and tedious.

-Rob

[Zach]

Actually, I feel like I'm making a little bit of progress. After checking out this page that Simplynes suggested...

http://members.lycos.co.uk/tomyweb/

...and completing the first mod, my drive is now trying to reprogram! It's reading an FDS ROM file, switching to "reprogram" mode without locking up the PC, and it's writing to the disk. Everything looks fine, but when I try to play the disk in a Famicom Disk System, it won't load. And when I try to read the disk with FDSLOADR, it's not finding any valid data. Where it should be displaying a bar of colored blocks, it's displaying a yellow zero or some other character.

So what I've done is made the simple mods to the circuit board that plugs into the disk drive. This is the board that holds the BU3208 chip. I've not done anything to the smaller board that inside the actual drive assembly. The instructions on that page seem to indicate that, since I have the FD7201P chip, I shouldn't have to change anything on the drive's board. Am I reading this incorrectly? Suggestions?

[Simplynes]

The first time I read that page I thought it meant that if you have a 7201 drive that you didn't need to do anything to it. Reading it again though I think you're right and have done what you're suppose to Zach. Maybe the fdsloadr software is to blame as it wasn't written for use on the original hardware.

[Zach]

Reading it again though I think you're right and have done what you're supposed to Zach.

Yes, I think we're on to something. While my actual DRIVE does have a FD7201P chip on its board, there's still the other board inside the case that houses the BU3208, which it now seems needs to hacked to get the drive to "copy" at all. It was a simple mod that I'll bet hackers figured out quickly, so I can see that Nintendo would still want to modify their drive design by switching the FD7201 to something else that blocks copy functions even if the BU3208 is hacked.

So my opinion right now is that FDSLOADR does NOT work with a normal FDS, even if it is hacked. I think the author only had it working because he bypassed lots of Nintendo circuitry. I would love it if someone would prove me wrong and let us know that they're using FDSLOADR to reprogram disks with a stock FDS (or even one with the simple BU3208 hack).

So now I'm on a quest to figure out what the FDSLOADR author did to his drive to get past all of Nintendo's "extra" circuitry. The first thing I'll try is making another cable that connects directly to the drive as described in that other messageboard post that Rob linked to. Wish me luck!

[rbudrick]

You could definitely be right, Simplynes. Since Tomy is the one who supplied the FDS copy tool docs to nesdev.parodius.com, that would seem logical. Other than tototek.com, I didn't know that Tomy had another site like that one. Thanks for pointing that site out! Now If only I could get a hold of that Bung disk he has for FDS repair.... :-)

Almost all Bung software is fading out of existence and no one seems to want to dump them...I have a feeling that isn't an accident, since if there's only a few out there, the software becomes rarer creating an oligopoly on FDS repair, hacking, etc. Just my conspiracy theory.

I spent quite a bit of time last night trying to translate the FDS copy tool docs. I didn't get very far, but I did manage to write out the romanji for everything but the kanji so far. After that I plan to retype the doc and go from there. God that's gonna suck. Maybe I oughta just pay someone to translate it, heh heh.

-Rob