Does FDS work with NOAC?
Moderator: Moderators
Does FDS work with NOAC?
Can anyone with an FDS tell me if it works with a NOAC? I am seriously contemplating a portable FDS, or at least a way to add FDS to my portable after its done. I was not sure if using a NOAC was a good idea, though, until I knew if FDS would work with it.
Well, the Famicom Disk System has even more pirate games available than the Famicom in the China/Taiwan area, and in a SLIGHTLY more limited fashion, Japan, and a lot of the classic games we got here on cartridge started out on FDS. FDS disks were (and as far as I know are still) cheaper to buy than carts, and rewritable. They even had kiosks where you could put new FDS games on blank or normal disks, as well as ones what couldn't be copied over.
Generally, the FDS library is MASSIVE. I even considered this, and looked into it a year or two back.
Unfortunately, like the NES, the FDS is plagued with a design flaw. A belt inside the unit tends to wear out, and maybe even ROT, and while these can be repaired (Nintendo Japan was offering tech support up until a couple years back, and may still be for all I know), the FDS is said to never fully recover, making different noises than originally.
Plus, though the unit runs on 7.5V, (It had batteries, though the unit it attached to wasn't portable YET
)I believe, it is far too bulky and mechanical in nature for a portable...and the motorized mechanisms may take too much power. It's a full size floppy disk reader, not a CD player. It might be more viable if someone actually redesigned a smaller FDS with an integrated NOAC.
I believe it had some compatability with a sort of floppy design back in those days, allowing pirates to make said games. You might want to look into seeing if a smaller one of those drives exists, though the name escapes me. It was NOT a standard 3.5".
Unless you can completely resesign and rebuild the FDS to be more compact, or build a completely new motor and physical mechanism, it may not be viable. I forget the dimensions of the unit.
I don't know about the configuration of the Sharp "Twin Famicom", though. It was an FDS/Famicom combo system available in red or black.
Also, I believe there are projects for using a computer to emulate the FDS and connect it to the Ram Adaptor(the part that plugs into the Famicom). It might be easier to look into getting a tiny motherboard, a floppy or hard drive, and storing this emulator in it, if it even works or is still on the net. It may even be cheaper, considering how much FDS units are, though you'd need to buy a busted FDS for the RAM adapter or find a schematic.
NOTE: It was the rampant illegal reproduction of FDS disks and Famicom carts, as well as certain United States legal precidents about third party games, that prompted the NES to be redesigned with the infamous lock out chip.
Generally, the FDS library is MASSIVE. I even considered this, and looked into it a year or two back.
Unfortunately, like the NES, the FDS is plagued with a design flaw. A belt inside the unit tends to wear out, and maybe even ROT, and while these can be repaired (Nintendo Japan was offering tech support up until a couple years back, and may still be for all I know), the FDS is said to never fully recover, making different noises than originally.
Plus, though the unit runs on 7.5V, (It had batteries, though the unit it attached to wasn't portable YET
)I believe, it is far too bulky and mechanical in nature for a portable...and the motorized mechanisms may take too much power. It's a full size floppy disk reader, not a CD player. It might be more viable if someone actually redesigned a smaller FDS with an integrated NOAC.I believe it had some compatability with a sort of floppy design back in those days, allowing pirates to make said games. You might want to look into seeing if a smaller one of those drives exists, though the name escapes me. It was NOT a standard 3.5".
Unless you can completely resesign and rebuild the FDS to be more compact, or build a completely new motor and physical mechanism, it may not be viable. I forget the dimensions of the unit.
I don't know about the configuration of the Sharp "Twin Famicom", though. It was an FDS/Famicom combo system available in red or black.
Also, I believe there are projects for using a computer to emulate the FDS and connect it to the Ram Adaptor(the part that plugs into the Famicom). It might be easier to look into getting a tiny motherboard, a floppy or hard drive, and storing this emulator in it, if it even works or is still on the net. It may even be cheaper, considering how much FDS units are, though you'd need to buy a busted FDS for the RAM adapter or find a schematic.
NOTE: It was the rampant illegal reproduction of FDS disks and Famicom carts, as well as certain United States legal precidents about third party games, that prompted the NES to be redesigned with the infamous lock out chip.
Warranty-Voiding fun!
-
psychotic_mechanic
- Posts: 346
- Joined: Tue Aug 23, 2005 5:06 pm
I've got some experience with these (I do sell them) so I'll try to clear some of this up.
They do use odd sized disks, not 3.5. I forget the exact size, but it was used in a couple other oddball laptops and such, so you can still find blank ones if you look hard enough.
The copy protection is a mechanical lockout (NINTENDO is stamped into the disk casing which fits into a NINTENDO stamp in the drive) You can remove the raised letters from inside your drive, but all of the pirates disks I have seen either have the stamp in them or a recessed blank where the stamp fits.
Replacing the belts is not hard for someone with (a) skill with tools and (b) opposeable thumbs. The tricky part is reindexing the drive head after replacing the belt so you don't get data errors when reading disks (usually error 27 or so) Once reindexed it doesn't hurt to clean the head of the reader.
The belts used by Nintendo were paper thin black belts that as far as I can tell were made out of tar and partially chewed taffy. I replace them with a much thicker natural rubber belt I accidentally found in a department store out in town. Screw paying $30 fr an "original Nintendo belt", if they didn't suck so bad in the first place we wouldn't be doing this now.
I usually test the systems on batteries first, I don't know how long the "C" batteries last, if I play for hours, I use an AC adaptor. A standard 9V adaptor works fine, but the original "red tip" Nintendo one brings $$$ on ebay.
I was toying with the idea of starting my own pirate disk buisness. A lot of the games I buy in town have the wrong stickers on them (I'm assuming from being reprogrammed at a game vending machin kiosk) so with a couple of the drives, so hardware tweaks and a lot of crappy disks I could copy SMB2(J), bubble bobble, etc on to the disks and sell them. There's not enough money in the disks to worry about the legal problems though.
One last point, don't ever buy a system off of ebay that says "this is untested, I don't know if it works" and not plan on rebuilding it as soon as you get it. I have purchased and rebuilt dozens of these systems and I have yet to buy one in a game shop that actually works when I get them home.
The twin famicom is a fancy case that houses a regular famicom circuit board and the same exact disk drive inside a fancy case. I'm working on one right now that is having problems with the controllers and AC adaptor.
You could theoretically interface a standard disk drive through the RAM adaptor, but then you would not be able to play the original Disk games on it. It would make more sense to case mod an original FDS with a CD or DVD ROM drive and play emulated games directly off of it on your PC.
I have 2 cases left over from burnt out drive motors and thought about putting a portable in one (it already has a battery compartment)
They do use odd sized disks, not 3.5. I forget the exact size, but it was used in a couple other oddball laptops and such, so you can still find blank ones if you look hard enough.
The copy protection is a mechanical lockout (NINTENDO is stamped into the disk casing which fits into a NINTENDO stamp in the drive) You can remove the raised letters from inside your drive, but all of the pirates disks I have seen either have the stamp in them or a recessed blank where the stamp fits.
Replacing the belts is not hard for someone with (a) skill with tools and (b) opposeable thumbs. The tricky part is reindexing the drive head after replacing the belt so you don't get data errors when reading disks (usually error 27 or so) Once reindexed it doesn't hurt to clean the head of the reader.
The belts used by Nintendo were paper thin black belts that as far as I can tell were made out of tar and partially chewed taffy. I replace them with a much thicker natural rubber belt I accidentally found in a department store out in town. Screw paying $30 fr an "original Nintendo belt", if they didn't suck so bad in the first place we wouldn't be doing this now.
I usually test the systems on batteries first, I don't know how long the "C" batteries last, if I play for hours, I use an AC adaptor. A standard 9V adaptor works fine, but the original "red tip" Nintendo one brings $$$ on ebay.
I was toying with the idea of starting my own pirate disk buisness. A lot of the games I buy in town have the wrong stickers on them (I'm assuming from being reprogrammed at a game vending machin kiosk) so with a couple of the drives, so hardware tweaks and a lot of crappy disks I could copy SMB2(J), bubble bobble, etc on to the disks and sell them. There's not enough money in the disks to worry about the legal problems though.
One last point, don't ever buy a system off of ebay that says "this is untested, I don't know if it works" and not plan on rebuilding it as soon as you get it. I have purchased and rebuilt dozens of these systems and I have yet to buy one in a game shop that actually works when I get them home.
The twin famicom is a fancy case that houses a regular famicom circuit board and the same exact disk drive inside a fancy case. I'm working on one right now that is having problems with the controllers and AC adaptor.
You could theoretically interface a standard disk drive through the RAM adaptor, but then you would not be able to play the original Disk games on it. It would make more sense to case mod an original FDS with a CD or DVD ROM drive and play emulated games directly off of it on your PC.
I have 2 cases left over from burnt out drive motors and thought about putting a portable in one (it already has a battery compartment)
American gamer stationed in Japan, PM with your import gaming desires.
Now with dancing boobies as my avatar!
Now with dancing boobies as my avatar!
-
psychotic_mechanic
- Posts: 346
- Joined: Tue Aug 23, 2005 5:06 pm
Ok, just to clear some things up here guys, I like the FDS because you can make your own disks with disk images from the web. (some call the ROMS, but they techincally arent ROMS since you can write disks)
I am currently in the process of writing up a document that explains how to disable the Disk Overwrite Lockout chip on the FDS unit that prevents entire disk overwrites. This would allow one to hook the FDS up to your printer port and use a specual peice of software called FDS Loader by Brad Taylor to make new FDS disks and to rip origional FDS disks. It also emulates the FDS disk drive. this means you can fun your FDS ram adaptor with it without the disk drive and use real NES hardware. In theory this could be seriously portableized into something you could actually carry. (Port FDS Loader to PALM OS hehe!)
Also, FDS is a special peice of hardware, and I would like someone to actually try this out as NOAC's are known to have sound and graphics issues with certain games. FDS has special add-on fatures which might not work right, and I really need to know for sure. Thanks!
EDIT: The FDS does have a security chip as well as the hardware issue with the indent on the disks. The indent was because some computers (Sinclair?) and MIDI keyboards used the same disks but without the Nintendo logo. The security chip looks to see if you are trying to overwrite a whole disk, and it can be disabled, but its complex because you have to replace its function since it does more than just blocking whole disk writes. Look at the NESDEV forums for some more info on that until I have my own docs ready.
I am currently in the process of writing up a document that explains how to disable the Disk Overwrite Lockout chip on the FDS unit that prevents entire disk overwrites. This would allow one to hook the FDS up to your printer port and use a specual peice of software called FDS Loader by Brad Taylor to make new FDS disks and to rip origional FDS disks. It also emulates the FDS disk drive. this means you can fun your FDS ram adaptor with it without the disk drive and use real NES hardware. In theory this could be seriously portableized into something you could actually carry. (Port FDS Loader to PALM OS hehe!)
Also, FDS is a special peice of hardware, and I would like someone to actually try this out as NOAC's are known to have sound and graphics issues with certain games. FDS has special add-on fatures which might not work right, and I really need to know for sure. Thanks!
EDIT: The FDS does have a security chip as well as the hardware issue with the indent on the disks. The indent was because some computers (Sinclair?) and MIDI keyboards used the same disks but without the Nintendo logo. The security chip looks to see if you are trying to overwrite a whole disk, and it can be disabled, but its complex because you have to replace its function since it does more than just blocking whole disk writes. Look at the NESDEV forums for some more info on that until I have my own docs ready.