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Hello everyone! New member!

Started by Aquarius, 14:16, 02 April 18

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Aquarius

Hello everyone, I am from Japan and I just wanted to say hello. I am mainly here because I have some interest in old 8-bit computers, and I just bought a floppy that was aimed for the Amstrad CPC, now trying to fit it into a Japanese retro computer.

Anyway, I think this forum seems to be a very helpful and nice place so I just wanted to say hello!

mr_lou


Zoe Robinson

Hello and welcome!


You're trying to fit a CPC floppy drive into a Japanese computer? That's an interesting project; I hope you'll keep us up-to-date on how you get on with it! :D


If it's one of the Amstrad 3" drives, it's worth remembering that their power and pin connections are different to most drives of the time; which can be a problem. There's a guide on the Wiki to attaching a 3.5" drive to a CPC that covers how the drives are connected differently, if that's of any help to you. http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Guide_on_how_to_connect_a_3.5%22_drive_to_a_CPC6128/664

DanyPPC

CPC 464 with USB Floppy Emulator / CPC 464+ with USB Floppy Emulator / CPC 6128+ with C4CPC and Gotek HxC USB Drive Emulator

ZbyniuR

Welcome.   I think you are first person from Japan here. :)

3" disk was used in SEGA Super Control Station SF-7000, for SC-3000, and some MSX machines too. :)



https://sega.jp/fb/segahard/sc3000/sf7000.html

In STARS, TREK is better than WARS.

Urusergi

You're welcome!

Quote from: ZbyniuR on 21:50, 02 April 18
Welcome.   I think you are first person from Japan here. :)

I'm not sure at all, but @keith56 may be Japanese  ::)



robcfg

Welcome to the forum!


The Tatung Einstein also had 3" drives.


For connecting a 3" drive, please see this link and this wiki page.


Don't hesitate to ask any question you may have, and good luck!

ZbyniuR

Yes, but Tatung was produced in Taiwan and sell only in UK. So I suppose Japanese never heard about it. :)

Since few years I dream about to know someone from Japan, to know more about 8 and 16bit computers popular there, like NEC, Fujitsu and Sharp. :)
In STARS, TREK is better than WARS.

keith56

Hello there! Welcome to the forum!
I'm not Japanese, I'm an english person living in Japan... but I can speak Japanese!
I was aware there were a few Japanese computers that used 3" discs, but I don't have any of them... I do have a lot of MSX'es though! I take it you don't have a CPC yet?

今日はキースです私は英国人けど日本語が話せます!これから宜しくお願いします!
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

VincentGR


Aquarius

#10
Hello and thanks for all the warm welcomes!!!

You are totally correct. I am trying to fit a floppy that was intended for the CPC but into a Japanese computer. Might sound crazy but these old 3" floppy drives are not only rare, but almost impossible to find in Japan. Even though many if not most of them were manufactured in Japan back in the days.

Correct, the MSX is using them as well, to a very limited extent. Sharp X1 probably had the widest use among computer in Japan and 3" floppies. Other than that, it was mainly used in keyboards (musical), and perhaps other type of HiFi Recorders or something like that.

They are actually so rare to find that it will be cheaper for me to import one from Europe rather than buying it domestically. Last one I saw was a stationary model and that one went for well over 300 USD so the only choice for me is to trying to fit one of these EME-Models into my computer. Maybe my PC or some of my Japanese 8-bit computers. I have most of the major 8-bit computers such as MSX/PC88/X1/Pasopia/FM7 etc, but it is for the Sharp X1 that I have a lot of floppies that needs to be dumped.

So yes, that is the story. I had a 3" floppy earlier but it broke. But the issue is that the EME-156 in my case uses a totally different connector. A 26 pin story which is totally not pin compatible with the edge connectors used in the normal mitsumi 5" drives. So I have somehow have to make a pin adapter.

Anyway nice to meet you all and thank you so much for the warm welcome!

Keith: キースさん! こちらこそ宜しくお願いします!日本にどのくらい住んでいますか?^o^

I created another topic for the discussing of my project fitting it into there, so please stay tuned and check it out if anyone likes. If I can get things to work, there would at least be somewhat demand from Japanese hobbyists to do the same thing I suppose haha.

Also, if anyone have some questions regarding the Japanese 8-bit computers, please feel free to ask. Like stated I have serveral of them, but besides MSX the PC-8801 from NEC I would say made the most huge impact on the home computer market back in the 80s, and the software library of the PC-8801 is vastly superior to that of any other 8-bit computer from the era. My favourite personally is probably still the PC-8801, while Sharp X1 and MSX is also highly regarded especially since the MSX was somewhat successfull even abroad which makes the international community of that computer very strong I suppose.

robcfg

Maybe you could save you some effort by acquiring an Amstrad FDI-1 drive, which is a 3" drive in a standalone case and has a standard 34 pin floppy cable.


I use one with a KryoFlux controller for dumping disks and it's connected with a flat cable, so it may be what you need.




||C|-|E||

Welcome and good luck with the project! Robcfg idea seems actually sound, although who knows how much will be to get a FDI-1 in Japan  :-X

Aquarius

Quote from: robcfg on 11:13, 03 April 18
Maybe you could save you some effort by acquiring an Amstrad FDI-1 drive, which is a 3" drive in a standalone case and has a standard 34 pin floppy cable.


I use one with a KryoFlux controller for dumping disks and it's connected with a flat cable, so it may be what you need.

Yes, that would probably be the best solution but the question is how to find one that is in good condition + shipping to Japan, as C-E stated. I am not sure how much they weight but the shipping cost would probably be very high. But yes, that would be the absolutely best solution.

By the way, do you happen to have any pictures inside of it? I am mainly interested in how it looks from the inside, and perhaps I can try to replicate it somehow. They are selling 26-pin to 34 adapters here in Japan, so maybe I should pick one of those up.

robcfg

The CPCWiki comes to the rescue!


Though maybe we could find a cheap one in Europe and then work the shipping costs.

Aquarius

Quote from: robcfg on 13:23, 03 April 18
The CPCWiki comes to the rescue!


Though maybe we could find a cheap one in Europe and then work the shipping costs.


Thanks a lot!

Now I already ordered a 3" EME-156 so right now I am mainly trying to find a way to hook it up to a PC or an X1 machine. But of course if it is possible to source one DDI-1 in Europe for a good price then it would absolutely be interesting. Thanks.

ZbyniuR

#16
You don't need DDI interface, cheaper should be Amstrad FD1 disk drive whitout interface, or even only FDD without power supply, and it don't have to be from Europe.

To connect 26 pins drive with 34 pins ribbon cable



34 pins  -    26 pins

  2 - (red cable)
  4 - DS4           <- you don't need this 3 pins
  6 - INUSE


  8 - IND    - 2    - in 26 pins ribbon here is red cable, but this is not the same signal as in red cable in 34 pins ribbon
10 - DS0           <- you don't need this pin
12 - DS1    - 4
14 - DS2    - 6
16 - MTRON  - 8
18 - DIR    - 10
20 - STEP   - 12
22 - WDAT   - 14
24 - WGAT   - 16
26 - TRK0   - 18
28 - WPT    - 20
30 - RDAT   - 22
32 - S1     - 24
34 - RDY    - 26

Off course all others pins 1-25 or 1-33 are GND.

And second important thing - power - yellow cable +5V, and red cable +12V.
As you see it's not so hard. :)



All as I know about computers popular in Japan I found here:
https://hg101.kontek.net/JPNcomputers/Japanesecomputers.htm

Before that, I thought most popular platform was there MSX. Now I know half of Japan market had NEC, next was Sharp and Fujitsu and fourth was MSX.

Outside Japan NEC sell PC66 in some arabian countrys (not compatible with PC88) and in some far east countrys. Sharp trying sell MZ models older than X1. Thats it,  except MSX, which was popular in South America, some arabian countrys and in Holand, and mayby little bit in Spain. Rest of the world barely know them.

Over 20 mln MSX was sell on whall the world. Including 5 mln in Japan. The only producer of MSX in Europe was Philips, in USA was Spectravideo, and all rest was from Japan or Brazil or Argentina. :)

People from Europe are amazed, why Japanese don't know computers from Atari or Commodore. And we never seen 8-16 bit NEC or Fujitsu computers. :)

Can you give us some links about retro japanese computers, please?
Could be in japanese. Google will help. :)
In STARS, TREK is better than WARS.

Aquarius

Oh thank you for the extensive information!

As I said, I have a EME-156 coming in, so that is basically what I have to work with. No power supply or anything like that. It did not yet arrive so I am planning to be prepared until it arrives here haha.

So the power adapter is reversed then? That is really good to know! Thanks.

When it comes to Japanese computers. Or when it came to Japanese computers, MSX came in rather late in history, and it was mainly due to the fact that they wanted to unite the manufacturers to make more standardized products that would work for them as a market standard for the customer so that one printer would work on the other machine, as long as it was an MSX. Although things caught on, it was mainly games that were developed for the MSX while NEC, Fujitsu, Sharp and other companies already had their own standards and that is why you do not see many NEC, or Sharp MSX computers out there, I think there was 1 or 2 Sharp MSX computers released in total.

It did however incorporate a lot of the old NEC structure, such as the CMT and some other I/O more or less were taken straight from that standard. But personally the NEC PC-6001 up until the PC98 is probably the best Japanese computers out there when it comes to what it boils down to = user friendly with a huge library of software. Even the PC-6601 were backwards compatible with the PC-6001 and when they released their PC-8001 series, and later the very very successfull PC-8801 series, the first models were totally backwards compatible with the PC-8001. But overall except for the MSX market, the Japanese industry was far from standardized and especially Sharp tended to want to go their own way with their X1 series, such as a totally different I/O layout which were not compatible with for example the PC-8801. Especially the earlier models couldn't even connect to the same monitors. While NEC used a 15-Pin Digital RGB, Sharp used a 8-pin DIN connector to provide Analogue RGB.

But as far as history goes, I can give you a few links if you are interested. They are in Japanese so you have to use Google translate, but here you go:

https://ci.nii.ac.jp/els/contentscinii_20180404000843.pdf?id=ART0007271038

http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/computer/personal/index.html


http://www.eonet.ne.jp/~building-pc/

Thanks for the help!!!

johnno56

Welcome Aquarius.

I hope that you will enjoy your stay and that we can all learn from each other... :)

J
May your journey be free of incident.

Live long and prosper.

Aquarius

Quote from: johnno56 on 21:22, 03 April 18
Welcome Aquarius.

I hope that you will enjoy your stay and that we can all learn from each other... :)

J

Thank you very much. I hope so too!  :)

Also, on the picture above which shows the diagram of a 26-34 ribbon cable. I will need a 26-pin Female and not Male connector right? Because I will connect it directly into the EME-156 which has a Male connector attached to it. Will it make any difference in signals if putting a Female instead of Male connector?

Thanks for input.

ZbyniuR

No, this big white picture is to connect 3.5" (34pins) FDD inside Amstrad 6128 with ribbon cable 26pins, which is there inside for 3" FDD. I couldn't found other picture to show which pins you need.

Male or female plugs, belive me don't change order of pins. :)
For EME-156 you need female plug 26pins. Can be longer it's not problem there is space for that. Look...

On other side you know better than me, what you need. :)

Imported is as you notice before. Modern 3.5" FDD need only  5V, without 12V.
Older FDD 3.5" from 80s need both, the same as 3" FDD, but order of pins in 3" is different than in 3.5"  That is very importent, because 12V is for motors only, and it could demage of mother board in FDD if you connect wrong.

Thanks for japanese links. :)
In STARS, TREK is better than WARS.

Aquarius

Quote from: ZbyniuR on 18:13, 04 April 18
No, this big white picture is to connect 3.5" (34pins) FDD inside Amstrad 6128 with ribbon cable 26pins, which is there inside for 3" FDD. I couldn't found other picture to show which pins you need.

Male or female plugs, belive me don't change order of pins. :)


Thank you for the answer!  :) 

So in other words, I just use a 26-pin female adaptor (instead of male) and a 34-pin male adaptor to connect it to a PC/Other computer that accepts 34-pin input? And of course I switch the 12 and 5 power to reverse positions. Is that correct? Thank you very much for your time. I just want to be sure that I am doing this correct. Thanks!

Gryzor

Welcome, @Aquarius ! Fascinating cross-platform project, looking forward to reading your other thread :)


By the way, if your IP geolocation is correct, I've been in your area :) Sadly I was with my later-to-be wife there, so I couldn't fill a trunk with Japanese retro stuff...

Aquarius

Quote from: Gryzor on 18:20, 06 April 18
Welcome, @Aquarius ! Fascinating cross-platform project, looking forward to reading your other thread :)


By the way, if your IP geolocation is correct, I've been in your area :) Sadly I was with my later-to-be wife there, so I couldn't fill a trunk with Japanese retro stuff...

Thank you very much!  :)

I have right now made the necessary cable needed (I think it was successfull), and now waiting for the floppy drive to arrive. Hopefully it will arrive sometimes next week.

Ah I understand, we don't have that much retro related things compared with Tokyo and Akihabara but Osaka has Denden Town but those places are way overpriced for me haha. So I usually use Yahoo Auctions and other places to trace down the stuff I want. There are also recycle shops that sometimes has a very good sortment of different retro games, but seldom computer stuff and mostly gaming things. But most of the best ones are located along highways and not in the cities to be honest.

I am not really sure where my IP geolocation is, but I am from Kansai  :)  Nice to meet you Gryzor! (I like the game very much as well!)

Gryzor

Yup, I stayed at Shizuoka at the time. Not a big place and of course not compared to the markets of Tokyo or Osaka but the Shinkansen made those accessible, and still, there were a few smaller shops in Shizuoka, too. I remember getting a NeoGeo Pocket Color and a WonderSwan, only because they were so small - and so cheap :D


Again, welcome :)

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