Found this on a old hard drive, I was writing it for this site back in 2007, but never got around to posting it and I lost my collection of PC9801 games in a break in (although what idiot Japanese burglar thinks two boxes of PC98 games were worth money....)
Backing up and recreating discs from the PC-98x1 to Windows and back again.
If you have a PC-98x1 machine and you have some games you may want to back them up or even run game images (from your back ups or for er other sources), you also might want to create a boot disc for your machine if the seller decided helpfully to reformat the hard drive to delete all their details before sending it to you so you just get a "NO SYSTEM FILES" message on booting.
There are two ways to do you can this, one is to use a USB (or Firewire) / 2.5" Hard Drive adaptor (you could use internal adapters but I would not due to the hassles it can bring) and copy the files over using DISK EXPLORER. The other way is to use a floppy drive to copy images over.
We'll look at the floppy method first as it is the easiest way to copy straight images and doesn't require you to remove the hard drive from the machine.
For this you will need three programs.
DISK IMAGE (
http://www.vector.co.jp/soft/dl/win95/u ... 76285.html)
VIRTUAL FLOPPY IMAGE CONVERTOR (
http://www.vector.co.jp/soft/dl/win95/u ... 51106.html)
and
DISK EXPLORER (
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA013937 ... td169e.rar)
You will be using the command prompt a lot so I suggest you find it. For ease of use create a PC9821 folder on your C drive and put each of these program in it's own folder, they just need to be unzipped no installation required. I also suggest making an Image Folder so you can put each of the disc images into.
The PC-98x1 series uses a weird 1.2MB disc format (some people call it 1.22MB, 1.23MB or 1.25MB, but these are all the same). The reason for this was to keep compatability between 5" (5.25") discs and 3.5" discs. You could use the DISKCOPY command between the two formats and get an exact copy (not something you could do on a western PC). However a number of disc drives in Western computers may not read / write 1.2MB discs correct.
If you have a USB floppy drive (or if you don't have any floppy drive then buy a USB floppy drive) then it is more then likely compatable. All the USB drives I have tested, which include HP, IBM, Fujitsu and a no name model have all worked fine (including drives bought in America).
A quick test would be to open up a command prompt in Windows (click Start, programs, accessories then command prompt or click Start, Run, then type CMD in the box and enter), put a 1.44MB floppy in the drive (you have plugged it in haven't you?) and then type
FORMAT A: /A:1024 /T:77 /N:8 /U
(Note A: might be different but to confirm, click My Computer, it should tell you the drive, if it doesn't then click once on Floppy Disk Drive and then click properties and click Sharing)
It should format the disc in PC-9801 format of 77 Tracks, 8 Sectors per track, 1024 Bytes per track on sector, if it comes up with errors like Track 0 unreadable then try another disc, if that fails then the drive is not compatable. Else it should finish and say something like (this is from Windows Vista).
C:\>format a: /a:1024 /t:77 /n:8 /u
Insert new disk for drive A:
and press ENTER when ready...
The type of the file system is FAT.
Verifying 1.23M
Initializing the File Allocation Table (FAT)...
Volume label (11 characters, ENTER for none)?
Format complete.
1,250,304 bytes total disk space.
1,250,304 bytes available on disk.
1,024 bytes in each allocation unit.
1,221 allocation units available on disk.
12 bits in each FAT entry.
Volume Serial Number is 0487-2775
Format another (Y/N)?
Then your drive is compatable, if you are going to make images then I suggest you format your discs first so type Y and continue. The /U switch is important as it will format the disc unconditionally, without it you might find the discs won't format correctly.
We will recreate the MS-DOS 6.2 installation discs, but any image file will work in exactly the same way.
Download the disc images from here
http://www.initialm.net/mkw/pc98catalog ... SDOS62.rarYou will need a program to unrar the file, use 7z or unrar or something.
Then open the file into your Images folder (I created a MS DOS 6.2 folder for it). The files will be in .FDI format and need to be converted.
Load up VFIC and select BKDSK FORMAT from the drop down menu and then just drag and drop each of the .FDI files into the window that says "Drag & Drop File(s) Here to Convert", it will create some new files that have the exention .HDM which is a plain image format.
Next load up Disk Image, click the "+" tab and uncheck skip error track, click "for old pc-dos users" and make sure you set the Windows option for your machine, either 95/98 for Windows 95, 98 or ME or Xp/2k for Windows XP, 2000, NT4 and Vista, also set FD Drive to the drive you will be using and FD Mode to 1.25M, anything else will work but will fail to work on the PC-98x1 machine.
Click HD -> FD (125) and select the first .HDM file, and click okay and it should then write the disc, if you did not format the disc to 1.2MB with the format command then the disc will probably fail to write correctly. Once done, open up a command prompt and type
DIR A:
(Replacing A: if different) and if successful it should list the files. The PC-98x1 should recognise the disc too.
Using the disc you can install an operating system on the drive if you get the dreaded NO SYSTEM FILES (Although check to make sure you do have a Hard Drive in the the Hard drive bay).
Making images is very easy, make sure your drive is compatable by testing it (see above) first. Then you need to check the condition of your discs. I suggest you don't put it into your PC-98x1 drive as if the disc is faulty then you could mess up the drive and it's easier to replace a USB drive then a notebook drive.
First check the discs to make sure they are not damaged in any way, like cracks or chips to the disc or the metal slider is bend or dented. Also check the metal slider by touching the top right hand part of it to make sure it will slide left and springs back when you move your finger right if unsure then don't use the disc as it'll cause you problems.
Slide the metal cover again and under decent light, check to see if the brown surface of the disc is reflective and doesn't have any marks, if the disc looks to have water marks or isn't totally reflective then the disc may be damaged and don't use it, you still of course could try but again do it on a USB drive that you can replace.
*IMPORTANT* make sure you always write protect the disc before inserting it into the drive.
Open up the command prompt and type DIR A: to check that the disc is readable if your drive makes funny noises then I suggest you press the eject button, also PC-9821 discs may be in 1.44MB format and if this is the case then
Create a folder in the images drive to store your images, just so you can find the files easily.
Next load up Disk Image, click the "+" tab and uncheck skip error track, click "for old pc-dos users" and make sure you set the Windows option for your machine, either 95/98 for Windows 95, 98 or ME or Xp/2k for Windows XP, 2000, NT4 and Vista, also set FD Drive to the drive you will be using and FD Mode to 1.25M.
Click FD -> HD (125)
Move to the correct folder and type in a name, it's useful to call the discs as they are called on the disc as well as using a numeric or letter first so you can idenify the discs easily. So for example DISK A, DISK 1 - SYSTEM DISK, DISK 1, DISK 1 - GAME DISC, DISK 2 - DATA DISC etc) then add the extention .HDM (as the program won't). Then click OK and it will read the disc, if it comes across errors retry them a few times, maybe take the disc out and reinsert it, if it continues to fail then give up as the disc is unreadable.
I would open the created image in DISK EXPLORER as it will show if the disc has copied correctly (ie you can see files, click VIEW and DISK VIEW. to see it has copied as a 1.2M disc (it should have 1,250,304 bytes on the disc).
Repeat this for all the discs and then you have a back up, you can use VFIC to convert the discs into other formats like .FDI for use in emulators if you so wish.