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PostPosted: April 18th, 2010, 10:20 pm 
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Joined: June 11th, 2008, 3:16 pm
Posts: 117
Location: Barcelona
I want to write a .D88 game in a 5.25" disk with my PC for use it in my real NEC PC-8801 MC.

I have the 5.25" floppy drive installed in a PC with Windows '98 because I need this old Windows for xFloppy to work. But... Under Windows '98 I can't use OmniFlop and have to use OmniDisk instead. But it doesn't matter because I think either OmniFlop or OmniDisk can't write PC-8801 games. (...)

I have been trying to convert the .D88 to .XDF with d88toxdf (http://www.vector.co.jp/soft/win95/util/se144476.html). I want to convert to .XDF because I can't find any program to write a .D88 file directly to floppy. I can write .XDF files with xFloppy (a program for writing .XDF images and works fine to me with X68000 games). The problem is that d88toxdf only works with 2HD (1.2 MB) .D88 images and refuses to convert any 2D and 2DD image.

My NEC PC-8801 MC can read 2HD, 2D and 2DD floppies, but I think 2HD games for PC-8801 never existed. Am I wrong?

I tryed making a copy of a game (Orbit 3) using M88 emulator and Magic Copy 3.5 (utility uploaded here by Snake Plissken: http://rapidshare.com/files/348662714/PC88_Utility.7z). I copied the game successfully into blank images created with M88 emulator. I tryed the three formats available: 2D, 2DD and 2HD. The copies I have made using 2D and 2DD both boot perfectly (with M88 emulator) but the copy I made using 2HD format doesn't boot (I tryed converting to .XDF and then writing to a real 2HD floppy but of course it doesn't boot in the real PC-8801 MC neither).
I think it doesn't boot because games for PC-8801 are only 2D/2DD format and can't boot if written into a 2HD floppy. :(

I downloaded a program called FD Image UTL (http://harmonicminor.at.infoseek.co.jp/index2.html). With this program you can read the .D88 DiskHeader. I watched closely all the tracks of the game Orbit 3 (163 tracks) and the corresponding address for each track. The addresses change if I compare the .D88 file in 2D format with the 2DD one, but the 2DD is exactly the same to the 2HD one. How can this be? Well, I think it is the same because the game was not correctly written into the 2HD floppy image (because 2HD games for PC-88 don't exist) and it was written into the 2HD image the same way as it was a 2DD image.

As I said, there are several utilities for open a .D88 and even extract/modify the data inside, but I can't find any utility for write a .D88 file into a real 5.25" floppy.
With VFIC utility it is possible to convert a .D88 to .NFD or .VFD but I can't find any program for write .NFD or .VFD. I can't find neither a program for converting .NFD or .VFD to other "writable" formats.

Any clues? Has anybody been able to write a PC-8801 image (.D88 or other format) with a PC? Please help. :cry:


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PostPosted: August 9th, 2017, 8:14 pm 
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Joined: October 27th, 2009, 5:04 am
Posts: 57
I'm running into this problem too and it looks as if the only other format .D88 PC-88 disks can really be converted to is the HxC format. OmniFlop can't write that format either, but the Kryoflux and Supercard Pro apparently can (it's among the few formats they can write directly).

OnmiFlop hasn't been updated since 2012 and only supports one of the many formats (the least common of course) that PC-88 disks come in. Worse, it can't handle the .D88 file format, so even that's essentially useless.


Last edited by papa_november on August 12th, 2017, 6:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: August 9th, 2017, 10:12 pm 
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Joined: November 27th, 2007, 2:19 pm
Posts: 478
Is Samdisk useful in this regard? E.g. by converting to imd (imagedisk).


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PostPosted: August 10th, 2017, 6:17 am 
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Joined: October 27th, 2009, 5:04 am
Posts: 57
SAMDisk worked wonders! Thank you very much.

Never would have guessed that it could handle PC-88 disks.


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