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Good job!Anyway , IMHO, the game has a protection against illegal copies since I tried both on FM-TOWN and Marty and it doesn't boot.Obviously the images were properly restored back to disks.

P.S.
For kobushi and other japanese users who know deeply the FM-TOWNS machine:

What can be done if the FM-TOWNS CD-ROM unit fails?Is there some replacement or way to boot CDs from external SCSI CD-ROM?I have a FM-TOWNS II MX, a FRESH TV and a Marty 2 with defective CD-ROM and I'm thinking seriously to trash them since I can't boot anything, they are useless!

I don't own an FM Towns machine, so I'm not very familiar with the hardware.

It is possible to add an external CD drive, but you can't boot from it, so it's kind of pointless.
edit: This replacement driver may allow using an external SCSI CD-ROM drive. //www.vector.co.jp/soft/towns/hardware/se042901.html
... nevermind, it only allows CD-DA from an external drive.

You could try to clean the lens/mirror and maybe replace the spindle motor or optical pickup. Need to research about usable replacement parts.
A power supply problem can also cause CD-ROM drive problems.

My hope is that one day, someone can create a generic CD-ROM emulator device, like an HxC for optical media. In many systems the optical drive is usually the first to fail - PC Engine CD, PCFX, PS1, Saturn....

Thank for replying.Yes, I already tried in the past the CDISC2.SYS driver and it really map an external SCSI CD-ROM to Q: letter.
This is the translation of its instructions:

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?21989-The-Translation-Thread/page25

Could you confirm is correct?From translation It seems it allow to use an external SCSI CD-ROM as drive replacement but I'm not sure.

I was looking for CD-ROM replacement parts but it seems they are not common ones.From what I understood FM-TOWNS CD-ROM unit share some parts with Technics/Matsushita drives.


P.S.
Found this card on YJA:

http://page11.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/n123513638

Reading the description maybe it's possibile to boot from this?Could you translate auction description, please?

The CDISC2 driver only reroutes CD-DA audio, so it's not very useful. Obviously you can't boot from the external CD drive, because you have to boot from the hard drive/floppy first to load the CDISC2 driver.

That translation looks OK, except the part you already noticed:



This means that CDDRV.SYS, CDISC.SYS, and CDSD.SYS must all be loaded before CDISC2.SYS.

The auction doesn't say much. It's a SCSI board for the original model of the FM Towns. Owner says it was working before he put it into storage, and hasn't tested it since.

Either way, from everything I've read, it is not possible to boot from an external CD-ROM drive.

OK, thanks.Translating this phrase with Google I thought it was possible to boot form this SCSI card but I was wrong:



The problem is that FM-TOWNS use a proprietary SCSI controller, the internal CD-ROM may appear as a regular IDE unit since it has a 40 PIN connector but it's not IDE and it's neither a SCSI one!
Other possibility would be to copy the entire content of a CD on the HDD and launch the game from it like we do with X68000 floppis.

You might try SHSUCDX: http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/shsucdx.html
I used that successfully in a PC-9801 once. Doesn't support CD-DA though.

Thanks.So using this driver I could be able to boot CDs from external SCSI CD-ROM?Is it also FM-TOWNS compatible?

No it's not bootable, but it allows you to mount ISOs in DOS like Daemon Tools (data only, no CD-DA). Maybe allow some games to run off hard drive.
I've never tested it in FM Towns, but it's generic DOS-compatible, and it does work in the PC-9801 at least.

OK, thanks.Could you make some example of configuration, please? .Once the image is mounted, will you launch it by executing autoexec.bat or main executable?

See this blog for a quick example. This is what I used with the PC-9801.
http://www.notanon.com/retro/how-to-use ... 010/09/15/

The documentation for SHSUCDX is all in English, so it shouldn't be difficult to set up in Unz at least. The only potentially tricky thing is that the FM Towns automatically loads CD drivers from the hidden C: partition.

http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/shsucdx.html
http://adoxa.110mb.com/shsucdx/index.html

Thanks, I will try,Anyway with CDISC2.sys I can access under MS-DOS and TOWN-OS to the CD inserted in the external SCSI CD-ROM, I can launch also executable .EXP but , ad you said, FM-TOWNS requires to access to an hidden C: partition.
For example, this is the autoexec.bat and config.sys from Splatterhouse:

GamePres is actually working on a (hardware) CD-ROM emulator. It's partly based on GDEmu and will first support PC Engine discs. Still a long way to go though.

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