Japanese PC9801 floppy

HxC Floppy Emulator on PC88 / PC98 and compatible support
Post Reply
WhiteShepherd
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun May 04, 2008 4:26 am

Japanese PC9801 floppy

Post by WhiteShepherd »

Great job on the virtual floppy! I have a interesting question some of you may be able to help me with?

I have a Japanese PC9801UV computer. In the 1980s Japan wanted to produce their own computer and started the PC9801 line. At their peak they enjoyed an 80% market share in Japan. These computers were very similar to US PCs and ran DOS but memory and the internal bus were different. Their floppy disks stored 1.2MB which I'm told was chosen to make them directly compatible to the 5.25" 1.2MB floppies.

Here is where I have my problem. A US 1.4MB floppy drive will not work in these machines and it is next to impossible to get these disk drives here in the US. On the positive side a "3MODE" floppy disk on a PC will read these 1.2MB disks just fine so I can create .dsk and .img images from the old disks. I'm hoping if your virtual floppy reads track information from the images then it may work with these PC9801 machines. If it did these floppy disks would be a huge boon to those of us who have the old hardware but cannot get parts any more.

I would like to try one of these virtual floppy disks with the intent of seeing if it will work with the PC9801 (would prefer stand alone though would test with the USB version). I can either buy one or I can try and build my own. I have put together simple electronic boards though I am new to programing PICs. I would be glad to try this project if someone here who was experience experienced wouldn't mind fielding questions from me as I tried to interface this drive to the PC9801? If so then for starters where would be the best place to buy my parts?

Post Reply