Let's identify our FDS drives!

[cosmic-ark]

sorry not having a good day

[MikeInJP]

Hey guys.. I just picked up a FDS today. As I expected it needs a new drive belt.

Fortunately its a 7201 with the old power board, but it appears to have an early version of copy protection included in a daughter card. Another feature is it is lacking the text near the drive light telling you not to eject the disk while its reading. The case of the FDS is different than my other FDS. It is smooth and not textured.  I'm posting some pictures to let you know about another type of power board that hasn't been discussed.

Also the Floppy drive has a jumper wire that appears to be added by Nintendo.. Possibly for copy protection reasons?

[MikeInJP]

One more photo 

[133MHz]

That is indeed a copy protection/write lockout daughterboard. You should be able to remove it with soldering equipment and the FDS should work fine. As for the jumper wire, it could be a design error.

[MikeInJP]

Hi 133Mhz

Thanks for your quick reply! 
Removing this daughter card shouldn't be difficult.

I was wondering if you have gotten FDSLoader to work successfully to write games to the disks. I have read on many forums that it just doesn't work no matter what. I have been told the only way to make FDS disks is with a game doctor and a pc cable for it.  I'm hoping that it can be done with just FDSLoader.

[robcfg]

Hello Everybody!

I got a FDS a couple a months ago as I was in Akihabara.

Mine has got the following:

- Lots of letters in the front
- A big power board, but without a daughter board
- A 7201P chip

I got also a very cheap Famicom, but I think it's not operational. I'm trying to run the disk system on a famiclone that comes with the japanese cartridge slot.

Is it kind of unpolite to ask where to get images of FDS games? I'm waiting for my Akumaju Dracula disk to arrive, and just in case I'd like at least to play it in an emulator.

Any info will be appreciated. 

Regards!

Rob

Edit:
I attached the FDS to the famiclone and it works! That's pretty good news, hehehe

Now for some more questions, Would it be possible to either attach the FDS drive to a PC or tu change the FDS drive for a standard 3.5" drive? That would make life much easier, don't you think?

[133MHz]

Would it be possible to either attach the FDS drive to a PC

Possible, but won't make your life much easier.

or to change the FDS drive for a standard 3.5" drive

Not possible without extensive reverse engineering and microcontrollers.

[robcfg]

Would it be possible to either attach the FDS drive to a PC

Possible, but won't make your life much easier.

or to change the FDS drive for a standard 3.5" drive

Not possible without extensive reverse engineering and microcontrollers.

Well, then I think I'll be trying the FDSLoader cable to do the images of the games. Anyway, I hope you find useful the info of my FDS.

[Co Attican]

Here's the info on mine:

1. all text
2. large power board
3. 3206
4. serial D1839578

did have service done on it 2007-03-22

[Xious]

Welcome to FW; You may have noticed that this thread is rather old, but thank you for supplying that information. Your drive has a very weird configuration, just so that you know. Drives under ser# 2m should have a R1-R3 power board with the possibility of what I refer to as R2B, which used old-stock R2 power boards with an add-on daughter-board to block write ability. This version looks like this R2 Board with Daughter-Card

You can read here for more information on the different boards here.

Many times, when drives were repaired by sloppy techs, the cases were swapped around, and also when work was done by Nintendo or a serviceman back when these were still being sold, they often did a fast swap of the guts to get you a working product as quickly as possible. this lead to many drive parts being incorrectly synchronized with their corresponding serial numbers. Your drive should have an early mechanism, a 7201P controller board and a R02 or R03 power board, or at least, that is the factory configuration for that serial number (1.8M)...