Disk System Belt: Replacement and Care

[Jollie]

Just Wondering
i have heard everyone say that you need an official disk system belt. Is there any other drive belts I could use?

[kite200]

if we said you needed an official one why would there be another one you can use.

it's not like we were lying

[JC]

I don't know exactly what you mean by "official," 'cause I don't think Nintendo makes them anymore. There are both good and bad generic brands (i.e., some fit better than others and last longer). I've never bought any except from featherpluck. He knew the good brand, I assume, but he doesn't come around these parts much anymore.

[kite200]

nintendo made them until 2003 (which was when they stopped their mail in repair service), so there are quite a few official belts floating around. kris uses the official ones, and when i bought his broken twin fami thats what he gave me to fix it. he told me he's had trouble with the generic brands.


jfgoods on ebay sells official belts

[133MHz]

Here you can go to an electronics store with the belt diameter and thickness and they'll sell you a suitable generic replacement, I don't see why bother so much for a piece of rubber

[kite200]

i dont think you understand, the size required is ONLY used on famicom disk system.

no electronics store will have it, not even anything close

[133MHz]

Wow sorry. I've replaced several weird Atari disk drive belts, VCR idlers and some other stuff and the guy at the electronics store never missed one. They have a chart for measuring the broken belt and it gives a number which gives you the correct belt. Never thought the FDS was so special since they seem to cover almost all diameters and thicknesses, even if they're not widely used. They come from an Argentinian industry called ElectroGoma. Maybe Switchstance could tell us more about the subject .

Also, I think a slightly smaller diameter could work.

[kite200]

I wasn't being mean.

But I basically live inside an FDS drive

There's nothing you can buy other than the specially made FDS belts.

Not only that, the third party ones even cause issues, Kris was using one and it wouldn't load like half his games.
Used an official and everything worked.

These drives are so finicky, so incredibly unreliable and overall terrible, that the only benefit to having one is the games

[manuel]

This made me so curious I actually want to take apart one of my Disk Systems now.

[Doc]

But I basically live inside an FDS drive

I'm guessing the electric bill is prepaid.

[kite200]

Yeah, JL.

If anyone has trouble with their FDS drive, I can try to repair it. However, you have to give me your FDS, a belt (available on ebay) plus a 10 dollar fee to make it worth my time, plus you have to pay shipping to me and shipping from me to you. That being said, I may not even be able to fix it since you don't know until you try.

That also being said, I have aquired a great amount of skill working with FDS drives and if it IS fixable, I could do it

[manuel]

You could try to write an article of your Disk System knowledge. With pictures and descriptions. That might help other people (like me  ) getting into this stuff.

[133MHz]

Has anybody here tried running a Disk System RAM adaptor connected to a PC parallel port and use transfer software to load FDS files onto the RAM adaptor? I do a similar approach for emulating an Atari disk drive with a serial cable, and saw some Youtube videos showing the parallel FDS interface, but I don't know anybody who tried it.

[kite200]

yes, ask madman and chimeyfolk butter, they write disks that way.


It's pretty common among the nes developing community

[Kreese]

i dont think you understand, the size required is ONLY used on famicom disk system.

no electronics store will have it, not even anything close

Eeeh? Well Me and my father just replaced the belt with a spare belt that he had (probarly taken from a cassette/video recorder or something). The belt wasn't even the same thickness, and still it works (at least with Volley ball which is the only disk I have).

Where we just lucky? Will no other games work?