Hello! I'm new to these forums.
My problem is that FDSloadr won't communicate with my RAM Adapter.
In summary, I made an FDSloadr cable and I'm running FDSloadr on Windos XP using DOSbox. I can run FDSloadr with the disk system image files (that have proper headers) but the Famicom always says to insert disk card. I'm almost positive that it's not a problem with my cable. I've got the parallel port set to EPP mode and everything. Do I need to do something special to allow DOSbox access to the parallel port? The FDSloadr software says that the RAM adapter is present.
An additional note: the bars on the bottom of the FDSloadr interface are always blue and never green. Not sure if that is relevant but I thought I'd include that information. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I was never able to get FDSLOADR working, myself. If you would like to try an alternative, Loopy recently made a USB FDS stick that works great:
http://home.comcast.net/~olimar/NES/FDSStick/index.html
I was under the impression that dosbox didn't support relaying raw parallel port access, as needed by FDSLOADR. Dosemu does, but only with a 32-bit host...
Unless you actually mean the NTVDM when you say dosbox? I'd think that would work, although maybe you need giveio?
Okay, so I've got access to the parallel port using DOSbox now, but another problem arose: the software is now saying that the disk drive hardware is present even though it's connected to the RAM adapter.
Update: I got the RAM adapter to begin to read the images sent by FDSLOADR but I keep getting error 22. Is this a speed error?
Error 22 means block 1 (the header) isn't recognized. Happens if you have a bad disk image, Game Doctor disk or non-FDS disk (and probably in a load of other situations not related to the disk). Make sure your disk image is working in an emulator at least, and that all pins on the FDSloader cable are wired correctly.
I've tested my FDS ROMs with an emulator and they work just fine. I've also checked the wiring of my cable and all seems to be well with that...
I see, maybe FDSloader is just in a bad mood. I had nothing but trouble with it anyway, gonna get an FDSStick myself.
I'm thinking that the problem is the computer I'm emulating DOS on. I think I'm going to need to run DOS exclusively.
The timing of FDSLoadr is extremely crucial... No surprises at all that it fails inside of a DOS emulator. You need to run it on a *real* Windows 98-or-earlier system in DOS-only mode.
Alternately, Loopy's FDSStick is available for less than the price of a game cartridge.
I've already put the time into making the cable and messing around with computers, so I'm dedicated to this project right now, but I may check out the FDSStick sometime in the future. I feel that if I can get this working though, it would be better overall.
I got out my old Windows 98 PC and of course, I need to replace the CMOS battery which is, of course, a Dallas chip soldered directly to the motherboard. I suppose I'll deal with that soon and hope to have FDSLOADR running on there!
FWIW, I had xboo working successfully inside dosemu-on-linux, or bare hardware, but not anything else.
That's because XBOO and MBV2 are acting as the master in an SPI-like protocol. The master can clock the slave at any reasonable rate without causing a problem. So even if the master's bit banging gets bogged down by other processes, the message will get through as long as the wires go high or low in the correct order.
if you had read the readme on FDSLOADR it states exactly what you need in order for it to work. use a pure dos environment when you do it. I had done this myself with a small computer that still used 72-pin simms and had excellent success with using it but ran into issues when I ran the program under windows.
another idea I had done if you wanted to apply for the exact same effect is remove a monitor and use floppy disks and keyboard only. create a batch file that lists everything on first boot and have your disk already inserted. for loading to work just change the game to only a certain name of your choice on the floppy and play.
I did this when I had built my cable. all I did was make a handful of batch files and had a list like this printed out. saving never became an issue and when I started using floppies it also felt so much better inserting a disk into the drive. any computer up to 800mhz should work just fine.