FDSStick appreciation thread :)

[chowder]

The eagle has landed!





This thing is awesome, go and order one now:
http://home.comcast.net/~olimar/NES/FDSStick/

I had to make a change to the Makefile to get the fds utility to compile under Linux, but it's super simple apart from that.  Just copied a couple of disk images on to it, off to play some FDS SMB 2 now

[L___E___T]

I have one in the post

It holds a few FDS games at a time - but can you half complete a game, pull it off to storage and replay later?

[Great Hierophant]

I have one in the post

It holds a few FDS games at a time - but can you half complete a game, pull it off to storage and replay later?

You can, yes.  You can now write an FDS image to the FDSStick and read the image back (as modified) to your PC as an FDS image. 

[chowder]

I have one in the post

It holds a few FDS games at a time - but can you half complete a game, pull it off to storage and replay later?

You can, yes.  You can now write an FDS image to the FDSStick and read the image back (as modified) to your PC as an FDS image. 

Yep, just tried it now and it worked perfectly.

This is a good read, it's about "purifying" FDS disk dumps to remove old save data etc:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=12911

[NintendoKing]

Oh yes! That's exactly what I've always hoped for!

[Great Hierophant]

Yep, just tried it now and it worked perfectly.

This is a good read, it's about "purifying" FDS disk dumps to remove old save data etc:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=12911

That is definitely a very good read 

[egg_sanwich]

Wow, how have I not heard of this thing till now!?

From the site:
"Device can also read/write disks from an FDS drive with an adapter cable (not included)."

Does this mean I could use this device to re-write faulty fds disks I have laying around? Has anyone tried this?

[loopy]

Wow, how have I not heard of this thing till now!?

From the site:
"Device can also read/write disks from an FDS drive with an adapter cable (not included)."

Does this mean I could use this device to re-write faulty fds disks I have laying around? Has anyone tried this?

Yes, you could use it to rewrite faulty disks.

[egg_sanwich]

Yes, you could use it to rewrite faulty disks.

Awesome, I've been needing to do this for a while! So long, disk error 22!

Question to the group - not that re-writing disks has been impossible before, but do you think the accessibility of tools like these will lead to an increase in pirated disks? For example, label-less All-Night Nippon SMB disks entering the market?

[ImATrackMan]

Question to the group - not that re-writing disks has been impossible before, but do you think the accessibility of tools like these will lead to an increase in pirated disks? For example, label-less All-Night Nippon SMB disks entering the market?

No. I have my QDC for personal-use-only and I can't get disks to read games between the two drives I have. Metroid won't write successfully at all, for example (loads fine, starting a game leads to ERR.24/26, disk never reads successfully again), so I don't think that even the minor variances in modern "properly" calibrated drives will allow non-Nintendo-written disks to load on all drives (even if all copy protection is circumvented or missing. Note that all of my non-test games load fine in both drives)

Plus I think Loopy's a smart enough guy to not sell 5 or 6 of these to some literally-who in mainland China.

[egg_sanwich]

No. I have my QDC for personal-use-only and I can't get disks to read games between the two drives I have. Metroid won't write successfully at all, for example (loads fine, starting a game leads to ERR.24/26, disk never reads successfully again), so I don't think that even the minor variances in modern "properly" calibrated drives will allow non-Nintendo-written disks to load on all drives (even if all copy protection is circumvented or missing. Note that all of my non-test games load fine in both drives)

Interesting, I was unaware that there was a significant difference. Good to know.

Plus I think Loopy's a smart enough guy to not sell 5 or 6 of these to some literally-who in mainland China.

Definitely not questioning Loopy's integrity 

[P]

This is why you shouldn't be rewriting all your disks. It's also probably a good idea to mark your rewritten disks for the future. I plan to use some bad disks I have to experiment rewriting with but I will probably use the FDSStick+RAM Adapter to play purified games on instead of rewriting old working disks.

Wow, how have I not heard of this thing till now!?

Because it's brand new!

[chowder]

Yep, just tried it now and it worked perfectly.

This is a good read, it's about "purifying" FDS disk dumps to remove old save data etc:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=12911

That is definitely a very good read  

  Thanks for writing it.

The FDSStick is proving perfect for my needs, namely playing FDS games without relying on my working but extremely temperamental disk drive.  Looking forward to working on some dev stuff for FDS now too.  Honestly, the Famicom Disk System is without doubt the most frustrating piece of hardware I own!

Thank you loopy

[P]

Yeah hopefully we will finally start seeing some more FDS homebrew from now on. I tried before to make a minimal working FDS image that just plays some sound on the square channel. I was finally able to get the disk image to be accepted by the FDS BIOS (on an emulator) after tweaking some tweaking but sadly no sound could be heard in the end.

[Koop]

Since I got a working FDS I was thinking of picking this up just in case it ever bites the dust lol.

Can anyone here make the cable so I can connect it to a FDS? I have a game I bought off ebay that had the wrong game written to it, I'd love to use the FDSStick to rewrite the proper game onto the disk.