FDS Turns 25

[Xious]

Fully restored means exactly that! Every part has been disassembled, cleaned, restored, and reassembled to original Mitsumi specs. A new belt (newly made) is installed, the drive mech is completely aligned, calibrated and adjusted for optimal speed and performance, using my own special techniques and tricks; Any damage is repaired and it is given a final cosmetic treatment if needed, and posted out with a reproduction head-protector card for safety.

Frankly, if you think that's too expensive, then I'm sorry, but I won't lower that rate: it's already discounted over my usual price, and they sell at $89.95 a-piece quitewell. The warranty alone is worth the cost, as without one, you're constantly gambling on how long it will stay functional; not to mention on who did the restoration (if anybody) and if it was done correctly (unlikely). I don't know of any other dealers that even offer a warranty, much less a One-Year warranty. Most sell them as-is, with no guarantees, and some for more than I charge.

I see broken systems with a belt of unknown origin sell for over $65, which is nuts, as you're just inheriting someone else's headache and may not even have the parts that you'd need if you knew how to do everything right. I've had numerous drives sent top me from people that bought 'working' drives on eBay that were nothing but nightmares, and then I did a servicing on them to produce a perfect product.

Sometimes the drives for sale on-line are even damaged, as was the case with one fellow here who bought an eBay drive with a broken disk-insertion sensor switch (kickback switch). It also doesn't post from China or Japan, which means it costs less for local customers to buy one, and they can deal with a local merchant. The freight costs from Japan aren't wallet-friendly unless you go with sea-post, which is neither traceable nor insurable. EMS is bloody-expensive...

My drives also include a high-quality new (NOS) power supply (on USA voltage); this probably wouldn't help you, although I have some 220VAC adapters left and could enclose one for a European order.

Postage to Sweden is whatever UPS quotes for it. I would have to call-in and request a quote to know for sure, and I would need a city and postal code to do that. If it is unreasonable I will get a second quote form the USPS, but they're a 'last-resort' as their services are horrible. 

[tappybot]

I assume it is loose for that price? $89.95 is still quite a lot, what exactly do you mean by that it is fully-restored? And is it a 7201 board?

Also how much for shipping to Sweden?

P, I know 90 seems like quite a bit, but even here in Japan, you don't find Famicom Disk Systems cheap, or even very often (at least in my experience)

Last time I saw a working Famicom Disk System for sale, it was 6000yen which is probably about 75 or 80 dollars, no guarantee for sustained functionality.  Every store I've been takes the hands off approach of a quick boot up check, then sell the hardware as is.

There is a 20 dollar Famicom Disk system at a local Hardoff right now, but it's busted and is listed as being sold just for parts.

If Xious is offering not just a working Famicom Disk System, but a fully restored (basically like if you bought it new I imagine) it's definitely worth the price, especially with the 1 year guarantee. 

[P]

Yes I'm thinking about it now. If he did as a good job with it as he claims, I don't think the prize is that bad.

A friend of mine who was in japan recently bought a loose disk system for around 4000 yen I think, and it worked with all games he bought with it at least.

[tappybot]

Guess he got lucky... But unless that was serviced recently, who knows how long it's going to hold out.

It's a gamble really.  I saw a real cheap junk one yesterday... guaranteed not to work, but might buy it for the parts.

[Xious]

The question is, which games? Many drives will read some games; generally the smaller or single-sided disks, but the more complex, or the larger the game, the higher chance of problems, especially on two-pass disks. 'Dracula II: Nori no Fuin' is one of those games, as can be '3-D Hot Rally'.

The drives that I do may also read some or most pirates, but there's no way to guarantee that without asking for a lot more, because of the finicky nature of the pirate media and the extreme extra work that goes into making a drive that is nice about handling it. My 200% drive (personal drive) reads every pirate disk that I've used in it, save for maybe one or two that are stupidly bad...so stupidly bad that I had top intentionally mis-align a drive to get them to work, and then no legit disk would read...and it took me days of extra work to make it do this.

Another concern is what type and quality of belt was used in the restoration. I only use belts made specifically for the FDS, which are completely new. I'm even thinking of having some super-belts made out of materials that will last many times longer, but I have concerns about the tension changes when switching polymer types, so I don't know if this will happen. Many people just use whatever they can get or find, or sometimes use original belts that are old. I ordered a batch of belts from Japan: original Nintendo belts... They are absolutely useless: I could feel how dry they were when handling them, and the tension was wrong because of the material degradation...

I ended up putting them in a little cabinet to save, but I'd never use them in restorations. They were a costly attempt to find original parts to re-measure for reproduction, and I won't toss them because they're a collectible, but I won't use them in a drive.

Thus, I won't buy any random belts, and I only buy the very high-quality stuff. I am also thinking of having my machinist make some spring sets using a couple NOS drives as the base for the spring size and tension, for complete overhaul kits. The problem here is that people aren't going to want to pay $20 for a set of springs, and that's around what they'd cost to make as a custom part in tiny quantities. I'd also like to work out some of the other funky-ness of the FDS, and make improved drives. My essential goal is to have product that are actually far superior to the factory, newly-made product from 1986. Just as good is only a stepping-stone.

Anyhow, I have a few more to do this week, and I'll be sending out all orders in the next few days. I have some Twin systems that I already restored, so I can always pull the mechs out of those if I get bogged down and re-do them again later. I'm a bit under the weather this week, so things have been slow... 

[ericj]

I've found that with pirate disks that it's typical to have to realign the drive to get them to read correctly, regardless of the make/brand of the disk. I've dumped hundreds of them (mostly game doctor format) --some work okay with a certain alignment, whereas others don't and no adjustments are necessary. I've concluded that it all depends on the alignment of the drive that wrote them. For that reason, I never keep the screws in the plastic disk system housing, so it allows for easier access to make alignment adjustments and clean the magnetic head. Pirate disks, being of low quality, sometimes leave "artifacts" on the magnetic head which need cleaned off.

Interestingly, I also found that some disks that I can't get to load will dump perfectly fine with a MGD1, and the disks written with the dumped images will load fine as well. I haven't yet quite figured out why this, since you'd think if it can't load to play, how would it be able to be read to be dumped...

[SeanOrange]

Oh man.  I was knee-deep in the 3D System Special when I heard the anniversary was coming up.  I'm so bummed I didn't have anything ready.

However, I WAS taking apart both my Twin and my FDS on that day so that I would know how to actually fix the Twin.  (As I suspected the, the belt had completely disintegrated.)   I also want to test out how to do the head alignment, since my (working) FDS is having a few read issue on some select games, and I don't want to mess with my only FDS that at least MOSTLY works before I know what I'm doing.

[tofufo]

Hi everybody, would like to have pinout of the Mitsumi QD drive (18pin) connected with the FMD POWER-02 in my FDS, please. Any infos will be appreciated. Thank you.