Disk Hacker

[Trium Shockwave]

Rising Stuff got a copy of Disk Hacker in a while ago, which I took off their hands. I also got a batch of non-working FDS games to use as blanks, which just arrived today. So, how well does it work?

The utility is pretty idiot proof, at least if you can read some basic Japanese. There's no menu, no options, no controls. You never need touch the controller once. Just do what it says on screen. When you first load the utility, the title screen briefly appears.



This will disappear on its own, and you will be presented with the following text:

ゲームディスクヲ　イレテクダサイ。

This is asking you to insert the game disk. Pop out Disk Hacker and pop in the game you wish to make a copy of. The FDS will churn a bit, then you'll see this:

ナマディスクヲ　イレテクダサイ。

This is asking you to put in a fresh disk, or the disk you wish to copy onto. Put that in, and again the FDS will churn a bit. When it's done, it will most likely go back to asking you for the game disk. The FDS RAM adapter only has 32k of memory, but one side of an FDS disk holds up to 64k, so it's going to take two passes. Put your game disk back in with the same side facing up you did last time. After that you will once again be prompted for the target disk, so put that in, again with the same side up you used before. When Disk Hacker's job is done, you get this:

オワリマシタ。

This simply means, "Done." Shut off your Famicom and remove your newly cloned disk. If you are copying a two-sided game, you will need to repeat the process from the start for the other side. All in all, it only takes a few minutes to copy a disk. So far I've copied Doki Doki Panic, Metroid and Akumajou Dracula without issue. Disk Hacker will not, however, copy itself. It gives an error if you try to do so. Ironic that the guys making the game pirating tool have anti-piracy built in.

[JC]

I imagine that's not anti-piracy so much as ensuring the disk doesn't mess up a blank disk by trying to copy itself to the disk when you don't want it to.

I think this program is really cool. I have one kinda like it. What I want to be able to do more than anything is copy ROMs from a PC. In order to use Disk Hacker, you need to have a functioning game on disk, which for me, defeats the purpose. I'd want to copy games I don't already have.

Thanks for the write-up. I've been curious about Disk Hacker, seeing it in auctions.

[Trium Shockwave]

It's certainly not the holy grail that FDS Loader is, but since I lack the electronics skills for that, this is better than nothing. As long as both copies of a game don't go at the same time, I should be able to fix it, and that's all I really want. Really the most difficult part of using it is securing a supply of "blanks".

[nintendodork]

I don't understand.  What's the difference between the versions of the Disk Hackers?  They all do exactly the same thing.