Building a saturn floppy drive cable?

[Mr^Burns]

Theoretically if someone made schematics for this cable would it be possible to build one and then use it with any floppy drive laying around?.

Info:

Name:

Sega Saturn FDD Operator

Sega Saturn Floppy Disc Drive Operator

セガサターン　ＦＤＤオペレーター

Product number: HSS-0128 / 610-6276

List of stuff that support the drive:

Programs:

Game Basic - http://translate.google.com/transla...BASIC_for_SEGASATURN&sl=ja&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8

Japanese games:

Azel Panzer Dragoon

Culdcept

Dezaemon 2

Sangokushi Koumeiden

Eiyuu Shigan ~Gal Act Heroism~

US/EU Games:

Panzer Dragoon Saga

Links:

A bin+cue of the floppy drive cd: http://sharebee.com/ba5ae10e

Segas official site has a page for the floppy drive http://translate.google.com/transla...ttp://sega.jp/archive/segahard/ss/floppy.html

Japanese fdd faq: http://translate.google.com/transla...sers.gr.jp/sug/saturn/nunokawa/ssfdd_faq.html

http://www.satakore.com/sega-saturn-game,,HSS-0128,,Sega-Saturn-FDD-Operator-Sega-Saturn-Floppy-Disc-Drive-Operator-JPN.html

 

[cgfm2]

Someone showed me a scan of the PCB which had just one Sega custom chip. It controls the serial interface (the disk drive connects to one of the SH-2's SCI channels) at least. In fact it may also control the drive itself, but there could have been more chips on the other side.

So the serial I/O would have to be figured out, probably by running Dezaemon 2 in an emulator and logging SCI data written. Then we'd have to get an idea of how the floppy disc controller works; there are some well known 'families' of chips like the uPD765 or WD179x series. Or it may be something custom. Has anyone checked (in a PC) what the floppy disk format is? Do different games (Panzer Dragoon Saga vs. Dezaemon) use different formats?

If this could get figured out and some replacement hardware was made, it might be cool to interpret the disk commands normally but actually store data on a compact flash card, or something.

Oh, also I think one of the SBL test programs for accessing backup memory supports a "Serial" connection, this probably means the SCI channel and may imply the disk drive. I think the actual functions are BIOS calls, so chances are we don't have the source code to the disk access portion of the backup library.

I'd like to know more about the disk drive myself, and would certainly want to help in any efforts to make a replacement.

 

[vbt]

(bump)