ToToTEK.COM

Mystic_Merlin · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Posts: 496 Location: Bangkok

Before you ask, these beautiful machines are not mine...you've seen pretty much everything I was getting was not in such a good shape... Laughing

The owner seems to have one of the nicest copiers' collection I've seen; and for the sake of science and preservation I thought I had to relay this information... Laughing

These are 2 FX-64, both with 64 M, the famous cart-db25 adapter and the even more famous CCL CD-ROM

Now that wouldn't be that really interesting if I wasn't getting a bit of info right?

Well, thanks once again to the owner, here you get an inside picture of the CD interface! He told me it uses a standard IDE drive and even swapped it for a DVD-R drive!!!

kyuusaku · Joined: 26 Jul 2003 Posts: 941 Location: .ma.us

Glad to finally see it and the PCB no less!

Mystic_Merlin · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Posts: 496 Location: Bangkok

kyuusaku · Joined: 26 Jul 2003 Posts: 941 Location: .ma.us

Well, we now know the CDROM functions are built into the BIOS! Clearly the '373 latches are for writes, '245 buffers are for reads and the GALs are for glue and certainly a few embedded control registers, the parallel interface it connects to after all is very minimalistic... I believe there are only 5 output bits, one for each status signal, so the GALs must assemble bytes for the latches *and* hold the control/IDE address bits.

kazmat · Joined: 18 Apr 2005 Posts: 122

additional pictures from me.

I think better than GDSF CD-ROM unit.

[img][/img][img][/img][img][/img]

Mystic_Merlin · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Posts: 496 Location: Bangkok

Ah Kaz! Ya I knew you had one of those too. Wink

I don't know what machine you're running it on but the FX-64 seems to have a BIOS v6.4, runs sounds and music when u boot up, and is able to retain more than one game in memory...As its specs are very close to the PFX2 I can only guess it's a clone but I ignore if World Com (FX-64's distributor in Thailand) did some custom mods on the bios...what is the last PFX2 bios version btw?

I also believe all these CD functions were embedded in earlier version as for my FX-32.

Regarding the CD format, as we can see from Kaz's pic, the cd-roms are probably the same as the one used on the CD 7.

Kaz, have u tried to use a DVD drive instead?

kyuusaku · Joined: 26 Jul 2003 Posts: 941 Location: .ma.us

Ah, so it requires a custom cartridge too... This cart has a small CPLD so it must have a lot of logic and won't be very practical to clone.

NorQue · Joined: 08 Jul 2006 Posts: 62

RGB_Gamer · Joined: 01 Oct 2007 Posts: 879

kyuusaku · Joined: 26 Jul 2003 Posts: 941 Location: .ma.us

The cartridge is definitely unique/not a parallel port adapter and uses a part practically clone-proof. Why? I don't know, to me it doesn't really seem necessary, the CDROM PCB's logic seems sufficient to be driven by the parallel port adapter.

Also the CDROM PCB is NOT a parallel port<->IDE adapter, and if it were (to connect to the LPT adapter) it would act *as the PC parallel port*. That is like the opposite of how normal parallel port drives work, so I really suggest you don't try connecting them, not that there'd be any reasonable chance of it working anyway.

RGB_Gamer · Joined: 01 Oct 2007 Posts: 879

I know this is off topic but relative, so I want to ask, is the slot on the side of the FX-64 compatible with the smart card flash cartridge for gb/gg?

Mystic_Merlin · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Posts: 496 Location: Bangkok

RGB_Gamer · Joined: 01 Oct 2007 Posts: 879

madman · Joined: 07 Jul 2006 Posts: 598

RGB_Gamer · Joined: 01 Oct 2007 Posts: 879

I saw that already madman, I was talking about the CD-ROM drive itself. I have the CCL parallel port adapter and was wondering if the CD-ROM drive itself could be cloned to work with the CCL parallel port adapter. I'm not as stupid as you think I am.