Yo all, I managed to get my hands on an MSX2 machine, and now I really really wanna play the games on that machine instead of emulated at my pc Only thing is....I dunno how to get the roms from my pc into the MSX When I format a flop so that it's ready for MSX, I can't put any roms on it from my pc, and formatted for pc, with roms on it, it can't be read in the MSX Is there a util to get roms from your pc to a flop so that it can be read in the MSX? or am I doing something wrong? I couldn't find anything in the faq about it either....

TIA!!

You might want to check out:

web.inter.nl.net/users/A.P.Wulms/index.html. That page has some utils for this.

First of all, if you simply put a rom-image on a disk, it won't start. For that, you need a ROM-image loader or a cracked disk version of the ROM. I myself prefer the latter, because the ROM loaders don't work with most megaROMs. You can however put .dsk diskimages on a disk, by using the DCOPY tool, or some other disk image read/write tool.



Second, you mention problems accessing the disks. This brings me to the following point, and that is, what type of MSX have you got? If it is for example a Philips VG8235 then it is very likely it has a single sided diskdrive.



There are generally three types of disks which are of concern:

HD (High Density) disks, those can only be read on a PC.



DD (Double Density) disks, those are the disks generally used on MSX computers. You can format HD disks in the DD format, and then you can also use them on MSX. This is not recommended though, since they are more vulnerable to errors.



SS (Single Sided) disks, these are DD disks, but of which only one side is used (the drive has only one head). Those are generally DD disks of which one side didn't pass the tests in the factory.



Now, as I said, the VG8235 has a Single Sided drive. Those drives can only read SS disks. Most MSX computers have a DD drive, which can read both SS and DD disks (and can also format both). PC computers have a HD drive, which can also read DD disks, but as far as I know CAN NOT read SS disks.



Since SS disks have the same density as DD disks, it seems to me that there should be some PC tools around which can access SS disks (if I remember correctly I have put some SS diskimages -those are 360kB in size- on SS formatted disks using DCOPY). However, few games use SS disks, and I really recommend you to build a DD or HD drive in your MSX. I think you should contact for example Hans Oranje on that.

And I think www.msxhans.msx2.com/ has a do-it yourself description if you are a little skilled in hardware stuff, but I'm not sure. Search the web, or ask a question. Ah, and don't forget to CHECK OUT The Ultimate MSX F.A.Q.