Hi! I'm a bit new to emulating the MSX platform - I used to own a toshiba HX10 back in the day and would really like to get back into playing some of the old classics like chuckie egg, hyper viper (my fav!), blagger, polar star, avenger... (I could go on for ages!)

I run ubuntu linux on my desktop and have installed openmsx. I have managed to *ahem* get some roms to pop in the shared directory - however whenever I select a hardware config and try to load a game - I get an error message:-

Fatal error: No drive named 'diska'.

Am I missing something? It doesnt matter which hardware profile I select - none of them seem to support a disk drive!

Look forward to any advice you can give!

Thanks

Ah, well, you're using a C-BIOS machine, which does not have a disk drive...

Because this question keeps popping up, I added it in the openMSX FAQ, check that, please

Feel free to join our IRC channel if you need more help (#openMSX on irc.freenode.net).

Sounds strange. Does it boot basic properly when you start it without a disk or rom image?

Yep it certainly does - its only with a disk in the drive that it doesnt work.

Ive tried some MSX2 platforms that should have had drives in the hardware and it gives the same resuly!

I'm not using C-BIOS either - I've tried various MSX platforms - Toshiba HX10, Spectravideo SVI 728 (this def had a disk drive), Sony Hitbit (not sure about this one) and various others - but no luck so far.

Am I missing some extensions maybe - or shared roms? I've put the correct roms in the hardware rom folders and the hardware test says the platforms I'm using should work.

Are you using Catapult? It seems you are...

Which version of openMSX are you using?

If you use a simple machine with disk drive like Philips NMS 8250, and you put a disk in drive A via Catapult (or with the -diska commandline option), it should definately work. Note that if you use commandline, the order of options matters. First specify the machine (if you don't want to use the default one) and then the disk image:

openmsx -machine Philips_NMS_8250 -diska mydisk.dsk

If you lack ROM images, the whole machine won't start up and it won't show up after testing.

If you boot without disk and you get in basic and it says "Disk Basic version 1.0", you know the machine has a disk drive.

Note that the HX-10 doesn't have a drive, the SVI-728 hasn't got one either (the 738 does, but it's single sided, so you need a single sided disk image).

You don't need any extensions, if you use an MSX with disk drive. If you use a HX-10, and you want to use disks, you do need to plug in a disk drive extension. A good example is the Sony HBD-F1.

Please join our IRC channel so we can help you more directly.

Thank-you so much - you've totally answered my question - indeed all the ROMS I was using didn't have disk drives! I've since located some that do - but I still have some issues getting some MSX1 only games to work.

I'll try the disk drive extension over the weekend and see how I get on!

Thanks again for all your kind help!

What games give you problems?
I think those problems you'd also get on a real MSX2 trying to run MSX1 games. As on real MSX, you sometimes need certain pokes to make games work. It's a problem of old games that don't adhere to the MSX standard and can't handle RAM in a sub slot (as the 8250 e.g. has, but also some MSX1 machines like the Philips VG-8020/20). The Toshiba HX-10 has RAM in a primary slot, that's why I use it often to run MSX1 software, it has a low probability of giving problems.

Have fun!