Sega Hot rod 1988 4 players Floppy

Wokie

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Hi everyone. I need some help...

I have a 4 players 1988 sega hot rod, but the floppy disk is unreadable. Can anyone help me?. I've tried to create a new one with ds3-5000-01A-revb.img from Mame using samDisk.exe but it creates a 80 cylinders floppy and I think I need to create a 83 cylinders one. Thanks a lot in advance.
 
...

You'll have to have someone copy the disk for you.
Like on gain ground, it will create a back-up very easily in the test mode.

Jon
 
If it's just an 83 track high density floppy, then it should be really easy to do. Not sure how to do it in Windows, but under Linux:

Code:
superformat /dev/fd0 cyl=83
dd if=image.bin of=/dev/fd0

The disk needs to be low level formatted as 83 track before writing - that's what the superformat utility does for you. It also by default writes a DOS filesystem to the disk, but this doesn't matter - dd'ing the image to the disk will overwrite it.

Without the superformat utility, you can also use setfdprm:

Code:
setfdprm /dev/fd0 hd cyl=83
fdformat /dev/fd0
dd if=image.bin of=/dev/fd0

As long as you don't take the disk out of the drive between setting the driver parameters and formatting it, it'll remember those settings.

If the image is too large to fit on a simple 83 track floppy, then you might be dealing with a disk format with more than the usual 18 sectors per track. You can usually get away with doing 21 sectors per track, so you can try that too - just add sect=21 to the superformat or setfdprm commands.

-Ian
 
OK, I did some reading. Looks like the Sega disk format isn't anything close to standard. The above commands won't work, because this is not the disk format. I downloaded the image file in question, and it's 1,925,120 bytes long. This is bigger than even an 83 track, 21 sector disk, which is 1,784,832 bytes.

I can find no documentation on the disk format used, so writing that disk is going to be hard. I downloaded SamDisk and played with it - looks like it should be able to allow Windows to write disks in a similar manner that Linux can with it's tools. The tricky part is going to be trying to sort out the disk format. Apparently, the disk image from MAME doesn't have the headers or info that SamDisk is looking for, because when I go to scan the image file, it comes back with a bogus result (1024 bytes/sector, 6 sectors per track, 80 tracks... which doesn't add up).

Can you use SamDisk to scan your original disk to see what the format structure is? It might be corrupt, but perhaps the track and sector headers are intact.

-Ian
 
About SamDisk

Hi Ian!!

Thanks a lot for the answer. I made an Image with samDisk and it recognized the 83 Tracks and 2 heads, but the size was only 1.411 KB. When I tried to copy the image into a floppy, it again recognized the 83 Tracks but the error was: "The drive cannot find the sector requested". In samDisk webpage this error is described as:

"This error during writing usually indicates an overrun during the track formatting phase, overwriting a sector at the start of the following track. If repeating the command doesn't help, you should check the rotation speed of your drive using the rpm command.

If you're writing an FM format, try the --fm-overlap option during the write."

The rotation speed is about 300 rpm. I've even tried the --fm-overlap option.

I've tried to copy with the command line "samdisk copy a: a:" and It finished reading, apparently ok but the same error appears over and over again.

any idea will be welcome. Thanks in advance.
 
Ask Mamedev or do what Exidy said. If the Mame Developers backed it up with a PC, then they will be able to tell you how to restore the backup from a PC.
 
No floppies on the net

I can't find anybody who owns a 4 player sega hot rod with a working floppy. I've sent E-mails, but nobody answer, so I'm trying to copy from the MAME working img file.

Thanks again for all your answers.
 
hopeless is filling me, to the point of agony

Does anybody have a working copy?. Does anybody have an idea?.

Thanks over and over again.
 
Sending out an S.O.S

Nobody who own a sega hot rod ds3-5000-01a-revb can help me?. Thaks again
 
4 players Sega hot rod

Hi,

I'm still looking for a 4 Players sega hot rod working floppy. Anyone would sell me a copy?.
Thanks.
 
Need floppy for 4-player Hot Rod too

Wokie,
I feel your pain. I just bought a 4-player Hot Rod which worked when I picked it up but once I got it home the main screen flashed "Disk or Drive Fault. (seek error)". I don't know much about arcade games but I got inside and ejected the floppy then reinserted it, hoping it would help. No luck. Please let me know if anyone comes across a floppy or has any recommendations, I'm in Long Beach, California.
Thanks
Matt
 
I've been in contact with Icecreamman on this...AFAIK, I'm the ONLY person to "successfully" write a new disk image using a PC and then have it boot on a Hot Rod.

Problem is I can't reproduce it reliably. *sigh* Other problem is it was a few years ago and I had a LOT of help from a gent somewhere in Europe. I can't dig right now, but I'm pretty sure I have all the email chain from his help as well as the software he wrote.

The gist, for those that care, is ugly. I had to get a certain model TEAC floppy drive that had an easy to replace crystal to change the timing just slightly. Found a few on eBay and did the mod. Damn if it didn't work. Then using software this fellow wrote for Windows I was able to write the MAME image to a floppy using that special drive. The other problem with this is that it wouldn't work with just ANY PC. I happened to have some sort of POS Sony desktop machine with a generic enough controller that did work. Believe me, you ain't doing this with any USB floppy controllers or any of that. It's gonna have to be old school stuff.

Supposedly there are Amiga's out there that could do this easily. But they are rare and collectible and you'd STILL have to know what you were doing. All a problem, obviously.

So you do all that and get an image written and it still wouldn't work on a normal drive. It will only work by then taking your modified drive and plop it into the Hot Rod. Then you can even generate your own "backup" disks using the machine. That said, for some reason mine has stopped working again and I don't know why. And I don't have the magic PC any more that would successfully write from the PC side.

Supposedly you can also buy an old school "Cat Weasel" custom floppy drive controller and get that to do it on a PC (you still need something old enough to have ISA or maybe PCI, I don't know). But at last check even those were hard to find, and you need crazy DOS software or something for it. Again, I don't remember specifically as this wasn't a route I took.

Now? I'm gonna monkey with it some, but at the end of the day I may just gut the damned cabinet and put an LCD and MAME setup in it. Then hopefully I can play a few other old school driving games. *shrug*


--Donnie
 
I've been looking at mine, too. Apparently Sega made a ROM card replacement for the floppy at one point or another. I found info online, and a very small picture of the replacement board. Of course, now I can't find it again... I personally think that's the path of least resistance here. I'm not sure how to proceed, but it'd be awesome if someone could hack together a ROM replacement, as the floppies are really unsustainable into the future.

I can't get the game to write a floppy using the internal backup procedure. It keeps complaining about a formatting error. Currently I suspect that it wants a BLANK disk, not one that is pre-formatted for DOS. Who knows why it won't overwrite. So a completely blank floppy is the next thing I'm going to try on mine.
 
Just another piece of information for you guys--there is one of these machines at Funspot. I'm not sure what they have running in theirs (disk or rom replacement), but it was operational the last time I visited. It might be worth contacting them..
 
There's no ROM replacement I'm aware of for this machine, there are simply later games that use the same "system" that have a ROM board instead of the floppy controller board and floppy drive.

My guess is that someone knowledgeable enough and armed with the MAME source *could* pull the data from the floppy image and create ROM images that, when burned to actual ROMs, would work in one of those ROM boards. But someone would then have to create ROM boards or they'd have to be stolen from other games, but my guess is finding game boards from some of the other games may not be that hard. Many of those other titles were in "normal" cabinets that would have been converted at some point to some newer game anyway, I suspect.

The best bet, honestly, may be to dig into the MAME source and find who wrote the emulator for System24 (that's what this is, right? I forget and I'm too lazy to go digging) in MAME and see if they'd be willing to help try that. In theory it could be COMPLETELY tested within MAME.

Anyone got the MAME source laying around? I am iPad'ing it until later tomorrow so I can't go poking easily until then.


--Donnie
 
There's no ROM replacement I'm aware of for this machine, there are simply later games that use the same "system" that have a ROM board instead of the floppy controller board and floppy drive.

Exactly what I was suggesting... You are right, I didn't clarify properly. :)

System24 (that's what this is, right? I forget and I'm too lazy to go digging)

Yes, it's a System 24.

I also like the idea of hacking the original ROMs via MAME to eliminate the floppy entirely (maybe even without the ROM board stuff). I'd love to help, but have very little advanced coding ability.
 
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