SVI-738 system disks

By psi30

Supporter (5)

psi30's picture

04-11-2019, 22:57

Dear fellow msx'ers,

After years of neglect, I found my old trusty X'press and to my surprise it seems to work perfectly!
During the years, I have, however, lost the original system disks that came with the unit. I only have some disks containing games.

I managed to find a usb floppy drive and even write files on it that could be read on the x'press.
I also found images of all the files at http://www.msxarchive.nl/pub/msx/programming/asm/

I tried copying the images to floppies using the dd method in linux. Copying went fine, but the end result won't work in the msx. I tried to mount the images in linux, and end up with a "invalid encoding" folder instead of the contents.

Without access to a DOS capable machine, I cannot try the method suggested in the chip.

Has anyone succeeded in re-creating the original disks? Or if someone would be nice enough to extract the image of existing disks? Or is there something I have been missing?

Thankful for your help,

Pasi

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By NYYRIKKI

Enlighted (6067)

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05-11-2019, 10:48

Hmm... Generic USB floppy drives can be really pain (if not impossible) to use properly with 360kB disks on any OS due to their SCSI style access method. Some of them don't read/write even 720kB double density disks, but since you can copy something this does not seem to be your problem.

Maybe these instructions can give you some tips?
https://www.msx.org/wiki/How_to_make_a_floppy_disk_image

As last resort I would try to divide the image to 4.5kB chunks and add all of them two times after each other to create 720kB image where there is just same information on both sides of the disk. What comes to the original CP/M disk, I think that is a lost cause and can not be written on modern PC. The good thing is that for normal MSX user it is pretty useless disk anyway.

Another approach would be changing the MSX disk drive to 720kB model, but that has some problems as well as the screw holes are not on standard position on this model.

By CopperPod

Supporter (11)

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01-06-2022, 15:40

Sorry for reviving an older thread.

I have a SVI-738, that I want to take into action : )
As I understand, it came with a Single-Sided, Double-Density drive, correct? And I understand that it came with 3 disks: MSX-DOS, CP/M and a demo disk, correct? Then I don't understand the disk images available for download here and elsewhere; where there is 1 MSX-DOS image and 2 CP/M images. Was the CP/M Double-Sided (would be strange) or is the second CP/M image the demo disk?

Cheers, C

By CopperPod

Supporter (11)

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01-06-2022, 17:04

And does anyone have pictures of this demo disk?

By Manuel

Ascended (19465)

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02-06-2022, 00:03

Not sure about a demo disc, I only see 2 pictures here: https://www.msx.org/wiki/Spectravideo_SVI-738

And yes, it's a single sided DD drive.

By CopperPod

Supporter (11)

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02-06-2022, 20:46

Thanks @Manuel Smile

I did find those pictures, but they don't quite explain the 1x MSX-DOS and 2x CP/M system disk images from here:
https://hansotten.file-hunter.com/uploads/files/svi738systemdisks.zip
Or:
http://www.msxarchive.nl/pub/msx/programming/asm/

I now these disks really aren't that important, but I'm a stickler for details and completeness in my collection. :hannibal:

By Briqunullus

Hero (665)

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02-06-2022, 21:48

Maybe you can ask at the Spectravideo Facebook group?

By CopperPod

Supporter (11)

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03-06-2022, 21:04

Thanks for the tip @Briqunullus Cool