A story of my PHILIPS VG-8235

Nice pictures, great storie and a good video including SofaRun. Thanks, the 8235 was my first MSX2.

Hi Meckert,

I like nice stories like that
I saw your message about associating .ROM files with ExecROM in SofaRun. I'm currently re-designing lots of things in SofaRun / SofaROM, so I can't test that right now (everything is broken or WIP for now), but I'll have a look at that before the next release. And SofaROM will support MegaRAM directly too at that occasion.

hi everyone!
I have a doubt abaout this part:
"A cool feature of VG-8235 is that it has an external FDD port, compatible with standard PC 3,5" floppy drives. So a 1.44MB 3,5" drive from my old PC works fine with it and formats 720kb disks. Which is useful, as VG-8235's internal drive is just single-sided with 360kb capacity"

So in any VG8235 you can connect a standar pc floppy disk into the external port and it works with 720 kbs?
what revision do you have? VG8235/XX (is in a stick in the back of the computer)
I think it must have a compatible disk rom with 720 kb.

Do you connect the pc floppy disk with a standar flat pc floppy cable or any modification needed?

PD: Where did you buy the belt for the original floppy?

Thanks and good job.

There is a Side Select signal (for double-sided drives) on the external drive connector, and afaik the diskROM does supports its use when a 720KB drive is attached. It's just the internal drive which is hard-wired / assumed to always be a 360KB drive.

Kinda stupid decision to hard-code that in the firmware, if you ask me. But then again that's why it makes sense to replace that stupid firmware...

That is incredible!!!
So, you can use a 720K diskdrive in external port (using 720K disks) even with the diskrom limited to 360K for the internal drive?

Amazing.