Saturn Floppy Disk Drive (FDD) not working?
Mar 8, 2019 20:40:49 GMT
Post by dubba on Mar 8, 2019 20:40:49 GMT
Greetings! I came here with the intent of seeking advice from seasoned Saturn fans...
So, I bought the official Saturn FDD recently, because I was tired of losing saves gratuitously (I also got 2 memory carts, but I want more safety for my saves), and it finally arrived after paying high import taxes, shipping etc...
But it turns out it's not working! I tried using many floppies, both brand-new and old, pre-formatted or not, and while the FDD Operator CD + floppy drive detect floppies (the green background options for fomatting and transfering saves shows up only if a floppy is inside the FDD), it says, in Japanese, that I cannot format the floppies. Naturally, copying save files onto them gives me the same message, saying it could not be done.
The floppies are shown to have 0 blocks of free space, and trying to format them doesn't fix that, because formatting fails.
When I formatted floppies with FAT16, however, they would show up within the FDD Operator with 8128 blocks of free space, which is strange, because it still won't let me copy data over onto the floppies, nor let me format the floppies within the Saturn FDD software. What's more, if they are formatted within the Saturn software, it should be 11392 blocks, and not 8128.
I also made sure to triple-check the disks are not locked (the physical lock / square thingy). Proof of that and proof that the floppies are not damaged is that I can format / read / write the disks on a USB floppy drive just fine, under Windows, Mac OS X and, surprisingly most reliably, under Mac OS 9.
New floppies I had, which were said to have 0 disk space by the Saturn, were pre-formatted with FAT12.
Anyway, what is wrong with my FDD? What can I do? CCan I fix the drive? What could be wrong with it? I even opened it up later to check for dust or whatever, but everything seemed very clean, so I closed it...
I'm very saddened by this........... I figure this drive is just dead beyond repair..... But in case anyone has any ideas/recommendations, I'd deeply appreciate that.
So, I bought the official Saturn FDD recently, because I was tired of losing saves gratuitously (I also got 2 memory carts, but I want more safety for my saves), and it finally arrived after paying high import taxes, shipping etc...
But it turns out it's not working! I tried using many floppies, both brand-new and old, pre-formatted or not, and while the FDD Operator CD + floppy drive detect floppies (the green background options for fomatting and transfering saves shows up only if a floppy is inside the FDD), it says, in Japanese, that I cannot format the floppies. Naturally, copying save files onto them gives me the same message, saying it could not be done.
The floppies are shown to have 0 blocks of free space, and trying to format them doesn't fix that, because formatting fails.
When I formatted floppies with FAT16, however, they would show up within the FDD Operator with 8128 blocks of free space, which is strange, because it still won't let me copy data over onto the floppies, nor let me format the floppies within the Saturn FDD software. What's more, if they are formatted within the Saturn software, it should be 11392 blocks, and not 8128.
I also made sure to triple-check the disks are not locked (the physical lock / square thingy). Proof of that and proof that the floppies are not damaged is that I can format / read / write the disks on a USB floppy drive just fine, under Windows, Mac OS X and, surprisingly most reliably, under Mac OS 9.
New floppies I had, which were said to have 0 disk space by the Saturn, were pre-formatted with FAT12.
Anyway, what is wrong with my FDD? What can I do? CCan I fix the drive? What could be wrong with it? I even opened it up later to check for dust or whatever, but everything seemed very clean, so I closed it...
I'm very saddened by this........... I figure this drive is just dead beyond repair..... But in case anyone has any ideas/recommendations, I'd deeply appreciate that.