Unable to write N88-Basic PC-98 .d88 floppies.

[Pawlicker]

Background: The NEC PC-9801 has a chicken and egg problem when it comes to writing out N88-basic floppies (usually .d88 format): there are tons of images that will boot with PC-98 emulators such as NP21w and FDD emulators (if you can somehow get past the VFO problem), but due to the strange format (oftentimes being 77 track 360rpm with the N88-Basic weirdness) absolutely no PC-98 or PC imaging program will write out these disks. I decided to buy a Greaseweazle V4 to write out a disk except there's one problem, the buttons are grayed out in the software and I get some error when I try to click "Format".

When trying to write these images to a disk using the command line with the workaround for 300rpm drives, I get an error similar to #498 (good luck ever finding a 2 mode drive in the USA): C:\Program Files (x86)\Cowlark Technologies\FluxEngine>fluxengine write n88basic -i C:\Users\Lain\Downloads\Galaga.D88 --flux_source.rescale=1.2 --flux_sink.rescale=1.2 Error: no such config field 'rescale' in 'flux_source.rescale'

Is there any trick to writing these images or are they unsupported?

[davidgiven]

It is supposed to work. Looking at the message in the status bar, it seems like an error was reported --- see View->Logs for the full text.

That said, the 'Format' button for writing a new blank disk for putting files on. If you just want to write a disk image, then pick 'Real disk' and press the 'Write disk' button (you'll be prompted for the disk image file). The UI isn't great; I have, in fact, just pushed a major update which may improve things?

The rescale trick isn't needed any more.

BTW, the 'browse files' and 'format disk' buttons should be greyed out --- that's a bug. The N88-Basic filesystem isn't understood by FluxEngine yet. If you can point me at technical data on how the file system works I should be able to add support.

[Pawlicker]

Here's the layout error and this is what happens when I try to select to write it. I have no idea what the issue is or if it's an issue with my setup and all.

[davidgiven]

Can you update to the most recent version? I think that's gone away.

[Pawlicker]

Same error, doesn't even attempt to write.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Cowlark Technologies\FluxEngine>fluxengine write n88basic -i "C:\Users\Lain\Downloads\Galaga.D88" D88: overriding configured format D88: forcing high density mode Error: LAYOUT: if you use a sector count, you can't use an explicit sector list

The image for reference is the Galaga image in the Neo Kobe PC-98 archive, in case you want to take a look at it: https://archive.org/download/NeoKobe-NecPc-98012017-11-17/Dempa.zip/Dempa%2FGalaga%2FGalaga%20%5BFD%20hdb%5D.zip

[davidgiven]

Got it --- the problem was actually with the d88 format reader, not the n88basic format itself.

The fix should now be building at https://github.com/davidgiven/fluxengine/actions/runs/4622894522; once it's done, an Artifacts box should appear at the bottom with a zipfile in it. Could you give it a try and let me know if it works for you?

[Pawlicker]

There's progress, unfortunately I'm getting a different error now and it halts early on.

To make sure it wasn't my setup I wrote out a 1232kb PC-98 DOS diskette with the same drive and media that failed to write and it worked and was readable by the target machine.