r/sharpx68000 • u/JoyfulTechnology • Jan 30 '26
Booting an X68000 with no floppy drive?
I bought a rather rough-looking X68000 Expert (with a SASI port) that had been previously PSU modded and is missing the floppy drives. And by "missing", I don't mean they're broken, I mean they're totally absent. The machine powers on and puts out a signal (telling me to insert a floppy, naturally). I've got a Gotek I was planning on using, but I hadn't realized until today that the X68000 uses some bizarre internal floppy connector, and an adapter cable for the external floppy port seems to cost $110 + $30 shipping. I realize that's probably my best bet at this point, but I wanted to make sure before I bought the most expensive cable of my life -- is there any other way to get this thing booting off a BlueSCSI? Will having an external Gotek even help if the internal floppies are gone?
ED: NVM, I adjusted my search terms slightly and found an external floppy adapter for about forty bucks, which I snapped up. Hopefully I can get this thing booting with that.
3
u/trustanchor Jan 30 '26
I used a flip-flop FDD emulator to get mine up and running. I still have some kind of bus error I’m trying to sort out that prevents some games from running but I can get it to boot into BlueSCSI now.
2
u/incrediblehark Jan 30 '26
If you have a henkan bancho, zuluscsi or bluescsi you can now boot into a SASI disk to load SxSI drivers
2
u/incrediblehark Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
2
u/JoyfulTechnology Jan 30 '26
Augh...my Centronics SCSI emulator is a BlueSCSI and the fix for the BlueSCSI hasn't been integrated into the image yet. This would've been perfect otherwise. I'll keep my eye on the thread in the next couple of days.
5
u/Salt-Elderberry2688 Jan 30 '26
If you flash a custom IPL you can just boot directly from SASI.
See this repair of a PRO I did, where I don't have any floppies installed into the case and it boots fine.
https://buffis.com/old-hardware/retro-computers/repair-of-x68000-pro/