Anyone with experience using Epson's PC-Club PC?

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croupier

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AmiBayer
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Just got hold of an Epson PC-Club PC (once called the 'Amiga killer' in Japan...:)...) and realized that without a system/boot disk I can't do much (or anything!) with it! :(

Tried to burn some floppy images but learned that these machines (and some other Japanese ones) use a special floppy format that stores 1.23M on a 3.5" HD floppy (called by some also PC98 format).

On top of that, you also need a floppy that supports a '3 mode' operation (floppy spins at a different speed than for the general 'PC' modes....similar to the Amiga's 1.76M HD format issue)!

Managed to find also one of these (a Mitsumi drive....not the ones of the Amiga fame!...:)...) but now it turns out that also the floppy controller must support this '3 mode' operation and it must be 'activated' in PC's BIOS in order to be able to format and read these '3 mode'/'PC98' floppies!

And here I got lost....with all the junk that I have at home, I'm unable to find a single PC with a BIOS where this '3 mode' operation would even be mentioned!

Tried even the USB floppy alternative, but it looks like the one I have doesn't support this mode....:(

Anyone here with any experience using the PC-Club and/or the PC98 series of computers? Any ideas on how to format and burn 1.23M images on 3.5" floppies using a standard PC?
 
Cool! PS: "PC-98 --- Series of PCs by NEC, sold primarily in Japan"
This one is "Epson PC Club PC-286C".
Regarding the 1.23 MiB on a DS/DD 3.5" disk: pushing sectors and tracks to the max, depending on the used controller....

This is nuts:

product-128123.webp
 
1.23MB read and write is not possible a standard PC.
1.23MB have rotation 360rpm speeds, a 3-mode FDD is required.
To write the image back, I think you can modify the floppy disk drive to 3mode and use greaseweazle to write it.
I hope this is helpful.
 
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