Ok, so maybe I did buy myself an Old PC

[rubber_jonnie]

Thanks @rubber_jonnie , this is a 7221, so it'd have been $3995 new then. :shock:

Apparently about $9,300 in todays money!!

[PhilC]

Had a bit of success with this this evening.

I linked a gotek up to the PC and managed to get it to boot but only if I used a 1.2mb 5.25 image file, anything else won't boot.

So slight problem is that the gotek image file I need to run is on a 360k disk but this won't boot on my Sharp.

I've somehow got to copy the files from the 360k image onto the 1.2mb image. I'm struggling to find an app on the Mac that will let me view and edit an image, so I'll likely have to boot up the windows laptop and work out a way to do it with that. Either that or find a 5.25" usb floppy drive :lol:

[derkom]

I'm struggling to find an app on the Mac that will let me view and edit an image, so I'll likely have to boot up the windows laptop and work out a way to do it with that. Either that or find a 5.25" usb floppy drive :lol:

Try using the HxC Floppy Emulator software (make sure you get a very recent version if using recent MacOS). It can do basic file manipulation on various format DOS floppy images, and might fill your need, even if you're not using the HxC device.

[PhilC]

@derkom thanks for the suggestion, I've never used the HxC stuff but maybe it's time to give it a try.

[PhilC]

Had a bit of time on my hands whilst away with work and got my little 9.5kg Sharp luggable computer up and running.

20210508_154118.jpg

What through me off a bit was that it was the actual floppy that had died, so I couldn't get any of the diagnostic disks to work.

As @derkom had suggested I popped a gotek in instead and now it all works, well except the floppy drive. The drive is a special that I'll likely struggle to get, so I'm going to take it out and mount a gotek in its place, hopefully with nice colour matching 3d printed adaptor plate.