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[midnightguy]

hell, we have all heard of the Famicom Disc System - because it actually was a Nintendo format that was sold in Japan - many Famicom/NES games originated from the FDS.

but what the hell, there was a Sega Master System Disk System O_O

never heard of a Disc System for the SMS or Sega Mark III before.


found it here: http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6174

Bock wrote:

I have this picture lying around since years... already posted but let's post it again.



I'm not sure where this come from, but I think it was some CES. Did someone attended CES around the nineties?

The source is:
http://www.linkclub.or.jp/~nof-h/suka_sega/ippatu/msdisc/msdisc.html

It says, in Japanese:
"
ファミコン通信 NO.12 P.7

ファミコン通信のマスターシステム（米）紹介の記事から。　アメリカの見本市の写真とかいうのでＣＥＳか何かだと思う。　モックアップだろうけどメガドラの２インチディスクよりも形になってる様な感じがする。　大きさを見ると３.５インチかな？　それにしてもセガのディスクはどれもこれも転けますな、これは何に使いたかったのかね？
"

Looks like a picture from Famitsu issue 12, page 7.

Automated translation says:

From the report of master system (U.S.) introduction of the Family Computer communication. the photograph of the trade fair in the United States -- since it says, I think that they are CES or something He has a feeling which has a form from the 2 inch disk of けど MEGADORA which will be a mock-up. When a size is seen, it is 3.5 inch kana. Even so, for this 転けますな also in this, each disk of Sega is whether to have wanted to use for what.

Insomniac86 wrote:

Would it use the mysterious expansion port?

Bock wrote

Yes. What would it do is that the SMS BIOS would boot to the ROM embedded into the disk system, and this ROM would communicate with the disk system hardware to read floppy data to RAM and then execute it (it would need to contains RAM just as the SF-7000).

The problem I can think of is that a floppy disk based program wouldn't be able to interact easily with the cartridge, or either way. It's somewhat possible using code stored in the regular SMS RAM, but retail SMS BIOS boots in priority on the cartridge, so if you plugged a cartridge it would boot on it and ignore the disk system.

So either you would have to hotplug the cartridge after booting the disc system (which often crash the system), either the cartridge would contains program code to access/enable the disc system part.

Don't know if I'm clear...
All it comes to, I think, is the tiny mistake of booting cartridge in priority to whats in the expansion port.
(and it annoy me everytime I want to dump a Japanese/Korean cartridge!)

 

[Hellraizah]

Probably never got past the prototype stage.