Problems with GD SF7, help!

Problems with GD SF7, help!
by DropDeadLegs on 2008-08-25 (#36383)

I'm having some problems that I hope you'll be able to solve for me. I bought a Game Doctor SF7 a couple of weeks ago. It boots fine but it always says "INSERT DISK PLEASE" when I try to back up a game. I have tried with several different games and bought brand new floppy disks.

I also have an older SF7 unit that I bought about 2 years ago. That one stopped working about a year ago (the disk drive started to make a loud buzzing noise when plugging in the power cord, and it didn't boot after that). Before that, it worked very fine and I backed up a lot of games with it. So I bought a brand new disk drive for it yesterday, and now it starts up and boots fine, but the same message with "INSERT DISK PLEASE" shows up EVERYTIME I try to back up any game there as well. I have tried switching the disk drives back and forth between the two units several times just to make sure... And sometimes it says "SRAM ERROR 1", but that seems to happen when the connectors don't fully connect.

Any ideas why this happens all the time? I have tried for more than a week now and can't seem to get it right.

Thanks in advance!

by MottZilla on 2008-08-26 (#36419)

Can you use a PC to transfer with the Parallel Port? It's much faster than floppy disk and more reliable. If you can do this I recommend doing so. You'll need a 25-pin DSUB Male - Male cable to connect it to your PC. Remember it's a straight through or "patch" cable. Not a "printer" cable. It should have all 25 pins wired straight through.

Anyway it sounds like your floppy drive is broken. The belt probably wore out or something. You could try replacing it with a similar drive. If that fails maybe the wiring or components on the GDSF7 have been damaged. Also, maybe you fried something if you used a bad power supply. I use a Sega Genesis Model 1 AC adapter which is Center Negative, 9VDC, 1.2amps.

To be clear, does it only say please insert disk when you backup but it works for loading ROMs? Or does the drive not work at all.

by DropDeadLegs on 2008-08-26 (#36438)

MottZilla wrote:
Can you use a PC to transfer with the Parallel Port? It's much faster than floppy disk and more reliable. If you can do this I recommend doing so. You'll need a 25-pin DSUB Male - Male cable to connect it to your PC. Remember it's a straight through or "patch" cable. Not a "printer" cable. It should have all 25 pins wired straight through.

Anyway it sounds like your floppy drive is broken. The belt probably wore out or something. You could try replacing it with a similar drive. If that fails maybe the wiring or components on the GDSF7 have been damaged. Also, maybe you fried something if you used a bad power supply. I use a Sega Genesis Model 1 AC adapter which is Center Negative, 9VDC, 1.2amps.

To be clear, does it only say please insert disk when you backup but it works for loading ROMs? Or does the drive not work at all.

Thanks for the suggestions!

I have now connected the SF7 to a PC with a serial cable, and it now says "Linking.." when I start it up. I've downloaded the TSF3 program which I guess is the correct program to use with it. I have no clue however on how to use that program since there is no read me file for it... Could anyone with knowledge about TSF3 please guide me what I should do now to get this *darn* thing to work? I've struggled with this for two weeks now, and I'm unfortunately no computer ace, so please forgive my noobie questions

Edit: I bought a new floppy drive yesterday, and it lights up when I choose Backup Card or Load Game or whatever I choose, but it always says "Insert Disk Please" no matter which of my two SF7 units I switch it to. And I use brand new floppy disks with it of course. To be a bit more clear, I have three floppy drives to switch between, and only one makes wierd noises when plugged in. So I really don't think there's anything wrong with the other two, but I have no idea what I'm doing wrong...

by MottZilla on 2008-08-26 (#36453)

Ok, grab "Ucon64" for Windows, and follow the instructions for installation of the parallel port drivers. After that it's simple to send and receive roms. If it's saying "Linking" then it's waiting for the PC to talk to it. That's good. It can be hard to get it setup correctly to send the roms but if you read the readme it's easy.