Specs:
https://www-fmworld-net.translate.goog/produc … tr_pto=nui,elem
http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/personal/0060.html
http://www.duensser.com/pc_townsmodelle.htm

auctions:
https://yahoo.aleado.com/2084039765-category-leaf.html

Wow

Very cool.

Excellent summary! 👌

Great read and great piece of tech history! 😀

Very interesting piece of 1990s computer history. I had the misfortune of having a Buffalo backup drive with the infamous 3TB Seagate drive that's so bad, it even has its own Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ST3000DM001

Of course, I only found out about this after the drive had failed with some old recordings I'd forgot to put back onto my main HDD. Well, sorry to hijack your thread anyway!

Interesting post and interesting piece of hardware - thanks, Kurasiu! BTW, you speak Japanese?

Buffalo is apparently a popular brand in Japan, that's around even today, and back then offered stuff like network cards

That reminds me, I have a Buffalo wifi pcmcia card on my Dell C810 laptop.

Nice machine and excellent info! 👍

Will have to add towns mode to dosbox :0

Townsbox

Looks fun, will have to give it a go, right after I've put Win95 on a DEC Rainbow, and Mac OS X on an OG Xbox.

Hey, thanks! Really glad you all liked my little rambling about that machine!

Ydee wrote on 2021-09-22, 13:36:

BTW, you speak Japanese?

Nah, not really. It's more like "I still remember something from the Uni classes..." I was studying on Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology after all. ;D

Anyway, I forgot to mention several things in the initial post, so here goes

* if you use FMDD.SYS driver, all the Towns partitions will appear as normal drives under DOS/Windows. You can freely move stuff between them, just don't try to format them under Windows.
* while FMT machines use *.EXE files for boot process and drivers, *.EXP are native TownsOS executables you should launch
* some software requires you to run it from DOS prompt, which you can access via the コマンドモード (command mode) icon
* also, some software requires a specific OS version to run, otherwise it won't run at all or cause weird problems. Examples include Alone in the Dark or Ultima Trilogy, which cause problems on anything but TOS 1.1 - the former doesn't want to start, while the latter displays garbage instead of text
* some games, like Ultima Trilogy, Ultima IV, 4D Driving or Prince of Persia, require a user disk to save the game (and in some cases, like the aforementioned Ultima titles, to even start the game). You don't need any specific one - any 1.2MB formatted disk will do just fine. You can even reuse the same disk for several games
* the original FM Towns pads featured four buttons (A/B/Run/Select), so you might want to use a similar 4 button Gameport pad for optimal experience with FMT games on FM-V Towns.

rmay635703 wrote on 2021-09-22, 17:48:

Will have to add towns mode to dosbox :0

Ok now, that would be absolutely sweet! I mean, Dosbox-X already features PC-98 compatibility, right? 😁

Kurasiu wrote on 2021-09-21, 19:59:

Ready for a little article-thingy post? I just felt like documenting my tech shenanigans with a rare Japanese piece of equipment […]
Show full quote

Ready for a little article-thingy post? I just felt like documenting my tech shenanigans with a rare Japanese piece of equipment, as it's a tale of incompatibilities, scarce information, lackluster instructions and intriguing design. But first I should properly introduce you to the star of the show. Say hello to FMV Towns.

I won't go into lots of details, as there are much better articles out there, and I'm definitely not an expert on the subject, so I'll just keep it short and sweet - FM Towns is a Japanese PC, first introduced in 1989, and supported up until 1997 (with FM Towns Marty console released in 1993, based on a 386SX FM Towns). It's powered by a 386/486 CPU, however it's not compatible with PC-AT architecture, as it has its own unique TBIOS (Towns OS API) routines for handling peripherals, graphic modes (FM Towns has several custom chips) and storage devices. There were a lot of different models released up until 1995, with different CPUs, motherboard designs, onboard RAM, optional hard drives etcetera. And of course these were full of proprietary connectors and devices, which makes repairing them today either difficult, costly, or near impossible. Not a very ideal situation, right?

Enter FMV Towns (alternatively spelled FM-V Towns), a DOS/V PC clone with native Japanese language support and FM Towns compatibility mode. Powered by Pentium processors, in theory it offered the best of both worlds - FM Towns compatibility, but now using much more common IDE drives, standard Gameport pads and PS/2 mouse/keyboards, a normal VGA output (that actually spits up a standard 31kHz signal, so no need for a Tri-sync monitor), and a rather decent PC for 1995 standards on top of that. What could possibly go wrong?

PC-9821, that's what. Introduced in 1992 as the successor of PC-9801 line, NEC's computers were still dominating in Japan, and even though FM Towns had a dedicated fan base, and did a noble effort, it never really went completely mainstream, selling around 500k units, which pales in comparison to impressive 18 m. units of NEC machines. This is what makes the later models (starting with FM Towns Fresh) pretty difficult to find in the wild, especially in working condition, so I'm super happy I managed to grab this one, though it required a bit of work to get it fully up and running.

But enough babbling about history, let's get this show on the road. Starting of with the front of the machine...

A small desktop case, Towns/PC switch (I'll get to it in a second), two standard Gameports (which, amusingly, can ONLY be used in Towns mode - they are disabled in PC-AT mode), a headphone/microphone jack and a nice volume wheel on the front. The inside houses an ALI chipset-based Socket 7 motherboard, two ISA/three PCI slots on a riser card with four brackets, onboard graphics chip, and a standard AT power supply, PS/2 mouse/keyboard connector, FDD, HDD and x4 CD-ROM drive. So far, it's really nothing surprising, right? Where does that Towns compatibility comes into play, then?

Well, I tell you where - similarly to PC-FXGA DOS/V and 3D0 Blaster add-on cards, FM Towns hardware is stored on an expansion card, in this case a PCI one. Behold, the Towns PCI card:

The heckin chonker of a PCI card not only has a daughterboard attached, it also houses all of the custom chips from a normal FM Towns computer (including the graphics/sound/TBIOS chips and its own battery). Not to mention, it has an abnormal amount of jumper cables... And it's not just mine - all of these cards, for some reason, featured these.

While the card contains all the necessary chips to perform Towns magic, it actually uses the host PC's keyboard and mouse, RAM, FDD, HDD and CD-ROM drive. This is achieved by both the PCI slot and the "OEM connector" on the motherboard, which connects to the Towns PCI card. While it may seem the card only works with this specific motherboard only, I found out it's compatible with several other Socket 7 motherboards, although it's apparently a rather daunting task to get running, as you need to do several additional modifications, including some heavy soldering. There's even a whole site that lists all compatible and semi-compatible motherboards.

(source: http://mujirushi.org/vtowns/)

Since the Towns card has its own VGA and audio out, you need to connect passthrough cables in order to make it work (one for your graphic card, a standard VGA cable, and one for the audio - annoyingly it's a custom mini DIN8 cable, that needs to be plugged to the line out of the sound card in order to have sound in Towns mode). The whole setup works similarly to a Voodoo 1/2 card - the PC starts with the default VGA graphic card (RGB IN on Towns card), and switches to Towns mode once the Towns PCI card is active (MONITOR OUT on Towns card). I'm leaving the pinout of the custom audio cable here, as I completely forgot about it at first, and for a second I was freaking out my Towns PCI/sound card is busted and doesn't output any audio. If you don't feel like soldering your own cable, just chop the plug off an old AppleTalk cable and twist appropriate wires together - it uses the same Mini DIN8 plug.

(source: http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA018718/)

Another standard equipment of the FM-V Towns is the Creative AWE32 ISA sound card, model CT3930. It uses all the necessary connectors, including the microphone, CD Audio and feature jumpers - these are actually used for the front panel's headphone output and volume wheel.

The two other cards I found inside were a Buffalo 56k modem (Buffalo is apparently a popular brand in Japan, that's around even today, and back then offered stuff like network cards, graphic adapters and CPU upgrades for both Towns, PC-9821 and PC) and an external floppy drive card, which isn't really a PCI card, as it's just a chipboard connected to the onboard FDD controller, and doesn't have any PCI pins. I swapped the modem with a Realtek network card, and removed the external floppy card altogether, freeing up one PCI slot - it uses a proprietary connector anyway, and I don't think I'll be looking for a rare floppy drive anytime soon, let alone use it with this thing. I safely stashed it away, in case I'll be ever needing it, though.

All in all, this is how it initially looked like on the inside:

The motherboard used in the machine is an Acer V50LA Socket 7 board. It's a 3.3/3.52V, 60/66MHz bus board with ALI chipset and onboard ATI Mach64 PCI card. It's supposedly a modified variant, as it doesn't quite match up to the one on Stason - this one features the aforementioned "OEM connector" (right next to the VGA feature connector), has a bit different layout, and doesn't have the onboard ethernet (that part comes as an optional FMV-183 LAN expansion card you plug to the proprietary connector on the side of the board). The rest seems to match up, though. Unfortunately, getting to the CPU, and most of the important jumpers requires you to remove the top frame and all expansion cards, as they're hidden beneath them.

(source: http://acermotherboard.wiki.fc2.com)

The first order of business was to get that PC up and running. I already knew from the Yahoo Auctions page it's going to be in a rough condition, and without a hard drive, but with several bonus BIOS errors to deal with. Annoyingly, it didn't even come with a HDD sled, so I had to improvise with a double-sided acrylic foam tape to keep it in place. The case was also quite rusty in some places, although the board itself and the cards were in top-notch condition, so that's a relief. Oh, and the FDD was completely dead. There was absolutely no sign of life no matter what I tried, so I just decided to swap it with a working spare Samsung drive I happened to have. It happily reads and writes disk both under Windows and Towns OS (which uses the more common among Japanese computers 1.2MB format instead of 1.44), so that was one problem off the list.

While I was waiting for it to arrive, I already started doing a little bit of research on my own. The dreaded 'equipment configuration error', which was mentioned on the auction page, can be attributed to either jumper misconfiguration, wrong CPU type or incorrect BIOS settings. Why 'dreaded', though? Don't worry, I'll explain in a minute.

I decided to skip that error for now, and focus on setting up Japanese Windows 95. The installation went pretty normal and uneventful, until I got to the first boot - the PC simply restarted after displaying the Windows logo, and kept doing that every single time. The safe mode on the other hand worked fine, which most likely indicated a hardware issue. Yikes, guess the BIOS wasn't kidding, I'll have to tackle this BIOS error right here and right now.

Fortunately, it was just a matter of IRQ conflict, which I managed to deduce on my own after some trail and error (emphasizing the "error" part). By setting the values manually, BIOS was happy once again and the system booted properly. I wonder what could've been the exact cause, though - in most cases BIOS should handle the resources just fine on its own, yet I found one German blog (I wish I've discovered it sooner...) that explicitly stated the Towns card refuses to work properly with default settings. I guess the previous owner didn't know about this as well, since the BIOS battery was dead anyway... I spent a little while tinkering, trying out several things and swapping various cards, as the information about FM-V Towns is pretty scarce on the web, and the official manual is helpful as ever - "contact the tech support if you encounter this error". Gee, thanks much. Debugging and fixing this thing has definitely been a spiritual experience for all parties involved.

(source: official FM-V Towns manual/parts guide)

With that pesky BIOS error out of the way, FDD working again, and Windows 95 up and running, I decided to tackle another issue - the onboard ATI card. Even though I bought it mostly for the Towns mode, I think I might use it for some DOS and early Windows 95 games too, and there's no way in hell I'll let any DOS game anywhere near that Mach64 thing. After checking my current hardware, the only two PCI options I had was a Voodoo Rush and S3 Virge GX. Between a crappy DOS compatibility/crappy accelerator, and a great DOS compatibility/crappy accelerator, I went with the latter. Sure, I could also jam a Voodoo 1/2 board inside, but I don't have any free PCI slots left - I definitely won't remove that ethernet card, otherwise moving files will be a massive chore, and two slots are already taken by the AWE32 and Towns card. I might pick up a PCI Riva or Banshee one day (even though it would be a complete overkill for these kinds of CPUs), but for now that Virge will do just fine - one of the FM Towns fan sites I found actually recommended getting a Buffalo Melco Banshee as a reasonable upgrade. And it looks a pretty neat Banshee card indeed. Too bad it's so rare, even on Japanese auction sites.

(source: http://www1.plala.or.jp/maruyosi/)

While setting everything up, I noticed one peculiar thing. While looking at the system properties, I saw "CentaurHauls" as the CPU vendor. Wait, what... Centaur Hauls? The BIOS identified the CPU as Pentium 166... Could it be?

Yep, it could, and it was. I guess somebody did a little upgrade along the way, and decided to swap the original Pentium (from what I read, FM-V Towns came in Pentium 90/100/120 variety) with a 200MHz WinChip CPU. Not a bad choice for office work, but it ain't too hot for gaming. I decided to swap it with a far more reasonable Pentium 200 I had lying around. And speaking of CPUs, remember about the CPU upgrades from our good old friends at Buffalo I mentioned previously? Turns out they sold AMD-K6 upgrade kits for FM-V Towns and PC-9821, which were pretty popular with Japanese consumers back in the day. Jamming a 400MHz AMD-K6 inside would definitely be a massive upgrade, unfortunately the model which seemingly is compatible with FM-V Towns (V2) is much rarer than the common PC-9821 variant (N2) - a sad day for humanity indeed. And I don't really want to risk borking the machine by putting an incompatible CPU inside.

(source: Yahoo Auctions/Buffalo products listing)

With DOS/Windows side of things set up and ready to go, I decided to tackle the Towns part next. Before we begin, you must know all FM-V Towns models came with a special 'Towns Master CD' - a collection of drivers and important utilities for the FM-V Towns computer. Three of which are especially important - the FMDISK utility, FMDD.SYS driver and system restore. The former is a partitioning tool, allowing you to create Towns partitions out of unallocated space on your hard drive, FMDD.SYS is a driver enabling you to see Towns partitions in Windows/DOS (beware, it does not work with Windows 98, only DOS/W95), while the latter lets you restore the Towns OS from hard drive images on the disc, without having to go through TOS partitioning tools and installers. This is where the Japanese Windows 95 or DOS/V comes into play - without the full Japanese language support, this kind of tools will either complain about absent Japanese environment, not run at all, or display garbage.

You can get to the Towns mode by either flicking the aforementioned Towns/PC switch on the case and restarting the PC (by the way, if BIOS returns any kind of error, the Towns mode won't work that way! That's why that equipment configuration error was so dreadful), or directly from Windows by executing VTOWNS.COM - a special utility that will end your Windows session and switch to Towns side of things. You can even use it to limit the visible memory in the Towns mode (using the /m switch) for some hardware sensitive games, like Mahou Daisakusen.

At this point, you are actually ready to play some games, as most of them booted straight from the CD. There were a handful of titles that did require a HDD install (like Return to Zork, Cyberia or Alone in the Dark 2), and since we already have a hard drive anyway, setting up Towns OS would be the most logical thing to do. You can achieve that by either booting a Towns OS System Disk and using the partitioning tool to properly format and prepare your FMDISK partition, or run the Master CD and execute the system restore program. The latter option requires you to do it in Towns mode - as tempting as it is, if you try running the batch file under Windows, it will just return an error, saying it needs to be executed in Towns mode rather than Windows/DOS. System restore contains the Towns OS version 2.1 (L51), which should be adequate to my needs, so I went with that.

After a bit of waiting and a restart, I was greeted with a Microsoft Bob-esque interface called "Pegasus". It has four sub-menus (rooms), each one filled with various things you can click on. That little alligator dude on the top right is the FM Towns line mascot, prominently used on the FM Towns Marty consoles.

You can quit Pegasus at any time and return to the much more familiar Towns OS Menu with the 'Exit' icon on the left. Is it just me, or does it look like a hybrid of old Mac and Windows 3.11 interfaces? Either way, I absolutely love it.

At this point I decided to chill a little and play several games, mainly to test out the compatibility, pad/keyboard/mouse inputs, as well as HDD installation of some titles. And I'm happy to say everything worked flawlessly. Since the Towns side can use the so-called 'Fast mode' (switching to 0WS for RAM and 3WS for VRAM, as well as enabling the on-chip cache if available. Gives a nice performance boost, but may break compatibility with older titles), more demanding games like Galaxy Force 2 or Street Fighter 2 also worked without a problem, with no performance issues. It should be noted the Towns mode runs with Fast mode turned on by default, but it can be turned off in the Towns OS.

And that's pretty much it, the PC-AT/Towns hybrid is happily working again, hopefully for many more years to come. I might tackle the rust and slight restoration of the case in the future (there are some scuff marks and scratches), but that's a story for another day. I'm leaving all the important utilities below, should anyone ever want to dip their toes into the world of FM-V Towns and need them (remember the bit with scarce information? Yeah), plus I will most likely upload the ISO of Master CD to Vogons driver collection too.

I have an fmv partially working can not install town os wondering do you have an ide image to use arexa way to get the cd back working

Korvac616 wrote on 2022-12-06, 20:01:

I have an fmv partially working can not install town os wondering do you have an ide image to use arexa way to get the cd back working

I'm not even sure how to make an IDE image of Towns partition, since it's a completely different format not even visible to any of the tools I used. Is there any specific reason why you can't install the Towns OS? You could use the aforementioned FMV Towns Master CD to simply restore the pre-installed Towns partition and make it bootable.

Anyway... Yeah, two years have passed, but it's time for a little bump regarding the machine so that my entire adventure would be properly documented. Don't worry, it's still working absolutely fine - it just received some additional upgrades along the way to work even better.

* First and foremost - I finally managed to track down and obtain the elusive HK6-MD/V2 upgrade for FMV Towns! This little CPU sandwich fits snuggly just below the Towns PCI card and gives your machine an AMD K6-2 up to 400MHz, which is a rather substantial upgrade over the old Pentium 200 I had installed previously. At first I was a bit afraid it might overheat easily being so close to the Towns PCI card, but many Japanese blogs I've found said otherwise - one user in particular had their FMV Towns with HK6 running for several days and had zero issues.

The disk came with a set of drivers and utils which you can still download from Bufallo's website - apart from displaying a little splash logo on Windows startup, the HK6 also comes with a neat little DOS cache utility - very handy for running older DOS games.

Apparently you could rip apart the HK6 upgrade and swap the K6-2 with K6-3 for an even bigger boost, but I'm not sure if I want to risk borking this kind of rare equipment. I'm absolutely content with K6-2 for now.

* I've also swapped the S3 Virge with Voodoo Banshee (CT-6760) for an even bigger boost. Happy to see much more games running just fine, but I can't help but wonder why only v1.01.03 drivers are working with this card, and not the recent v1.04.00 (the system just hangs on boot). No idea whether it's due to the card itself, Japanese Windows 95 incompatibility, or some motherboard quirk.

* Lastly I've swapped the old x8 Toshiba CD-ROM with a x32 one. At first I just dropped one of the DVD drives I had lying around, and while the Windows side of things worked great, the drive completely failed to initialize in Towns OS. Out of three old CD-ROM drives I've tried (Toshiba, Apple, Sony) only the x32 Toshiba one worked well in both Windows and Towns OS. Again, no idea why - might as well be some very weird Toshiba firmware issue...

The last upgrade piece I'd love to get is that little Ethernet dongle (FMV-183) you plug directly to the board, instead of using a separate PCI card (which I'm using now). Sadly it's horribly rare - I've actually yet to see one in the wild.

I'd love to see what is between that PCI card sandwich. Interesting machine ~

Hi! First time poster here.

Your timing for this article couldn't be better: [Edit: Sorry, I didn't notice the year of your post; how embarassing...] My bestie has invited me to four weeks in Japan, starting on Sunday. And I plan to look out for an FMV Towns. An impressive machine, indeed.

A number of questions, however:
- Can the Soundblaster safely be switched with another soundcard? I'd prefer one that has a wavetable daughterboard connector, so I can use my old Yamaha DB50-XG in it. - That is, if there's sufficient space in there.
- If I were to plan to upgrade the CPU, does it matter which exact model of the FMV available? According to a model list I found (http://www.duensser.com/pc_townsmodelle.htm; German site) they range from Pentium 120 to 200. (There is one with a Pentium 90, but it's one of those models integrated with a screen and a TV tuner - I wouldn't want one of those)
- That same list suggests that grey variants of those desktops exist, but I haven't ever seen one depicted online, so far. Have you? I find that coulour rather elegant (that is, if it's the same grey in which the earlier FM-Towns models exist)
- If the mainboard's gameports can only be used in Towns mode, can I at least still use the soundcard's gameport in AT mode?

By the way, on some collector's homepage I've read that it's inadvisable to (un)plug the monitor while it's on or even in standby - apparently there's a chance this might fry VGA output Towns-side!

Oh nice! Man, I'd love to visit Japan one day...

Ketzerfriend wrote on 2023-10-12, 22:13:

- Can the Soundblaster safely be switched with another soundcard? I'd prefer one that has a wavetable daughterboard connector, so I can use my old Yamaha DB50-XG in it. - That is, if there's sufficient space in there.

Yeah, absolutely. The ISA/PCI soundcard is only used in AT mode, as the FM Towns card has its own audio output, complete with a custom cable. You only risk losing the front panel jack and volume wheel functionality if you don't have necessary headers on the card, otherwise it will work just fine. A daughterboard might be a tight fit, but I think it should be possible.

Ketzerfriend wrote on 2023-10-12, 22:13:

If I were to plan to upgrade the CPU, does it matter which exact model of the FMV available? According to a model list I found (http://www.duensser.com/pc_townsmodelle.htm; German site) they range from Pentium 120 to 200. (There is one with a Pentium 90, but it's one of those models integrated with a screen and a TV tuner - I wouldn't want one of those)

The board is a socket 7 3.3/3.52V one (I believe that's the case for all FM-V models), so you can just drop any compatible replacement for the AT mode (Towns card has its own souped up 386 chip), up to Pentium 200 (though the older BIOS will complain of 'CPU speed mismatch' - both Towns and AT mode will work fine though). If you won't find the official K6-2 upgrade anywhere, I think in theory it would be perfectly possible to replace it with a 2.2v AMD if you supply your own voltage regulator. The upgraded K6-2 in my case is still recognised as 'Pentium 200', so...

Ketzerfriend wrote on 2023-10-12, 22:13:

- That same list suggests that grey variants of those desktops exist, but I haven't ever seen one depicted online, so far. Have you? I find that coulour rather elegant (that is, if it's the same grey in which the earlier FM-Towns models exist)

Yep, there a few FM-V models, however as you've already noticed they're pretty rare - I guess being released at the end of FM Towns platform life didn't help. I've been looking for quite some time at various FM-V hardware and FMT games on Japanese listings, and so far I've only managed to come across other beige FM-V models. I've yet to encounter a grey one in the wild.

Ketzerfriend wrote on 2023-10-12, 22:13:

- If the mainboard's gameports can only be used in Towns mode, can I at least still use the soundcard's gameport in AT mode?

Yes! Again, the soundcard is only used for AT mode, so you can use it however you wish in DOS/Windows.

Ketzerfriend wrote on 2023-10-12, 22:13:

By the way, on some collector's homepage I've read that it's inadvisable to (un)plug the monitor while it's on or even in standby - apparently there's a chance this might fry VGA output Towns-side!

Indeed, I've read some blog entries that it's generally not advised to both (un)plug the audio DIN and the VGA connectors when the machine is running.