About Free FM TOWNS Project

The goal of this project is to make fully self-contained FM TOWNS emulator. Also, if someone take on a project to replicate a FM TOWNS hardware (like by using an FPGA), I want to make available ROM images that can be used without a copyright concern. I don't know if anyone can take on such a project, well, but I think it is very possible because FM TOWNS was based on DOS.

Fujitsu released a hobby personal computer FM TOWNS in 1989, which was the first computer that had an internal CD-ROM drive as a standard equipment of the minimum configuration. All FM TOWNSes had a CD-ROM drive, which gave a significant incentive for software developers to release software titles in a CD-ROM. CD-ROM can last long if you keep it in dry cool location. We can still buy working media of FM TOWNS apps from a retro-game shop or from an auction legally.

However, the running environment is quickly diminishing. FM TOWNS hardware very often has an issue with the internal CD-ROM drive. Since Fujitsu did it too early (Fujitsu did always things too much ahead) the internal CD-ROM drive was proprietary. In fact, there was no such thing called CD-ROM drive standard then. Once the internal drive is broken, it is nearly impossible to find a replacement.

So you can think of using an emulator like UNZ and Tsugaru. However, if you strictly interpret the copyright law, it is illegal to use ROM images extracted from FM TOWNS unless you own a FM TOWNS computer.

The current copyright law protects the software developer, but not the software. Once the developer closes the door, nobody can use the software legally. Should the developer be given a right to take software away from the users? Should a developer be allowed to kill a software that was once released to the world? I don't think so. The copyright law should protect the developers as well as the software. I'm not saying make all old programs free. I am saying there should be a rule that the user can continue using old software for reasonable price, and the developer can benefit by keeping the software available.

You need minimum two ROM images, FMT_SYS and FMT_DOS. Others can somehow be auto-generated. The developer of UNZ emulator, Kasanova, has also developed a compatible and free version of FMT_SYS. He has generously opened the source code. His version is only good for booting from CD-ROM drive, but I took over and made it bootable from Floppy and Hard disk drives.

The other ROM image, FMT_DOS, was a problem. It includes MSDOS.SYS, COMMAND.COM, and MSCDEX.EXE. MSCDEX.EXE can be replaced with SHSUCDX (https://github.com/adoxa/shsucd). I really appreciate the developer of SHSUCDX for their effort to develop a compatible version of MSCDEX. However, I still needed MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM equivalent to MS-DOS Ver 3.1. Microsoft opened MS-DOS V2.0 source code, but stopped short of V3.1.

You also need a font-ROM image, FMT_FNT.ROM, which pinterior developed a tool for converting a public-domain font into FM TOWNS ROM format, and you can download FMT_FNT.ROM from his github repository. https://github.com/pinterior/FMT_FNT.ROM/actions) 20-dot font image can just be filled with zeros. Earlier FM TOWNS models didn't have this ROM, and FM TOWNS applications rarely use font from this ROM. FM TOWNS also had a ROM that stored a dictionary for typing Japanese Kanji charactors in FMT_DIC.ROM, which can be filled with 0xFFs, and at least you can type Hiragana and Katakana.

So, I started writing YSDOS.SYS, a compatible version of DOS, and YAMAND.COM, a compatible version of COMMAND.COM. I finally made it bootable into FM Towns OS. So, I opened it.

Well, it was a heck of assembly programming....

Confirmed to work with Tsugaru and compatible ROMs

Known Issues

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