You cannot view this attachment.My FM Towns Marty finally arrived from Japan (and paying $80 import tax!!!
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The system was listed as junk as it was untested, and it was very vague on the drive's functionality. Marty consoles are infamous for their failing disc drives so I didn't get my hopes up, but to my surprise, it booted the CDs I had for it! Consistently too! It even boots the CD-R I burned of Alone in the Dark!
However, most of them just had a black screen or only loaded the FM Towns OS.
I decided to try an audio CD and I think I figured out the issue from that.
It played the first track fine, but if I told it to play any other track, the system kind of freaks out and resets the TOC and defaults to the first track again.
I dedicated to move the laser and sure enough, it didn't move back when powered on, and didn't boot CDs until I pushed it back to the centre.
So the laser itself is good, but the drive isn't moving it. Lubing the tray didn't help, so I asked around and given the system was released during the capacitor plague, we theorised the capacitors likely need replaced.
At least it isn't necessarily a failing drive because good luck finding replacements!
I also tested the floppy drive, expecting it to not work, and it didn't. Not a huge surprise. Everyone told me the first thing I need to do when I receive the system is to get new belts for the drive. That's added to the to do list.
One more thing of note: I didn't get any controllers with the system but it turns out it uses the standard 9-pin connector many older systems did, so using a Mega Drive controller works fine with it!
