Modern Floppy Disk Image Conversion: A Practical Guide

My first experiences with floppy disk image formats began when figuring out how to save old Yamaha floppy disks for use with a Nalbantov using a Greaseweazle. My goal was to find a clean repeatable way to image floppy disks and add floppy disk images to Nalbantov USBs in the proper formats. However, although Nalbantov’s … Read more

Floppy Disk Image Tool: Convert Between Formats or Extract Files

Whether your workflow revolves around a Gotek, a Nalbantov USB floppy disk emulator, or the full Greaseweazle toolkit, you’re in the right place! I built this online Floppy Disk Image Converter around Greaseweazle tools to take the friction out of disk-image wrangling—just upload almost any 3½-inch or 5¼-inch image, click once, and within seconds you’ll … Read more

Why Disklavier Floppy Drives Fail (And How to Back Up Disks)

Yamaha Disklavier floppy disk drives are a notorious point of failure. Yamaha Disklaviers used floppy disk drives that were quite excellent for their time: They had all-metal frames, precision stepper mechanisms, and reasonably tolerant analog read electronics. Thirty-odd years later, however, these mechanical drives are far past their life expectancies. If you have an older … Read more

Best USB Floppy Drives for Reading Yamaha Disklavier Floppy Disks

So you’ve decided to back up your Yamaha Disklavier floppy disks. And now you need a floppy disk drive that can read them! So what’s the best USB floppy disk drive for our purpose, and especially for reading those earlier, pesky 720 KB double-density (DD) variants used by early Disklaviers? This article explores various options, including … Read more

How to Use PSX (ESEQ Archive) Files for the Yamaha Disklavier

If you’ve downloaded music for a Disklavier Mark III or older model with a floppy drive, you might have downloaded a PSX file. If you have one of these files, hopefully this article can help you out! What Is a PSX File? For Yamaha MusicSoft, a PSX file is an archive format that contains the … Read more

Recording with the Nalbantov: The Truly Blank Disk!

In short, you probably want to download my blank virtual disk file for the Nalbantov or other emulators. These work on your Disklavier—specifically the Marks I and II—and on your computer. If you have an early Disklavier model like the DKC5R or DKC100R, you might have decided to install a Nalbantov floppy emulator in place … Read more

Upgrades for your Yamaha Disklavier! Where to Start?

This list is designed to help you understand the options for upgrades for your Yamaha Disklavier. It can be confusing, so start here! No matter what model of Disklavier you have, it’s worth looking into some good sources of music! I also have a list of free MIDI sources to recommend. See my Disklavier compatibility … Read more

Yamaha Disklavier, MIDI, ESEQ, and Floppy Disk Tools

I use a wide variety of software tools when reading floppy disks and preparing ESEQ and MIDI for the Yamaha Disklavier. Below is my attempt to compile the most useful tools I use on a daily basis. If you have any input or want any further information, please don’t hesitate to contact me. WinImage A … Read more

Backing Up Yamaha Disklavier Floppy Disks with a Greaseweazle

This is an article about backing up your Disklavier Floppy Disks using a specific tool called a Greaseweazle. If you do not have a Greaseweazle, and want a straightforward and less technical solution, please see the article on backing up your Yamaha floppy disks using simply an external floppy disk drive and downloadable tools. I … Read more

Conveniently Rename all ESEQ Files for use with EEXPLORE

This Python program will recursively rename all ESEQ (.FIL) files in the specified directory, ensuring they follow the naming convention described, and convert all filenames to uppercase. If, for instance, you have twenty albums, direct this program to run in their parent directory, and all the albums in subdirectories will be corrected. I’ve recently put … Read more