Extract text from FDS files
To convert your FDS file to another format, you need FL Solutions or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Scientific Instrument Data" file type, you need software like FL Solutions or a similar tool.
The .fds extension is a classic 'container of mystery' because it serves three completely unrelated industries: scientific research, retro gaming, and safety engineering.
1. Hitachi Spectrophotometer Data: Most commonly (approx. 28% of cases), an .FDS file contains fluorescence data generated by Hitachi F-Series Spectrophotometers. The primary friction here is proprietary lock-in; these binary files are designed to be opened exclusively by the Hitachi FL Solutions software suite. Researchers often struggle to share raw data with colleagues who lack the specific software license or need to analyze the spectral curves in Microsoft Excel or MATLAB. Converting these to CSV, TXT, or XLSX is essential for data portability and publication.
2. Nintendo Famicom Disk System (FDS): In the emulation world, an .FDS file is a disk image of a game for the Japanese Famicom Disk System (an add-on to the NES). Unlike standard cartridge ROMs (nES), .FDS files mimic floppy disks and often require a specific BIOS file (disksys.rom) to run in emulators like FCEUX or Mesen. Users frequently need to convert these to different disk image formats or patch them to bypass loading errors.
3. NIST Fire Dynamics Simulator: In civil engineering, .FDS files are actually plain text input files used by the NIST Fire Dynamics Simulator. While these are human-readable, they are often converted to PDF for archival documentation or rendered into SMV (Smokeview) visualizations for presentation.
Less commonly, you may encounter .FDS files as transaction logs from IBM/Fujitsu POS systems or scan data from Topcon medical imaging devices.
Convert.Guru analyzes your FDS file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted FDSHAPE, ZIP, NES, UNF, PDF, LAZ, WAD, RAR, DOCX, TORRENT, RVZ and TSX files.
If you want to convert FDS file to NES, SHP, KML, KMZ, GPX, GEOJSON, TOPOJSON, TIF, TIFF, ECW, SID or IMG, you can use FL Solutions or similar software from the "Spectrophotometer Data & Game ROMs" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert LAZ, KMZ, DTM, CSV, DEM, PRJ, LAS, GPX, DSM, SHP, DBF or KML files to FDS, try FL Solutions or another comparable tool in the "Spectrophotometer Data & Game ROMs" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our FDS converter.