Hard Drives

[Sean39]

Hi

 

I need to know if anyone knows where to get the Adapter for the Atari 130XE for the Hard drive???? Also where to find this 8 bit

hard drive at.....

 

SUPRADRIVE FOR 8-BIT ATARIS

 

I believe it was a 10 Meg drive..... Here is more info on it...

 

The SupraDrive 10 megabyte (10Mb) hard disk for 8-bit Atari computers delivers fast access to the equivalent of over 100 floppy disks at the touch of a key. Our Antic 10Mb SupraDrive contains every 8-bit program ever published in the magazine-with more than seven megabytes still available for more data.

 

The system's controller board is encased in a long plastic box, roughly the size of a paperback book, which plugs into the parallel bus port on Atari XL and XE computers. A 50-conductor ribbon cable and a four-conductor power cable (each cable about 30 inches long) connect the controller board to the gray metal SupraDrive, which is approximately the size of a small shoebox and weighs 8-1/2 pounds. The controller board comes with its own parallel bus port so it can be "daisy chained" to other compatible peripherals.

 

If you own a I30XE, you'll need the $16 XE adaptor that plugs the controller board into the XE's parallel bus port and cartridge slot. This adaptor has its own cartridge slot, permitting use of cartridge software with the SupraDrive.

 

 

 

Well let me know if you know where to find this hard drive and adapter???

 

 

Thanks Sean39

[dinosaur]

Supra sold the rights to this hard drive interface to:

 

Bob Klaas

4267 W.Midway Drive

Salt Lake City UT 48120

 

robert_klaas@msn.com

 

I have one of these that I have never set up,as it is very complicated.You have to burn an EPROM if you want to use any drive but the original 10meg.Maybe one day,but I have other projects that have a higher priority.

 

If anyone needs them,I have the setup disks (in .ATR form) and a lot of text files about this interface.

[MEtalGuy66]

Hi

 

I need to know if anyone knows where to get the Adapter for the Atari 130XE for the Hard drive???? Also where to find this 8 bit

hard drive at.....

 

SUPRADRIVE FOR 8-BIT ATARIS

 

I believe it was a 10 Meg drive..... Here is more info on it...

 

The SupraDrive 10 megabyte (10Mb) hard disk for 8-bit Atari computers delivers fast access to the equivalent of over 100 floppy disks at the touch of a key. Our Antic 10Mb SupraDrive contains every 8-bit program ever published in the magazine-with more than seven megabytes still available for more data.

 

The system's controller board is encased in a long plastic box, roughly the size of a paperback book, which plugs into the parallel bus port on Atari XL and XE computers. A 50-conductor ribbon cable and a four-conductor power cable (each cable about 30 inches long) connect the controller board to the gray metal SupraDrive, which is approximately the size of a small shoebox and weighs 8-1/2 pounds. The controller board comes with its own parallel bus port so it can be "daisy chained" to other compatible peripherals.

 

If you own a I30XE, you'll need the $16 XE adaptor that plugs the controller board into the XE's parallel bus port and cartridge slot. This adaptor has its own cartridge slot, permitting use of cartridge software with the SupraDrive.

 

 

 

Well let me know if you know where to find this hard drive and adapter???

 

 

Thanks Sean39

 

 

Hi Sean.

 

Your gonna have a real hard time finding that particular hardisk setup, as it hasnt been made since the mid-late 80s. There are, however several options for you if what you want is a hardisk interface.

 

The cheapest, most commonly available, (and fastest, in my oppinion) hardisk solution these days is called MyIDE. You can purchase it from http://www.atarimax.com and it allows you to use any standard IDE hardisk (like the ones used in a PC) or even a compact flash card instead of a hardisk with any 8-bit atari computer. For the things most people use ataris for, this is an excellent solution. The downside is that it patches the atari's built in OS in a somewhat "nonstandard" way, and has compatablilty problems with some applications and operating systems. This device either piggybacks under the OS-ROM inside your ATARI, or is connected through the cartridge slot. This is a very cost effective solution at less than $50.00US..

 

Another common solution is called SIO2IDE. This system plugs into the SIO port (same place a floppy drive plugs in) and has a VERY high degree of compatability with just about everything you could possibly want to run on the atari. Unfortunately, going through the SIO port limits its speed of access. There are other SIO port connected solutions called SIO2SD and SIO2USB that allow you to use SD cards or USB mass storage devices instead of a hardisk. These are all limited to the speed that can be gotten across the SIO port.

 

IF you really have your heart set on a hardisk interface that connects via the PBI (paralell bus interface) on the back of the machine (which is how the supra interface connected to the atari,) You have 2 choices..

 

First, you can try to find someone willing to sell you a CSS Black Box. This is by far the best and most advanced PBI device ever made for the atari. It contains a SCSI hardisk interface, Fully buffered 6551 UART based serial port, a paralell port with up to 64k of print-spooler and firmware based instant screen dumps from any graphics or text mode(including ATASCII characters), It can accept an expansion board which allows the use of PC-standard floppy drives as FAST atari drives, a built in machine language monitor, hex editor, and sector copier that can handle partitions up to 16megabytes, and allows up to 96 partitions per device, any of which can be mapped to any drive designator "on the fly" without terminating the application you are using.

This thing ABSOLUTELY ROCKS... But it's not being made anymore.. If you find one, $200 - $500 is a reasonable price, depending on what all the setup includes.

 

Lastly, there is the ICD MIO. This thing gives you a SASI/SCSI interface, fully buffered 6551 UART based serial interface, a paralell port with up to 1 megabyte (user configurable) of print spooler, 1 megabyte of Dynamic RAM (This can be configured via firmware as any combination of RAMdisks or Print spooler memory), and an internal expansion connector for which there may be a VGA video/80 column expansion board available for soon. I currently build an improved version of the MIO, and right now, Im trying to catch up on building and shipping all of the units that people have preordered. As soon as that's done, I will most likely be taking more orders for brand new MIOs. The price for the basic 1 megabyte unit will be somewhere around $200-$250 and if the video expansion becomes a reality, we will be offering that as cheap as possible. You can see pictures of the MIO on the "New MIO Production Run" thread, or at http://www.blackenedtech.com

 

Both The Black Box and the MIO are fully compatable with spartados and 99% of any application or OS you would want to run, and are reasonably fast as they are connected via the PBI bus on the back of the machine.

 

The Supra interface was the first generation PBI based (XL/XE) hardisk interface. The MIO was the second generation, and the Black box was the third.

[MEtalGuy66]

Supra sold the rights to this hard drive interface to:

 

Bob Klaas

4267 W.Midway Drive

Salt Lake City UT 48120

 

robert_klaas@msn.com

 

I have one of these that I have never set up,as it is very complicated.You have to burn an EPROM if you want to use any drive but the original 10meg.Maybe one day,but I have other projects that have a higher priority.

 

If anyone needs them,I have the setup disks (in .ATR form) and a lot of text files about this interface.

Yeah I have a blank (never assembled)PCB for the supra controller.. Its not really worth reproducing, in my oppinion..

Hopefully Bob Puff will either start producing the black box again, or release the rights to it, so someone else can.

[+Larry]

Yeah I have a blank (never assembled)PCB for the supra controller.. Its not really worth reproducing, in my oppinion..

Hopefully Bob Puff will either start producing the black box again, or release the rights to it, so someone else can.

 

It would be nice if Bob made another run, but last year, I contacted him about buying another BB + FB, and he told me he had sold all his remaining stock of the devices. Previously, he had sounded a little "down" that after making another run of Floppy Boards, they had not sold very well. So I think the odds of more BB's are pretty slim.

 

FWIW: If I were "king for a day" I would simplify the BB significantly. In 2008, how useful is the RS-232? Floppy Board connection would go. Likely the printer. That should really cut down on the chip count and real estate. On the minus side, it would make the firmware a new issue.

 

The thing that is missing from the BB is the ramdisk feature of the MIO -- that is the MIO trump card, IMO. If/when you solve the MIO "old drive" issue, you will be in the "driver's seat," I think. That ramdisk can be invaluable.

 

-Larry

[drac030]

You have 2 choices..

 

Three, actually. There is yet KMK/JZ IDE aka IDEa: http://drac030.krap.pl/en-kmkjz-info.php

 

There are (at least two) people producing it all the time.

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

Bob Klaas has sold the right to the SupraDrive to somebody else. Sorry, can't tell you who it is. But this person told me they are working to improve it.

 

The BlackBox can be shrunk quite a bit, if you use more modern ICs. Guus Assmann is working on it.

 

RS232 and printerport have to stay. Modern printers need way to big drivers. And for stuff like the LANtronics, the RS232 port is nice to have. But the speed of the RS232 should (and can) be improved. And if somebody finds a backward compatible way to make the printerport do "bi-directional" that would be nice too.

 

But a USB port would be nice. Although not for printers, because as I already said, the drivers (each new generation of printers and each brand needs a different driver) needed would be huge. As would be a MIDI interface (IN, OUT and THRU).

 

The FloppyBoard connector (in some way, sharp or form) should also stay, as it can be used for all kinds of usefull add-on's (that have to be developed yet).

 

Greetings

 

Mathy

 

PS I spoke to Bob over the phone I guess over a year ago. He didn't seem to not like the idea of Guus building a "replica", but he wanted to see Guus' BB first.

[MEtalGuy66]

Well, the "old drive" compatability problem is a characteristic of the firmware.. And it can be solved with firmware. And I have every intention of doing this. But the MIO is not nearly the device that the black box is. The black box offers functionality that could not be gained on the MIO without significant hardware changes.

 

I totally would not give up any of the Blackbox features. In fact, since all of the chips are commonly available still for the blackbox, The biggest design change I'd be willing to see is integrating the floppy board into the main PCB, and redesigning the layout to make it fit some sort of standard case enclosure, instead of the hellacious "t-shaped" PCB that it currently uses. Maybe some of the TTL logic could be put into GALs, but I would definitely not reduce the chip count using large scale programmable logic.

 

 

As far ast the KMK goes.. Thats a decent hardisk controller.. But it doesnt hold a candle to the black-box...

[Mathy]

Hello Ken, guys

 

... and SIO2USB that allow you to use ... USB mass storage devices instead of a hardisk.

 

Since the last update, it'll even take memory card readers, so you can also use SD cards (or whatever else you can plug into those card readers) with the SIO2USB. I'm not sure if that means "any" card reader or only those based on certain chip(set)s.

 

It can accept an expansion board which allows the use of PC-standard floppy drives as FAST atari drives, a built in machine language monitor, hex editor, and sector copier that can handle partitions up to 16megabytes, and allows up to 96 partitions per device, any of which can be mapped to any drive designator "on the fly" without terminating the application you are using.

 

You can use the 2.16 ROM version on any BB, even those without the FloppyBoard. Meaning you can do everything except use PC-floppies if you DO have ROM version 2.16 but DO NOT have a FloppyBoard. If you can find a DOS that will do 64MB per partition, the BB can handle that too. And if you want to, you can have multiple partitionlists on the harddrive. But the BB will not make a list of all your partitionlist starting sectors. So you'll have to somehow make that list yourself. On my Atari 8 bit boot CD, I have 17 partitionlists.

 

Greetings

 

Mathy

[Sean39]

HI Guys

 

I have a question if you use the IDE drives how do you tell your computer which drive you are using... Now I wish I keeped all my IDE drive because

I have 50 to 60 of them... They all were different sizes too. Now all those drives had a number asigned to them like #16 may be a 20meg harddrive

or a number #234 may be a 80 meg hard drive, so how do I tell the IDE card which drive I am using??????? Most computer are plug and play now a days

and find that number for you. I just thought using what was originally designed for the computer may have been the easiest way to get a hard drive.

I guess I was wrong,and I would not mind using an IDE drive as long as I can put programs and the DOS on it... Now would I use DOS 2.5 or MYDOS

as the operating system with an IDE Drive????? Most IDE drives are 12 Volts so is there a 5 Volt Drive or do I need to add a small 12 volt power

supply in the Computer???? I have built computers from scratch, so I will understand what ever you tell me. IF someone has an IDE CARD for Sale

Please let me know and I will need a wiring diagram where to wire it to, so I can run an IDE cable to a drive.... Well a hard drive built in the computer

would be nice. Well fill me in on this because I don't want to be in the dark on it.

 

 

Thanks,

Sean

[dinosaur]

You have 2 choices..

 

Three, actually. There is yet KMK/JZ IDE aka IDEa: http://drac030.krap.pl/en-kmkjz-info.php

 

There are (at least two) people producing it all the time.

 

I bought a KMK/JZ interface several years ago and it is very well made,well documented.

 

I tried for a long time to get it to work with an 80meg (several different drives) IDE hard drive.

I set it up with 5 partitions (1,4,5,6,and 7) leaving 2 and 3 for floppy drives and 8 for the ramdisk.

Everything worked with SpartaDos (I could read and write to the hard drive partitions) but I could never get it to boot the computer from partition 1.

 

This was undoubtably my fault (some error on my part),but about then,I got sick and stopped working with it.

 

Now that I am in better shape,this is going to be my #1 project.

[dinosaur]

Supra sold the rights to this hard drive interface to:

 

Bob Klaas

4267 W.Midway Drive

Salt Lake City UT 48120

 

robert_klaas@msn.com

 

I have one of these that I have never set up,as it is very complicated.You have to burn an EPROM if you want to use any drive but the original 10meg.Maybe one day,but I have other projects that have a higher priority.

 

If anyone needs them,I have the setup disks (in .ATR form) and a lot of text files about this interface.

 

I think that the biggest problem with this interface is that you have to use a bridge controller and use MFM hard drives.

I have an Adaptec 4000 bridge controller and several Seagate 20meg MFM hard drives,but the whole setup procedure is rather daunting and I would be working with very old drives (reliability?)

Edited May 23, 2008 by dinosaur

[Sean39]

Hi Guys,

 

Hey what about this?

 

" The cheapest, most commonly available, (and fastest, in my oppinion) hardisk solution these days is called MyIDE"

 

That IDE Cartridge do you just hook it up to any IDE Hard drive of your Choice, or is there a particular one that works well

With that cartridge????????????? I am assuming that the IDE Drive would be on the out side of the computer, and you would

have to supply it with the correct voltages to get it up and running. I am wanting a hard drive up and running but I need a very

professional look to this...... I need a very clean and neat setup, and elieve me I have set up some that do not look good. Wires

just going everywhere is not what I am looking for. I am an retired engineer so I know how things can look when things are

in experimentation stage. I need a Atari 130XE that has a hard drive,but looks like it was made to be there if you get what I mean.

Well I am open to suggestions and of someone has a nice IDE Card and drive that works together well I will buy it from you. Now

also fill me in on these Boxes too if IDE is not the way to go. Thanks

Please fill me in on the BLACK BOX and MIO What they are and if that the way I should go.

 

 

Sean

Edited May 23, 2008 by Sean39

[classics]

Bob Klaas

4267 W.Midway Drive

Salt Lake City UT 48120

 

robert_klaas@msn.com

 

I was recently told that Bob passed away.

 

Steve

[Mathy]

Hello Sean

 

Both the MIO and the BlackBox use SCSI drives.

The MyIDE uses IDE drives, but only half of it's capacity. On an 8 GB drive it would only use 4 GB.

A new IDE drive isn't that expensive. But if you get a 2.5" drive (laptop harddrive), you only need 5 Volt.

Forget about DOS 2.5 when using Harddrives. MyIDE needs MYDOS. For most (all?) others, you can also use SpartaDOS or BeWeDOS. I prefer MYDOS.

 

Greetings

 

Mathy

[dinosaur]

Bob Klaas

4267 W.Midway Drive

Salt Lake City UT 48120

 

robert_klaas@msn.com

 

I was recently told that Bob passed away.

 

Steve

 

That may be true,I have not spoken with him in three years. I hope not.

 

BTW...Lance Renquist (Video 61) may have information on the Supra HD interface.I think he and Bob were (are?) business associates.

[Sean39]

Hi everyone

 

 

Well I found a SEAGATE ST-125 20MB Hard drive which is IDE TYPE......Now this will work with the Cartridge that the IDE

Controler???????????? Now I am assuming that it only will access 10 MB of the drive correct. NOW the IDE is the Hard drive that

has the modern type pin out. The older drives you are talking about are the ones that had the cable that slid right on to the printed circuit board

on the back of the hard drive.(no pins, but traces on circuit board).... Boy I have not seen those in years. I would like to find a box to mount the

IDE Drive into and just run a cable to it, So I can make my own power supply in the same box as the harddrive to power it. That way I can give

it a very professional look. That way it does not look junk out......Anyways enlight me on this..

 

 

Sean39

[+Larry]

Hi everyone

 

 

Well I found a SEAGATE ST-125 20MB Hard drive which is IDE TYPE......Now this will work with the Cartridge that the IDE

Controler???????????? Now I am assuming that it only will access 10 MB of the drive correct. NOW the IDE is the Hard drive that

has the modern type pin out. The older drives you are talking about are the ones that had the cable that slid right on to the printed circuit board

on the back of the hard drive.(no pins, but traces on circuit board).... Boy I have not seen those in years. I would like to find a box to mount the

IDE Drive into and just run a cable to it, So I can make my own power supply in the same box as the harddrive to power it. That way I can give

it a very professional look. That way it does not look junk out......Anyways enlight me on this..

 

 

Sean39

 

An ST-125 (with no other letters in the ID number) is an MFM drive. It is not IDE. If it is ST-125A, then that is an IDE drive. If ST-125A, then it uses +12VDC and +5VDC power. Many folks use a small 2-1/2" laptop drive that can be supplied by a 5VDC power supply. Probably the most popular "drive" is the compact flash card. Cheap and power-efficient.

 

You can read and ask MyIDE questions better, I think, at the AtariMax site/forum and/or Mr-Atari's site. There is a wealth of info there about what is available, possible, powering the MyIDE setup, pictures, installation info, etc.

 

-Larry

[Shawn Jefferson]

The MyIDE uses IDE drives, but only half of it's capacity. On an 8 GB drive it would only use 4 GB.

 

Yes, because it only uses 8bits of the 16bit data path, so only 256 bytes of the 512 byte sector.

 

Also, you will lose some space here and there, depending on your partition structure and image space setup. The current 4.x MyIDE system uses the cylinder/head/sector addressing modes, and everything starts/ends on a full cylinder.

 

Forget about DOS 2.5 when using Harddrives. MyIDE needs MYDOS. For most (all?) others, you can also use SpartaDOS or BeWeDOS. I prefer MYDOS.

 

This really depends on your partition size. You can run DOS 2.5 with MyIDE, but you are going to be restricted to either 720 sector, or 1040 sector partitions/images. This is fine in the image space-not so useful as a partition.

 

I'd forget about using some ancient IDE drive, like anything less than 500 MB. Just find something in the 1-4 GB range and you should be fine, and will have lots of space. To get the maximum out of a MyIDE setup, you need to replace your OS ROM with the MyIDE OS. This can either be the in-computer flashable internal kit offered by Atarimax (classics), the 32-in-1 OS ROM upgrade (also Atarimax), or you can burn the OS ROM yourself (or get someone to do it for you) and put that into your computer. I like the simplicity and size of the MyIDE setup. I really don't do anything with the 8-bit that would make a big interface hanging off the back of it useful (like a Black Box, MIO, or KMK/JZ).

 

SIO2PC and APE (again, Atarimax!) on the other hand... I'd probably not have brought my Atari computer out of the closet without that great invention.

 

PS: for a box to put your IDE drive in, you can look for an old Macintosh external Hard Drive or CD-ROM drive enclosure. These have their own power and when they are closed up, look pretty good. Rip all the SCSI crap out of the back and run your IDE cable out one of the holes.

Edited May 24, 2008 by Shawn Jefferson

[DamageX]

I was using a MyIDE interface with an 80MB laptop drive inside an 800XL, with the patched ROM and SpartaDOS (forget which version, but there was one without high-speed SIO routines which worked along with the MyIDE ROM)

 

It didn't seem to be much faster than APE 3x SIO. I guess the old drive was one factor, since it doesn't have a cache in it like newer ATA drives, and the Atari only reads one sector at a time. The other issue was calculating the sector address. I started to write my own driver but didn't get very far. I was thinking of using a newer addressing scheme or taking some shortcuts with the CHS... and using a partially unrolled loop of LDA/STA instructions to read from the port at over 100KB/s

 

It was definitely better than fooling with floppies, just not what (I thought) it could be. It sounds like the KMK/JZ interface is IDE on the Atari done right, with the full 16-bit wide port and a driver included in ROM.

[+Larry]

I was using a MyIDE interface with an 80MB laptop drive inside an 800XL, with the patched ROM and SpartaDOS (forget which version, but there was one without high-speed SIO routines which worked along with the MyIDE ROM)

 

It didn't seem to be much faster than APE 3x SIO. I guess the old drive was one factor, since it doesn't have a cache in it like newer ATA drives, and the Atari only reads one sector at a time. The other issue was calculating the sector address. I started to write my own driver but didn't get very far. I was thinking of using a newer addressing scheme or taking some shortcuts with the CHS... and using a partially unrolled loop of LDA/STA instructions to read from the port at over 100KB/s

 

It was definitely better than fooling with floppies, just not what (I thought) it could be. It sounds like the KMK/JZ interface is IDE on the Atari done right, with the full 16-bit wide port and a driver included in ROM.

 

As you mention, there is evidence that some laptop drives are way slow with the MyIDE. With compact flash there are few issues, and they are quite fast.

 

Mr-Atari's 5.0 test OS addresses the sector calculations. He is currently still working on the OS to further improve its operations and compatibility.

 

There are benchmark times of various systems scattered in several places in this ICD MIO thread:

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...l=MIO&st=60

 

The newer 5.0 improves throughput by about 20% more in my tests, especially when you get to large sector numbers as in backing up a HD partition.

 

While not as fast as most PBI devices, it is very respectable, IMO. In the real world, it is about 25% slower than the BB, based on timing HD backups. And with Hias patch to provide Ultraspeed, it is a very nice package. To me there are three big advantages to the MyIDE: first, it is extremely compact and the new internal flash OS allows you to re-flash the OS from APE; second, when using the cartridge, it is very easy to transport the "drive" to another computer just by moving a cartridge; and third, it is still the least expensive HD system by quite a bit, even with the new (more expensive) internal flash interface.

 

I like all the HD systems for the Atari -- each has its own strong points (except maybe the Supra ) Long story short, the MyIDE very respectably fills a nice niche.

 

-Larry

[dinosaur]

Larry:

 

The Supra has one strenghth....you gave it to me !!

 

Since I have all the components ( I just found an Adaptec 4010 bridge controller that I didn't know I had!),I guess I will try to set up this puppy.

 

Then dinosaur can use a dinosaur hard drive!

 

BTW...I never have got my KMK/JZ to boot,either with MyDos or SpartaDos...

[+bf2k+]

Larry:

 

The Supra has one strenghth....you gave it to me !!

 

Since I have all the components ( I just found an Adaptec 4010 bridge controller that I didn't know I had!),I guess I will try to set up this puppy.

 

Then dinosaur can use a dinosaur hard drive!

 

BTW...I never have got my KMK/JZ to boot,either with MyDos or SpartaDos...

 

Is there a link (in english) where I could get a KMK/JZ? Preferable with Paypal?

[Fres]

Regarding the "professional look" that Shawn desires, I'd have to say the myide cart with an ide module is the best. Everything looks like it was "supposed" to be there. The cart is very professional looking, and it provides power to the ide module (e.g. transcend) there are NO wires or ICs showing besides what you need to operate the computer.

[dinosaur]

Is there a link (in english) where I could get a KMK/JZ? Preferable with Paypal?

 

Here are a couple of websites:

 

http://8bit.yarek.pl/interface/atari.kmk/

 

http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~machek/atari/ide8bit.html

 

I bought my KMK/JZ from Jerzy Dudek on eBay.He shipped it to me from Poland,with no problems!