Compact flash or SD solution for games, etc?

[+eebuckeye]

I see the Satandisk.. is there also such thing as using compact flash as a hard drive like the Amiga or something similar to SD2IEC like the C64? What are the options for the Atari 1040STFM? I want to be able to run TOS, games, etc..

 

I'm new to the Atari St.. :-)

 

Thanks!

[Charlie_]

UltraSatan is probably the most popular option. It works very well.

http://www.lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=94

[+wood_jl]

 

Also consider the HxC Floppy Emulator. They're different devices. The UltraSatan is a hard drive emulator for SD card. So it will play games (etc) that have been modified to run off of hard drive (etc). But many games are floppy-based, and of course exist in the [modern] form of an ST disk image (.ST or .MSA).

 

For this, you need a floppy emulator! The SD2IEC you mentioned is a floppy drive emulator for the C64. Lotharek sells floppy drive emulators too, in the form of the HxC SD card floppy emulator.

 

http://www.lotharek.pl/category.php?kid=7

 

Here is one that I use on my ST (although the picture is of me using it on an Amiga 500 as that pic is handy; it works on both):

 

 

I have some non-cased ones, too.....

 

 

What you need are floppy cable and power cable extensions. There's a thread I either started or posted in here in the ST forum about where to get those.

 

But this is what you need to simply throw plain old ST disk images at real hardware. It's nice it works on the Amiga, too. Some people don't like the fact, however, that you need to run a converter to convert the disk image to .HFE file format, to use the HxC. You have to do this with either the Amiga or the ST. It's a small (run from directory; do not have to install software) mouse-driven program that allows you to convert a single or a batch of ST/Amiga disk images to .HFE format, and you can convert them back, too. It takes a fraction of a second to convert, and it didn't bother me, for once I have an SD card loaded with converted (.HFE) images, I don't have to mess with it anymore. I think it's great, because it's the closest to a "flash cart" you can get for a system that didn't use carts to begin with.

 

To be honest, I have Ultrasatan somewhere but never got around to using it, because I've never used a hard drive with the ST before (I couldn't afford one in the 1980s). I haven't had time to fool with it. Shameful, I know.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

HxC floppy emulator is great thing, and everyone who intensive using old computers should have it (or some other HW floppy emulator) - as floppies and floppy drives become more and more unreliable, and is cheaper than lot of floppy disks.

But this thread is about CF and SD mass storage for Atari in gaming purpose. Atari games were published on floppies, and work from hard disk was barely supported - only by few. Situation is now pretty different, and what was expensive in past is now cheap. Playing multi floppy games may require lot of disk swaps (pushing buttons on HxC), while with hard disk fix you don't need to do anything. Loading times may be much faster too.

 

Currently available is: UltraSatan for SD cards, Gigafile (Sushka) for SD cards.

Coming soon: Cosmos Ex - SD cards + floppy emulator .... ACSI-CF adapter http://atari.8bitchip.info/astide.php

Later will be cheapest.

 

@wood_jl: it is really not hard to use hard disk on some Atari ST, except if you have very old TOS (1.00 ) . For start you can write image onto SD card, which has autoboot driver and some games installed, so all what you need is to connect US on Atari and run games or other SW (what can add on PC very easily ).

http://atari.8bitchip.info/DiskImgPP1.html

[+eebuckeye]

Great information! Is there any chance there are compilations of games like the WHDload Amiga compilations that people have created? Floppy images or hd installable?

[lp060]

http://shop.inventronik.de/store/10

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Great information! Is there any chance there are compilations of games like the WHDload Amiga compilations that people have created? Floppy images or hd installable?

 

I'm not sure what type of compilations you mean, but there are sites where can DL individual games fixed for hard disk/Flash card usage, and few compilations.

Floppy images are not best way of hard disk install, instead that you copy files on SD/CF cards via card reader on PC.

 

http://klapauzius.net/

http://dbug.kicks-ass.net/

http://atari.8bitchip.info/fromhd.php

 

Latest is still active, and there are 2 compilations - link given above + Superior FFLS system - see at Something almost forgotten.

[IainGrimm]

If you get the Automation disks and ppera floppy image runner you can just run the images directly off the SD card also, literally drag the .st image and drop it on the image runner program and the compilation will fire up just fine. Just bear in mind you will need a few blank discs, if you are playing an rpg for example you will need to save it at intervals.

 

http://steem.atari.st/automation.htm

 

http://atari.8bitchip.info/imgrun.php