New 520ST user - looking for floppy solution, power switch

[+DamonicFury]

I recently came across a boxed Atari 520ST at a flea market. As a happy owner of most every other kind of Atari system, I was thrilled to add this to the collection.

 

Unfortunately, I soon found out that that the system had no floppy drive, or power supply.

 

Turning to Ebay, I picked up a nice lot of 2 more 520ST's with power supplies, a SF354 single sided floppy with cables, and a mess of software.

 

Sadly, while I was able to find out that the original 520ST powered on fine, as did one of the Ebay 520ST's, the other ST won't power on at all (probably due to a flaky power switch), and the floppy won't load software.

 

Disassembling the SF354, I quickly found that the belt had mostly disintergrated.

 

I've ordered a belt for the floppy from the UK, so hopefully that will restore the SF354 eventually. Even if it does, I'd be interested in getting a double sided drive. The Ebay lot came with a nifty adapter that converts the ST floppy port to a PC floppy port. Anyone have any ideas on how to use this? I understand that ultra common 1.44MB HD drives don't always work well with the ST's. Even if I found one that did, would I just power it using an old PC power supply? (Seems like that would work, but it's a bit overkill, right?)

 

Would love any suggestions on my floppy drive issues, as well as any ideas on where to get a power switch to try to fix the broken 520ST.

[+DamonicFury]

Perhaps something like this would work (with an adapter) to power an external PC floppy...

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/110-120V-AC-to-12V-5V-DC-Power-Supply-Adapter-w-4-Pin-Molex-Connector-2AMP-/121335517256?pt=US_Power_Cables_Connectors&hash=item1c40291048

 

Worth a try, I suppose. Still trying to figure out what model of PC floppy will play well with the ST... apparently it needs to be one that supports signalling a disk change on a certain pin. The link below describes the problem, but only lists two fairly rare Epson drives as being compatible... are there any others?

 

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=14049

[Charlie_]

Perhaps something like this would work (with an adapter) to power an external PC floppy...

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/110-120V-AC-to-12V-5V-DC-Power-Supply-Adapter-w-4-Pin-Molex-Connector-2AMP-/121335517256?pt=US_Power_Cables_Connectors&hash=item1c40291048

 

Worth a try, I suppose. Still trying to figure out what model of PC floppy will play well with the ST... apparently it needs to be one that supports signalling a disk change on a certain pin. The link below describes the problem, but only lists two fairly rare Epson drives as being compatible... are there any others?

 

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=14049

I found the best bet to be the Epson SMD series. These are the drives Atari used in the later Mega models. I think the Falcon had the HD version, and so did the kit for an HD drive on the Mega STe. The HD version will work just fine as a 720K drive in any model ST. The models I remember are the SMD-300 SMD-340 SMD-380 (maybe, it has been a while)

Edited August 8, 2014 by Official Ninja

[+DamonicFury]

Thanks, Official Ninja! From what I've read, those are indeed the best choice as they work with no modification necessary, but they seem to be a bit hard to find these days. I'm seeing some instructions out there on how to convert the much more common Mitsumi drives for use on the ST... think I may give that a try. I'll post here with the results.

[Charlie_]

Thanks, Official Ninja! From what I've read, those are indeed the best choice as they work with no modification necessary, but they seem to be a bit hard to find these days. I'm seeing some instructions out there on how to convert the much more common Mitsumi drives for use on the ST... think I may give that a try. I'll post here with the results.

There is a model that HP used in a PC that was more available last year when I was playing with ST floppy drives...

Found my spare.. It is the SMD-340

[+DamonicFury]

Thanks for checking, Official Ninja! I got lucky and won an auction for a SMD-340. :-) So hopefully that will do the trick. :-)

 

Also got the belt from England and it brought the SF354 back to life. :-) But it seems like it will work with precious few disks (even from the ST's era!) and that there's no way to write files to a disk from a PC that the SF354 will read. So guess that drive is of little practical use, although it did boot one game I had a disk for (The Pawn, a text adventure.) So it was nice to see the 520ST do something other than just display the GEM desktop. :-)

[Charlie_]

Thanks for checking, Official Ninja! I got lucky and won an auction for a SMD-340. :-) So hopefully that will do the trick. :-)

 

Also got the belt from England and it brought the SF354 back to life. :-) But it seems like it will work with precious few disks (even from the ST's era!) and that there's no way to write files to a disk from a PC that the SF354 will read. So guess that drive is of little practical use, although it did boot one game I had a disk for (The Pawn, a text adventure.) So it was nice to see the 520ST do something other than just display the GEM desktop. :-)

You can use the Floimg program to write single sided disk images to floppy on your pc.

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

[+DamonicFury]

You can use the Floimg program to write single sided disk images to floppy on your pc.

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

Oh? I will have to give that a try! Thanks!

[+DamonicFury]

I am happy to report that the Epson drive and FloImg are working great for me. I am now having lots of fun exploring the ST Atari era! Thanks for all the advice, Official Ninja!

[tjlazer]

You can also hook that Epson drive to the SF354 insides to make it a SF314 You will have to mod the faceplace to make it fit though.

[+DamonicFury]

You can also hook that Epson drive to the SF354 insides to make it a SF314 You will have to mod the faceplace to make it fit though.

 

Thanks for the tip! I'd love to do that, but unfortunately, my particular SF354 uses a non-standard 14-pin data connector. I found instructions here in this forum about how to convert that to a 34-pin connector, and I may do that someday.

 

So what do you longtime ST owners mostly do with your machines these days? I've been playing some of the games for it, and it's been an interesting experience. Graphics seem roughly between a NES and Genesis level. The sound hasn't been that impressive on most games I've tried. I have to admit I'm not likely to play the many long-form games that seem to be popular such as Dungeon Master. There have been some standout games with more of an arcade feel that I'm getting into, such as Starglider (love the graphic style, but it seems crazy hard) and Time Bandit (really enjoying the multi-game aspect of this one.) Some of the arcade ports are interesting, like Bomb Jack which has long been a MAME favorite, but seems super hard on the ST. Any other suggestions?

[English Invader]

Skulldiggery (Boulderdash clone)

Blood Money (ultra hard shoot-em-up)

OIDS (ultra hard shoot-em-up)

Super STario Land (Super Mario Bros clone)

Stunt Car Racer

Microprose F1 GP

Sensible Soccer

Microprose Soccer

Treasure Trap (isometric adventure game)

Outrun

Berzerk (homebrew)

Duckdash (homebrew)

Maniac Mansion

Llamatron

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (action game)

Batman the Movie

Batman the Caped Crusader

Ghouls n Ghosts

Great Giana Sisters

[+DamonicFury]

Thanks, English Invader! I'll check those out!

[Charlie_]

 

Thanks for the tip! I'd love to do that, but unfortunately, my particular SF354 uses a non-standard 14-pin data connector. I found instructions here in this forum about how to convert that to a 34-pin connector, and I may do that someday.

 

So what do you longtime ST owners mostly do with your machines these days? I've been playing some of the games for it, and it's been an interesting experience. Graphics seem roughly between a NES and Genesis level. The sound hasn't been that impressive on most games I've tried. I have to admit I'm not likely to play the many long-form games that seem to be popular such as Dungeon Master. There have been some standout games with more of an arcade feel that I'm getting into, such as Starglider (love the graphic style, but it seems crazy hard) and Time Bandit (really enjoying the multi-game aspect of this one.) Some of the arcade ports are interesting, like Bomb Jack which has long been a MAME favorite, but seems super hard on the ST. Any other suggestions?

 

Try Crap-Man. A game for real Heroes.

[RodLightning]

From English Invader's list, I highly recommend Stunt Car Racer to show off ST graphics. I will add two of my favorites, Vroom! (great racing game) and Populous, an addictive strategy game.

[Charlie_]

 

Thanks for the tip! I'd love to do that, but unfortunately, my particular SF354 uses a non-standard 14-pin data connector. I found instructions here in this forum about how to convert that to a 34-pin connector, and I may do that someday.

 

So what do you longtime ST owners mostly do with your machines these days? I've been playing some of the games for it, and it's been an interesting experience. Graphics seem roughly between a NES and Genesis level. The sound hasn't been that impressive on most games I've tried. I have to admit I'm not likely to play the many long-form games that seem to be popular such as Dungeon Master. There have been some standout games with more of an arcade feel that I'm getting into, such as Starglider (love the graphic style, but it seems crazy hard) and Time Bandit (really enjoying the multi-game aspect of this one.) Some of the arcade ports are interesting, like Bomb Jack which has long been a MAME favorite, but seems super hard on the ST. Any other suggestions?

So a few days ago I had the urge to play some ST. I have a coco setup and didn't want to break it down. So, I threw my 1040STf on a bench and decided to just have at it with a simple floppy system. No UltraSatan or 4mb ram or anything. I remembered this thread and wanted to list a bunch of stuff I like to play. Since all I had to recommend last time was crap man. So I looked through the few games I pulled out of a few boxes of floppies I had made a while ago....

 

Rogue I and II, Gauntlet I and II, Colorado, Battle Chess, Pacmania, Galaxian, Super off road, Shanghi v2, 1943, arkanoid I and II, Bubble Ghost, Fast Food, Chip's Challenge, Flimbo's Quest, Millipede, Insects in Space, all the Sierra games, King's Quest and the like, Death Bringer, Mata Hari, Armalyte, R-Type, Immortal, Bank Buster, Jim Power, Death Sword, Cyber Assault, Iron Lord, Space Harrier, Out Run, Buggy Boy, Joust, Rick Dangerous, Blasteroids, Enchanted Land, Magic Boy, Saint Dragon, Captain Dynamo, Berzerk, Starball, Fire and Brimstone, Stormlord, Hoog, Impact, Gods, Empire Strikes Back, Vroom, WIngs of Death, Droid, Cannon Fodder.

 

ST has a lot of great gaming going on. If you don't get hung up on comparing systems and just enjoy the ST for what it is you can find lots of great games to play on it.

I'm not sure what happened to the Climatics Atari archive, but that is where I downloaded most of my disk images I wrote out to floppy,