Real 1050 drive in tandem with SIO2PC (USB) setup

[seastalker]

I've had a time lapse of Atari 8 bit real hardware and getting set up again. I successfully made my own cable last year following a guide by the wonderful YT channel, ' The Modern Atari 8bit computer.' Loading with PC software went just fine last year, but I now have my old 1050 and hope to add it to the mix. Never owning more than one floppy back in the day, I ask:

 

1. What is the cable setup? Is it SIO to SIO from 1050 to 800xl and then SIO2USB cable from one (the other) 1050 input to a PC usb input?

2. Would a setup only use the real 1050 as a swappable drive, or both in tandem? Even better would be to have the ability to WRITE to floppy, both save games AND writing software from PC to real 5.25 floppy. Does any software do this or am I in for a KryoFlux device only? I do have some NOS shrink-wrapped software so I may get into archiving and software preservation.

[+Nezgar]

800XL --> 1050 --> SIO2PC-USB

 

Set your real 1050 and PC software to use different drive numbers depending on where you want to boot from.

 

To copy from an emulated drive to a real drive, find any number of sector copy programs out there, which will copy from drive to drive, ie emulated D1: to real 1050 set to D2:

 

I've heard that extra care is needed to ensure all handshake lines are wired up to have the SIO2PC work with other devices on the SIO chain. The simplest 3-wire concoctions may only work if the SIO2PC is the only device attached to the SIO port I think?

[+DrVenkman]

If you're doing high-level, file-based work (e.g., with a bootable or ROM-based DOS), you don't even need a sector copier program. Just access both devices as you would any other disk drives. My current daily driver is the 1088XEL I built last winter. It has a built-in Sparfun FTDI-based serial to USB board inside it. I can easily access my emulated drives (RespeQt running on a dedicated RPiZeroW) as well as my two legacy 1050's, separately or all together.

[seastalker]

Perfect- thanks! I will utilize both responses and experiment a little. Nice to know I may be able to use RespeQt software to write to real floppies. Now if I get a KryoFlux device I may really be set up for archiving.

[xrbrevin]

mycopyR and copy2000 are popular sector copy programs

i use the hardware arrangement nezgar mentioned above with aspeqt emulator on my pc. load in mycopyR on the atari and create real disks in the 1050 from ATR files. it works reliably and supports the various high speed write buffer mods too.

best of luck!

[seastalker]

Thanks for that. Will check those. I also don't need to look into a happy drive option as the software loading is good when I want it FAST and the real 1050 when I want the memories.