Writing out ST floppies...?

[blakespot]

If memory serves, SF314's are just standard DS/DD PC floppies - 720K, right? SF354's are single-sided at 360K. Given that, I assume writing out ST images to (true) DS/DD 720K PC floppies on a standard PC (I have a Win98SE PC) w/ a std 1.44MB floppy drive is an easy process. Right?

 

What util do I need? Tnx.

 

 

 

blakespot

[Gunstar]

Actually that is only partially correct. you will find you have problems with disks formatted and written to at 720k if your 1.44 floppy is set to 1.44Mb. You need to set the drive to 720k, and not just by selecting 720k formatting option in windows or setting the drive to 720k mode from windows. You need to go into your computers start-up/system menu BEFORE entering windows (usually holding the F2 or F5 key at boot-up, systems vary). Then you will have a PC drive that is much more compatible with your ST drive. Then straight ST files can be dragged and dropped onto the floppy and then accessed from your ST desktop. ST/MSA disk images are a different thing though, that will require a PC program capable of writing them. Do a search here, the topic with suggested programs for this purpose pops up here every few months, like this one.

[ijor]

Yes, it is a simple process.

 

For Windows 98 get Makedisk. It works in a dos box, but it works better rebooting in DOS mode. For Windows XP get Floimg.

 

A problem you might fact is that some ST images have more than 80 tracks, and not all PC drives can access more than 80 tracks.

 

You don't need to change anything in the PC Bios Setup.

[tjlazer]

Yeah no need to mess with the BIOS, not sure what kind of PC Gunstar has. The issue is this. If you have a ST disk image that is other than bog standard 720K you will have probems in Windows. Tools like MAKEDISK or ST2DISK will work with 720k disks fine, but will choke on higher disk formats. I have seen images up to 830K. These disks were purposely extended to cram all the data in them, mostly cracked games that were converted from 2 disk versions to a single disk (Due to Atari first releasing the ST354 360k drive, that set the standard for SSDD disk formats from software houses, as they did not want to release software that was not able to be read by 360k drive users) Now to format a disk in Windows XP to 720k you needed a special command, as the OS dropped support for 720k disks with 2000. If you do have XP I highly recommend the new tool called Floppy Image as it allows writing all disk formats to disk! Works great! But since you have Win 98 you will have to boot to pure DOS mode to be able to do this with MAKEDISK...

[Gunstar]

I wasn't refering to disk images with the bios, only straight ST files. Not everything online is in disk image form. I was talking about merely formatting a 720k disk and dragging and dropping files. Not images. I don't change anything in the bios either when writing ST disk images, I too just use a program like ones you mentioned that writes ST/MSA disk images.

Edited February 18, 2007 by Gunstar

[nathanallan]

Is there a way to make floimg work with USB fdd's? The fdd controller on my main machine bit the dust and I can't find a PCi card one.

[ppera]

Creating 720KB floppy in DOS or Win95-98 goes with command:

 

format a: /f:720

 

Or with Windows Explorer, right click, select 720K

 

In XP it goes not, must enter command prompt and type: format a: /t:80 /n:9

 

Of course you need DD floppy for it. Or cover hole on HD floppy, but it may be not reliable

 

 

Floppy Image (floimg) now has options to add files directly to floppies under Win XP - to any non-protected Atari ST format (except hyperformat).

In archive with proggy is 2 empty floppy image - one in standard PC 720K, and other is 800KB, both should work with every floppy drive.

[techie_alison]

I use an old IBM Thinkpad laptop (486DX4-100, 8MB RAM) running DOS to create my 720k Atari disks. The main reason is that it works every time.

 

Alot of the newer PC kit doesn't provide native hardware support for the old DSDD standards. Or if it does, it just doesn't work properly. BIOS developers are leaving out the essential code. This has been going on for as long as 10-years. Most PC stuff today is just mass consumer crap churned out for the masses.

 

You don't get much more standard than an IBM/Shugart, which is where most of the standards originated from. Modern IBMs/Dells though, all near to useless.

 

A PARCP parallel interface cable is also recommended, since you can write the Atari ST floppies on the Atari itself. It's kind of a laplink type interface, running on server/host. Good for backing up Atari hard disks too. My images are stored on CD on the PC, then ported over to the ST when I rebuild. Quite fast too.

 

An old 486 PC should definitely be in your repository. My old desktop is still up in the loft with the best most standard bits added to it over the years; Paradise IDE Cache Controller, VL-Bus Cirrus Logic Graphics card, 16MB RAM (4MB SIMMS!!!), 720K 3.5" and 1.2MB 5.25" drives, SB AWE32 card with CDROM. All very powerful stuff in it's heyday. But also invaluable now for interfacing with older kit.

 

With the older PC kit you can even create Amiga/Macintosh, and really really weird disk formats. Acorn BBC, Melco Industrial Embroiders (some weird DSSD format). All of it's possible when the FDD controllers used to have all of the original firmware available.

 

If you ever see an old PC/Laptop, never throw it out until you've checked it over. They were real proper computers. Today's computers are all geared towards Windows and only fulfilling that function.

[tjlazer]

I copy ST files to 720k disks all the time in XP. I use the command ppera mentioned to format the disks and it works fine. I also formatted disks in TOS 1.04 and it seems to work fine in XP... Why would one have to enter the BIOS and make changes to allow the PC to copy files to a FAT 12 720k disk???

Edited February 19, 2007 by tjlazer

[ijor]

I use an old IBM Thinkpad laptop (486DX4-100, 8MB RAM) running DOS to create my 720k Atari disks.

...

Alot of the newer PC kit doesn't provide native hardware support for the old DSDD standards. Or if it does, it just doesn't work properly. BIOS developers are leaving out the essential code

...

With the older PC kit you can even create Amiga/Macintosh, and really really weird disk formats ...All of it's possible when the FDD controllers used to have all of the original firmware available.

 

Hi Ali,

 

An old PC is great for many things, but most of the above quoted points are not exact. Most modern PCs, as long as they have a built-in (non-USB) FDD interface, are as good as old ones in this regard.

 

If you are using any modern OS, then the BIOS doesn't matter. Windows or Linux don't use BIOS for accessing the floppy.

 

A modern FDC is much more compatible than most older ones. The reason is that only two companies make FDCs nowadays, Winbond and SMCC. And they both use licensed Intel/NEC cores. Years ago there were more than a dozen different brands, most of them didn't use licensed cores and were only partially compatible.

 

Btw, FDCs don't have firmware (unless you mean microcode or nanocode). So a modern PC can read/write the same formats that you could in the past. No standard PC FDC can write classic MAC or Amiga disks. They cannot even read them (except Amiga disks using Disk2FDI two drives technique). Most modern PCs can read FM disks (such as Atari 8-bit ones), most older ones couldn't.

 

All of this is, of course, regarding a standard FDC and drive. USB floppies are a completely different beast.

Edited February 19, 2007 by ijor

[ppera]

Ijor is right. Problems are in software, not in hardware.

 

However, old PC can be good because of one thing (related to this topic):

It can run Win 95! This may sound little stupid, but Win 95 surprisingly well handles floppies, Atari floppies.

I installed it on one 200Mhz P1, and it read all Atari floppies, even formatted with TOS 1.0 .

 

 

This thread just shows how bad most of people is informed about whole this issue. How wrong is explanation of reasons often.

As Ijor said, Linux and Win XP doesn't use BIOS. Not for floppy, hard disk etc.

So, setting anything in BIOS setup will not help.

However, in Win98 things with floppies are pretty weird , probably because of mixed use of BIOS and own drivers. Maybe setting to 720K drive in BIOS really makes it better...

[blakespot]

I do a:

 

MAKEDISK /WRITE IMAGE.ST /AUTO

 

...and the disks never work. One disk displayed a boot-loader, but the disk was empty when we got to the GEM desktop. What am I doing wrong ? Using 98SE booting into Command Prompt Only (DOS). Please help!! Tnx!

 

 

 

 

blakespot

[tjlazer]

May not work in Win 98, boot to pure DOS mode. If you format the disks to the source format that may help. Just get Win XP and use the Floppy Image util, works awesome!

[atariksi]

May not work in Win 98, boot to pure DOS mode. If you format the disks to the source format that may help. Just get Win XP and use the Floppy Image util, works awesome!

 

Is there some utility to convert the image disks to MFM for disks like 800K and other weird formats that people may use on ST? I have the standard MFM code but not aware of what weird tricks people do with the MFM to cram extra data in. So far for Amiga disks (880K), they pretty much use the same MFM encoding which makes it easier to build simulators like the one here:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=320091938536

 

I could adapt this to work with ST, but don't have the exact specification of various MFM that the ST accepts.

[ppera]

 

Is there some utility to convert the image disks to MFM for disks like 800K and other weird formats that people may use on ST? I have the standard MFM code but not aware of what weird tricks people do with the MFM to cram extra data in. So far for Amiga disks (880K), they pretty much use the same MFM encoding which makes it easier to build simulators like the one here:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=320091938536

 

I could adapt this to work with ST, but don't have the exact specification of various MFM that the ST accepts.

 

By ST is not much space for MFM tricks - it is tied in hardware. Extra data is achieved whether with more tracks (up to 83-84) or with 11 sector/track (hyperformat) - less GAP between sectors. But latest can't be done on PC because of FDC llimitations.

 

There is a STT format for Steem emulator which covers weird formats ( here is 2 such image:

 

http://www.ppest.org/atari/floimgd.php )

 

For protected games and other SW mostly only way is imaging on ST (again because of PC FDC limitations)

 

Better come to another forum with this topic - there is couple people which works on this things...

 

http://www.atari-forum.com/

Edited March 13, 2007 by ppera

[ijor]

Is there some utility to convert the image disks to MFM for disks like 800K and other weird formats that people may use on ST? I have the standard MFM code but not aware of what weird tricks people do with the MFM to cram extra data in.

 

I am not aware of any utility that would make MFM encoding, but it would be very simple to implement. For your purposes, you can consider ST disks being the same as PC disks. The only difference between 800K disks and PC disks (again, at the level you are interested), is that they hold 10 sectors per track instead of 9. This is regarding disks without copy protection.

 

If you are interested in supporting Pasti images with copy protections, then please contact me by PM or email. But honestly I'm not sure it is feasible without extra hardware. Most protections are based on timing, you would need a precision in the order of ~50 nanoseconds. Can you handle that precision by pure software on the parallel port?