Old Atari user needs a little help.

[jhill98]

I have pulled all my Atari equipment out of mothballs, and I need a little help getting where I want to go. I have replaced my Dell LCD monitor with one that has a composite input, so I can take my capture card delay out of the equation.

 

In my hands I have my Atari 130XE, Indus GT and an ICD 256KB MIO board. I've had the Atari and the Indus hooked up and a few cartridge games I found in my pile. That all works fine. I'd like to hook up a hard drive and I'd like to somehow shuffle stuff from my PC to my Atari.

 

The issues I have is that I don't have an 800XL or I don't have an XE PBI Adapter. Also I'm not sure if I want to go old school and hook up an Adaptec 4070 and an old RLL drive, or figure a new way to do this.

 

Also is there any software to using an SIO2USB adapter on the Atari side?

 

I hope I don't sound too noobish.

 

Thanks

[Lord Thag]

Actually, you were closer than you knew

 

Go get a SIO2USB cable and the APE software from Atarimax

 

Then you can do anything you want. Load thousands of programs over the cable, back up disks, transfer files, set up your pc to emulate any number of floppies or hard disks, and even telnet onto the web using APE's modem emulation.

 

Best of all, it's dead simple. Great, great product!

[pseudografx]

Actually, you were closer than you knew

 

Go get a SIO2USB cable and the APE software from Atarimax

 

Then you can do anything you want. Load thousands of programs over the cable, back up disks, transfer files, set up your pc to emulate any number of floppies or hard disks, and even telnet onto the web using APE's modem emulation.

 

Best of all, it's dead simple. Great, great product!

I'd rather go the SDrive or SIO2SD route, which saves you from having a PC near your Atari. You can even take your Atari stuff to a friend or a party and still load all the software.

Here's some info:

http://raster.infos.cz/atari/hw/sdrive/sdriveen.htm

Edited April 2, 2009 by pseudografx

[Defender II]

The SIO2SD is the easiest I've found. Format the SD to be readable in the SIO2SD and put a folder in the root directory (Usually done by the seller). Just copy files off the internet onto SD and plug it into the SIO2SD and plug the SIO2SD into the SIO port. Turn on you Atari and you've got access to all Atari software if you copied it all. It's nice to have the MIO for the RAM disk too.

[+bf2k+]

In my hands I have my Atari 130XE, Indus GT and an ICD 256KB MIO board. I've had the Atari and the Indus hooked up and a few cartridge games I found in my pile. That all works fine. I'd like to hook up a hard drive and I'd like to somehow shuffle stuff from my PC to my Atari.

 

The SIOxxxx devices are convenient, small and very nice but if you have the desk space, nothing boots faster than a real HD on your MIO.

[jhill98]

My thought was only using an SIO2USB cable to get things from the internet to the Atari side, and use a Atari based hard drive to run with. It was along time I used my 8-bit. Even after a 1040ST, Windows 3.11 PC, and an Amiga 500. It was only my PowerMac that got me to put my Atari away.

 

I'm missing an XE PBI adapter, are these a needle in a haystack kinda thing? I do not know the whereabouts of my original 800XL i got for Xmas, so the 130XE is all I have, and the MIO I have doesn't have this adapter.

 

Do you still have to use the old MFM/RLL drives and an external adapter (4000, 4070), or is there a more modern way of doing this with a more modern drive. I have a couple 40MB and 80MB half height SCSI drives from old Macs, and I know they work. (Not modern, but better than the old ST506/ST412 drives.)

[sl0re]

My thought was only using an SIO2USB cable to get things from the internet to the Atari side, and use a Atari based hard drive to run with. It was along time I used my 8-bit. Even after a 1040ST, Windows 3.11 PC, and an Amiga 500. It was only my PowerMac that got me to put my Atari away.

 

I'm missing an XE PBI adapter, are these a needle in a haystack kinda thing? I do not know the whereabouts of my original 800XL i got for Xmas, so the 130XE is all I have, and the MIO I have doesn't have this adapter.

 

Do you still have to use the old MFM/RLL drives and an external adapter (4000, 4070), or is there a more modern way of doing this with a more modern drive. I have a couple 40MB and 80MB half height SCSI drives from old Macs, and I know they work. (Not modern, but better than the old ST506/ST412 drives.)

 

You can get certain old scsi drives to work that have integrated scsi host adapters but I have not heard of success using old mac scsi drives. I used the 4070 myself back in the day. I still have one if you need one. It usually comes out to be a wash (the price of an old scsi drive that works is about the same as an old RLL drive + 4070). One other thing, the ST megafile 30 had a 4070 and RLL drive inside. Some people here have pulled some out of recycling center piles and such. You could part one out for your needs if you can find one for a good price.

 

About the pbi adapter, after I read your post I asked someone who sells the IDEa adapter if they could sell the ECI to PBI adapter they come with by themselves. It might work for you. It has a pin header AND edge connector. So, I bet the MIO could plug into their edge connector. I'll let you know what they say when I hear back.

 

PS

I agree with the other guy. A sio2sd is the easiest way to get files from a pc onto an Atari.

Edited April 2, 2009 by sl0re

[ataridano]

I agree about using the SIO2SD drive for file transfers too. You might check with MEtalGuy66 about the PBI adptor board, he reproduced them a year or two back and I got a couple from him and they work great. I suspect that it was a one time run though. There is some new MIO firmware in the works that might let you use a newer drive, like your Mac drives. I've got a couple ST225N drives that I probably won't end up using too if all else fails.

[+bf2k+]

I agree about using the SIO2SD drive for file transfers too. You might check with MEtalGuy66 about the PBI adptor board, he reproduced them a year or two back and I got a couple from him and they work great. I suspect that it was a one time run though. There is some new MIO firmware in the works that might let you use a newer drive, like your Mac drives. I've got a couple ST225N drives that I probably won't end up using too if all else fails.

 

IIRC, the 225N will work with the 1.1 firmware too, right?

[+wood_jl]

I certainly don't want to come across as the highly-opinionated type on this issue, but I'd like to make a suggestion.

 

Get the SIO2PC USB device from Atarimax.com. Try it out first. It's a small device, reasonably inexpensive, and extremely effective. Using the software on the PC, you can make big hard disc sized virtual-drive image files. Of course it's slower than a hard drive, but boy is it cheap, and you've only 48-64K to load anyway.

 

THEN if you still "feel the need", get all that elaborate, expensive hard drive stuff going. Personally, I can't believe how well the "APE" software works, and it meets my needs well. I never had a working hard drive on the Atari8 back in the day, and I admit it's one of my secret nerd fantasies to have one working, so I'm not going to rule that out either.

 

In the meantime, you can't go wrong with the SIO2PC USB interface. You'd probably be hard pressed as a modern enthusiast wihout one. What's really cool about it is it gave me a bonafide use for my old, slow Windoze laptop [previously my "main" computer]: My Atari's Bitch - a role that it fits in quite nicely. The fact that it converted (instantly) that turd into my favorite Atari peripheral is nothing less than intriguing. Also, I don't know how you'd ever "Defrag" or properly back up an actual Atari hard drive, but PC CD and DVD burners loom if SIO2PC serves as all your drives. Prepare to giggle like a schoolgirl the first time you fire it up.

 

Additional thought: I have yet to explore any of those SIO2SD or IDE solutions. Plan on looking in to that stuff in the future. You'd likely **still** need the SIO2PC to get software working for that other stuff anyway!!!

[Urchlay]

A small word of warning: so far, there are no drivers for the USB SIO2PC on Linux or Mac OSX. If you're not using Windows, you're better off with the RS232 version of the SIO2PC.