help with 5.25 floppies

[bongomeno]

I have an Atari 400 with an 810 drive and DOS 2. I also have a Toshiba ND-0801GR drive by itself (no cables or anything).

I want to be able to transfer files from a newer computer to my Atari via the floppies.

I have computers with Windows Xp, 98, and 95 (among others) to work with.

 

1st, how can I hook up my Toshiba drive to my newer computer?

2nd, what do I need to do to format the disks and copy files on to the disk for use with my Atari?

 

The reason I want to do this is so I can download games and programs from the internet and use them on my Atari rather than buying them from Ebay. (I need to save for a car! lol)

 

Thanks!

[thebiggw]

Just use the built in USB port on the atari

[jaybird3rd]

This is the kind of situation that APE (the Atari Peripheral Emulator) was designed for. Take a look at AtariMax, where you can download the software to use on a trial basis. It emulates Atari peripherals (including floppy drives) on the PC, and you can use it to "mount" disk images from the Internet and copy them to physical diskettes. You'll also need an APE cable, so if you can't make one, you can purchase them (and registered versions of the software) from AtariMax.

 

EDIT: Just looked up the Toshiba floppy drive you mentioned. You'll need a floppy data cable with a 5.25-inch card-edge connector on it (they're still around, just not as common as they used to be) to connect that drive to a modern PC. You can't write Atari diskettes with it directly, though, as the Atari diskette format is different than the PC format.

Edited September 28, 2009 by jaybird3rd

[mimo]

sio2pc and APE from Atarimax, great investment. You can also use it to get your Atari onto a BBS. Need 48k though

[1050]

1st, how can I hook up my Toshiba drive to my newer computer?

With a 1 dollar floppy disk drive cable, you may have to pay $5 at Radio Shack for one though. None of this may work if the drive you have is NOT a 360k drive. 5.25 inch drives also came as 1.2 meg which are not really useful for this kind of work. Once it is attached properly and powered, you'll need to set the drive type in your BIOS setup screens. If you get error 'floppy fail 40' then you have set the drive to the wrong type, when you don't get any errors you have correctly matched drive types in the BIOS with the physical drive. I suggest Win98 on the PC side.

 

2nd, what do I need to do to format the disks and copy files on to the disk for use with my Atari?

The free AtariDsk program.

 

But you can't get there from here with an 810 drive and DOS 2.0. You'll need a modified 1050 and MyDOS or other Double Density capable DOS in order to read the disks on your Atari. That 400 will really cramp your style even though it's about as retro as you can get, a more modern machine will run much more software and games.

 

Even if you go with the free SIO2PC program to use your home made SIO2PC cable with you'll need an upgrade in DOS files. DOS 2.0 won't even handle Enhanced Density disks or images of those disks when it comes time to convert them to a real floppy. DOS 2.5 won't handle Double Density disks any better than DOS 2.0 can. You could use DOS 2.0 to write a Single Density image of a MyDOS boot disk and start using MyDOS that way though.