Ransom Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 I've been using two stock XF551s for quite a few years now, but I've always preferred the XL-line aesthetics. I'm thinking about hauling out my two 1050s, perhaps adding US Doubler or Happy mods. Of course, the 810s have their own charm. I've always liked the Indus GTs (I had one once, but sold it when I went crazy one time and decided I only wanted Atari brand hardware). And then there's the 815, the drives from Percom, Trak, Rana... Or maybe you've gone floppy-less, and just use an SIO2SD , SIDE cart, etc. Decisions, decisions! What's your current A8 drive setup...and what's your ideal? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 (edited) I keep at least one floppy drive, basically for saving charcter disks for RPG or saving data for application software. I don't mind loading stuff off of SIO2PC, but I trust my floppy drive for saving. That, and I do have some software that I like to load from real disks still, generally stuff that has something going on while the game is loading, like Rescue on Fractalus or Ballblazer original disks. Anyway, I currently have a 1050 with built-in SIO/1050-2-PC interfaces (which I think looks bad-ass now, with extra LED's and a front toggle switch*), I intend to upgrade it with a Happy or US doubler DD mod. A 1010 program recorder too. I too, want to get an Indus GT as a second drive. I too, used to own one and sold it, but I needed the cash at the time. There's just something about drives hooked to the Atari I like better than virtual drives. As far as the "look" of drives, I prefer the XL line, then 800 line and last the XE line. But, I prefer which ever matches the computer I have, which happens to be a 1200XL+ right now. I hate when my computer and peripherials don't match. Except for the Indus GT drive, it looks good no matter what it's connected too. Eventually I'll get an SD card drive and some form of HDD. Basically becuase I'd rather my Atari has it's own mass storage, instead of an ambilical cord to a PC. AtariMax 8Mb flash cart is in my Atari's future too. *See '1050 mod' thread. Edited February 21, 2012 by Gunstar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 My real 1050 drives rarely get used. Usual setup is IDE Plus 2 with SD card and SIO2PC plugged into SIO. Usually use D4: for transferring stuff, or disable IDE+2 and boot with D1: SIO2SD has been pretty much sidelined for a bit over a year, just don't have much need for it any more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KubaCZ Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 On my main Atari I use XF 551 and 1050(D1,D2) with IDE+ 2.0 which remaps these drives to D4 and D5 in SDX. Or I can just hold shift key on start and load software directly from XF... Sometimes I use SIO2PC, but not too often because I have most of games/demos/etc. already on HDD. Also I use SDrive for testing when modding something and for playing on XEGS that's connected to my tv in other room. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 Yeah. Its hard to beat SIO2PC... On my 1meg 800XL, I got dual happy 1050s.. Blackbox/FB with 73gig SCSI drive, 1.44M, and 360K floppies attatched.. SIO2PC.. On my 320XE, I got IDE Plus 2.0, XF551, XF351, SIDE, and SIO2PC.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charliecron Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 D1: Happy 1050 D2: Stock 1050 SIO2PC -->> AtariSIO on linux. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bob1200xl Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 I keep 4 drives on SIO, two D1: and two D2:. D1: options are an XF551 and a 3.5 XF551. D2: options are a USD 1050 and another 3.5 XF551. This allows me to copy a 5.25 or a 3.5 to a 5.25 or a 3.5. The USD 1050 allows me to format special skews on diskettes. The XF551 reads 360K disks. The 3.5s are 90/180/360/720K. I also have an APE interface and a PBI HDD that can be any disk in any drive. The Indus/Rana/815/Percom/810/... sit on the shelf. Bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
w1k Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 i buy rare printer BT-100, but i dont have power supply, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 I have a US Doubled 1050, a 1050 with Lazer, and an Indus GT with SRAMCharger board. I keep the Indus hooked up so I can play with CP/M. I keep the 1050s around in case I need to archive any real disks. My Atari is always connected to the PC via APE, and I also have an IDE2+ installed. It's really hard to go back to SIO storage after seeing the speed of these hard drives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 SIO2SD (100% compatible, emulates 8+ disk drives) + SIDE (to quickly load .XEX format games) + 1050 (to load floppy disks that I receive attached to ABBUC magazine) I have other storage devices (SIO2PC, IDE Plus 2.0 ...) but I don't use them very much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beamer320i Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 SDrive NUXX (100% compatable for me), SIO2SD, various 1050's (stock, Lazer, US Doubler and Happy) and 810! Even with all the latest drive options, I still use the 1050's on a regular basis as I still like to boot disks as I did nearly 30 years ago! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havok69 Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 (edited) SIO2PC for me - that coupled with my APE Warp OS makes loading large files fun! I was briefly considering picking up a 1050, but for around the same price I just decided to purchase the full version of the APE software instead. Edited February 21, 2012 by Havok69 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 HAPPY 1050 rulez! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pengwin Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 I have a US Doubled 1050, but I rarely use it. For convenience, and space saving, I use Sio2PC with Sio2OSX on my Mac. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariGeezer Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 (edited) My drives consist of: 8 - 810's (2 Archiver, 2 Happy) 4 - 1050's (1 USD) 3 - XF551's 2 - IDE+ 2.0's 1 - SIDE (so far) 1 - SIO2SD 1 - ATR-8000 using 360k drives 1 - Percom AT-88 1 - SIO2PC by Steve Tucker 2 - Indus GT's 1 works... These are used on multiple systems including 400's, 800's, 800xl's, 1200xl's, 1450xl, XEGS's and 130xe's Jay Edited February 21, 2012 by AtariGeezer 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmlloyd Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 Just one Indus GT and SIO2PC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+wood_jl Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 Sdrive NUXX, SIO2SD, SIO2PC --> The ones that get used. A few 1050s, and one 1050 with US Doubler. 2 "Happy" mods to go in someday. One of the ones I want to put the Happy in the one that has the USD in it, and I think that means there's been some changes the Happy installation doesn't account for. Indus GT - "sealed." Now I'm afraid to open it. Best looking disk drive ever created. By habit, I use Sdrive NUXX the most. SIO2SD rocks pretty hard though and loads faster. If I had to give it all up except for one, it'd be the one I started (started back in 2007) with --> SIO2PC. Had 1050, Happy 1050, Indus GT in the old days. Never had XF551 or 810. Kind of want one of each for the collection, but I know the XF551 would need some[body else] to do some mods, and there's no point in having an 810 around, except it looks so cool! Happy 1050 is all-time favorite. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 I have a US Doubled 1050, a 1050 with Lazer, and an Indus GT with SRAMCharger board. I keep the Indus hooked up so I can play with CP/M. I keep the 1050s around in case I need to archive any real disks. My Atari is always connected to the PC via APE, and I also have an IDE2+ installed. It's really hard to go back to SIO storage after seeing the speed of these hard drives. Oh yeah - forgot my two SDrive NUXXs, and an SIO2SD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 Indus GT - "sealed." Now I'm afraid to open it. Best looking disk drive ever created. I want to know more about its creation. I know it was called the WART (Wonderful Atari Rotating Thing) during development, but I don't know much else. It looks like it was fairly labor-intensive to assemble and must have taken a while to design. Does anyone have information on whose idea it was? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mirage Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 I have: (1) Happy 810, (2) 1050, (1) Indus GT. But I actually only use the SIO2PC-USB. And I have a SDrive micro coming and will probably get a SIDE cart too. Pretty much don't use any real floppies anymore, I've gone to SD/CF/etc drives for everything that I actually use now, or multicarts where that makes more sense. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to bring myself to get rid of any of my actual media, even old copied "backup" floppies lol. They take up a lot of space! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 Set-up #1 130XE (128K), Black Box, SCM PCD-50b CF/SD/PCMCIA/etc. SCSI card reader/writer,Speedy 1050 DS, 1050 Turbo-Speedy, Floppy 2000, XC11, SIO2PC (AspeQt) Set-up #2 130XE (320K), Black Box, SCM PCD-50b CF/SD/PCMCIA/etc. SCSI card reader/writer, XF551 (5,25' 40 tracks+3,5' 80 tracks), SIO2PC (AspeQt) Shared drives: XFD602, XF551 (5,25' 40/80 tracks) Connected when required: Happy 1050 (2x) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 I also have 12 xf551s.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 12? I didn't mention the non-connected drives, like the stocked Percom/1050's and the 17 (18?/19?) other XF551's :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KubaCZ Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 I also have 12 xf551s.... Is actually possible to connect 8 of them to one Atari, just like you have on picture? I know that they only have D1-D4 switches on them but maybe there's some trick? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chilly Willy Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 I originally used a Percom DD floppy. The Percom can control a second floppy drive, so I put a 3.5" drive in the Percom for the second drive. This was how I originally transferred stuff from Atari to PC - I'd copy it to 3.5" then read that on the PC (had to write my own PC dump program since the sector sizes were not what the PC BIOS expects). Now I use an SIO2SD, and can't be happier. Everything should use SD cards! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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