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ST Images to Real Floppy...


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I appreciate this may be a difficult subject to broach and of course if this is inappropriate then please accept my apologies.

 

I would like to be able to use a selection of .st images on a real 520ST. My question: Is there a universal program/solution to do this on a Modern PC with Vista? I have a USB Floppy Drive and the correct disks... Just obviously curious if its at all possible......?

 

Once again I appreciate that this maybe a touchy subject so please delete/warn as appropriate. Hopefully though someone maybe able to help.

 

Thanks for your consideration!

Edited by dudeydude
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You can use FloImg:

http://atari.8bitchip.info/floimgd.php

 

HOWEVER you must use a regular internal floppy drive connected to a floppy disk controller. It will NOT work with a USB drive.

 

Providing you have the correct floppy disk setup, it works great.

 

i would also suggest the program above. With it, i now have 50+ games i can play on my 1040st.

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ST images are just plain raw dumps. You can use them with rawrite on DOS/windows or dd on Mac/UNIX.

 

Don't forget to use the right disks and drive for your Atari drive. e.g. my SF314s need DSDD floppies, which I can't write with modern (heh) high density drives.

 

I actually write my ST floppies on a Mac SE/30, which has the FDHD "superdrive" that supports DOS discs. Disc Copy 4.2 doesn't support raw images

directly, but I wrote a little program to attach a header that it will recognize. Works great.

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Or you can ditch the floppy drive altogether and install the HxC floppy emulator into your Atari. Then you put all you floppy images on an SD card and boot them directly on the Atari ST from the SD card.

That is in my opinion much more convenient than writing real floppies especially if you quickly want to try some software.

 

Robert

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ST images are just plain raw dumps. You can use them with rawrite on DOS/windows or dd on Mac/UNIX.

 

Woah.. Didn't know Rawwrite would write them correctly. I will need to try that.

 

Will it also write MSA images back correctly?

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No, msa disks are compressed. You'll need a program called msa2st to switch between the two formats. You might also avoid all that together for games that are smaller than 720kb (most of them) and check the hd patches by d-bug and klapauzius since those will also run from floppy disk in most of the cases.

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Or you can ditch the floppy drive altogether and install the HxC floppy emulator into your Atari. Then you put all you floppy images on an SD card and boot them directly on the Atari ST from the SD card.

That is in my opinion much more convenient than writing real floppies especially if you quickly want to try some software.

 

Robert

 

This device looks insane. They are a little pricey but for me well worth it. I will probably get two when i can save up for them. One for my Amiga 500 and one for my Atari 1040ST.

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Or you can ditch the floppy drive altogether and install the HxC floppy emulator into your Atari. Then you put all you floppy images on an SD card and boot them directly on the Atari ST from the SD card.

That is in my opinion much more convenient than writing real floppies especially if you quickly want to try some software.

 

Robert

 

This device looks insane. They are a little pricey but for me well worth it. I will probably get two when i can save up for them. One for my Amiga 500 and one for my Atari 1040ST.

 

It's pretty nice, I use it on my 1040 ST and Amiga 500. Haven't tried it on any other platform yet.

 

~telengard

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Ok appreciate the awesome responses guys. This is pretty amazing really and definitely something I will consider however for now I am outta luck as money is now very tight.

 

So I am looking at what I have at the moment. Heres the list:

  • USB Floppy Drive
  • VIsta PC
  • XP PC
  • Shedloads of Floppy Disks
  • WinImage
  • Steem
  • Above average technical knowledge
  • I got my fingers crossed too...

So let me develop my notion: I have read on the AtariForumWiki about transferring files from PC to ST. There seems to be a solution involving the creation of a HDD image within a Steem environment and using the USB Floppy Drive(on the PC) as the ST floppy within Steem. Is there a way to extract the files from a .st image and put them on the HDD and then use something on the emulated ST to do a floppy copy that way? For the sake of argument can someone give me a quick breakdown of how to do this within Steem?

 

I don't care about how difficult it may be or if its a time consuming process. Basically I just wanna play something to test the floppy drive out. If I cannot play games, is there something I can do to test that the floppy drive works ok on my ST? Any kind of procedure with the disk or something...?

 

Basically long story short, this ST I have got is a total mess. It was covered in mud and looked like it had been used as a lawnmower cover. No structural damage, just stacks of dirt. The mouse is an abomination. It looks like I could catch some kind of 18th century plague off it if I go near it. I have cleaned it to near perfection with only a slight discolouration to the casing now present. The mouse I feel is a lost cause but thats another matter. Basically I wanna test the thing because I have my doubts it even works correctly...

 

I am just looking for some kind of solution that gives me access to the floppy drive and its performance. Be it games/apps/whatever.

 

So there you have it. Appreciate the kind advice so far!!

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Appreciated and understood.

 

I am hoping that common sense can be thrown out of the window for the purposes of getting a disk to work... I am hoping that I can do something with the items and the hope I have... :)

 

I am hoping I do not have a weighty brick.... :?

 

If I try the Steem method am I just gonna hit a brick wall?

Edited by dudeydude
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So let me develop my notion: I have read on the AtariForumWiki about transferring files from PC to ST. There seems to be a solution involving the creation of a HDD image within a Steem environment and using the USB Floppy Drive(on the PC) as the ST floppy within Steem. Is there a way to extract the files from a .st image and put them on the HDD and then use something on the emulated ST to do a floppy copy that way? For the sake of argument can someone give me a quick breakdown of how to do this within Steem?

 

In STeem you can indeed map a PC directory as hard-disk on the emulated Atari. Just press the disk icon (upper left in the STeem main Window) to open the disk manager. In the dialog box, click the "hard drivers" button. Now you can map a PC directory as for example drive C under STeem. Then start STeem to the desktop and then mount a floppy disk image as drive A (don't mount the floppy before booting to the desktop since then it might start the game instead of going to the desktop). Now on the emulated Atari you can copy the files from A to C (drag-n-drop) and they will end up in your PC directory. From there you can copy them with Windows Explorer file-by-file to a real floppy.

Note that this only works for disk images of regular formatted Atari disks. Lots of games use their own format and do not contain files. Also lots of Atari disk are formatted with 10 sectors instead of 9 sectors and might not fit on a regular floppy created by a PC.

 

Basically long story short, this ST I have got is a total mess. It was covered in mud and looked like it had been used as a lawnmower cover. No structural damage, just stacks of dirt. The mouse is an abomination. It looks like I could catch some kind of 18th century plague off it if I go near it. I have cleaned it to near perfection with only a slight discolouration to the casing now present. The mouse I feel is a lost cause but thats another matter. Basically I wanna test the thing because I have my doubts it even works correctly...

 

I am just looking for some kind of solution that gives me access to the floppy drive and its performance. Be it games/apps/whatever.

 

To just test if the floppy drive of your Atari works, you can just format a disk on the Atari (select drive A, then file menu -> format). If that works save the desktop (options menu -> save desktop). Now the floppy should contain the file "Desktop.inf" and when booting your ST with that floppy, the open Windows should be the same as when you saved the desktop.

 

Robert

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Ok appreciate the awesome responses guys. This is pretty amazing really and definitely something I will consider however for now I am outta luck as money is now very tight.

 

So I am looking at what I have at the moment. Heres the list:

  • USB Floppy Drive
  • VIsta PC
  • XP PC
  • Shedloads of Floppy Disks
  • WinImage
  • Steem
  • Above average technical knowledge
  • I got my fingers crossed too...

So let me develop my notion: I have read on the AtariForumWiki about transferring files from PC to ST. There seems to be a solution involving the creation of a HDD image within a Steem environment and using the USB Floppy Drive(on the PC) as the ST floppy within Steem. Is there a way to extract the files from a .st image and put them on the HDD and then use something on the emulated ST to do a floppy copy that way? For the sake of argument can someone give me a quick breakdown of how to do this within Steem?

 

I don't care about how difficult it may be or if its a time consuming process. Basically I just wanna play something to test the floppy drive out. If I cannot play games, is there something I can do to test that the floppy drive works ok on my ST? Any kind of procedure with the disk or something...?

 

Basically long story short, this ST I have got is a total mess. It was covered in mud and looked like it had been used as a lawnmower cover. No structural damage, just stacks of dirt. The mouse is an abomination. It looks like I could catch some kind of 18th century plague off it if I go near it. I have cleaned it to near perfection with only a slight discolouration to the casing now present. The mouse I feel is a lost cause but thats another matter. Basically I wanna test the thing because I have my doubts it even works correctly...

 

I am just looking for some kind of solution that gives me access to the floppy drive and its performance. Be it games/apps/whatever.

 

So there you have it. Appreciate the kind advice so far!!

 

To do test of floppy drive in ST self with some SW you don't need Steem (although may do with it too). But because you have USB floppy drive, you can not use most of floppy imaging SW.

What will work for sure is: writing files onto regular DD floppy, formatted to 720KB.

So, type in command prompt: format a: /t:80 /n:9 . Then copy some shorter text file (few KB long) onto and try to read it on ST.

Of course, may try some game too - but then need to know which can be copied filewise. There is many of such. Bot online you will find mostly floppy images.

You can extract files from images with Steem, but simpler is with FloImg or Winimage. For instance Flight Simulator 2 will for sure work if you copy all files onto 720KB floppy, since it is not protected at all.

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I don't understand, why are you wanting to extract files from your .st images? They are raw 720K MFM disc images. You can dump them straight to disk and they should work fine.

 

If you're having trouble using typical windows imaging software because of the USB floppy, try it in Linux. Just boot to linux, plug in the USB floppy, run 'dmesg' to see which device is created when you plug in the floppy, then invoke dd like this (with file names changed to fit your situation of course):

 

$sudo dd if=diskimage.st of=/dev/usbfloppy

 

That's it, you're done. Things like this is why *everyone* should have a Linux partition handy to boot into.

 

The only thing that should give you any kind of trouble is determing whether your USB floppy can write DSDD disks. That is, unless your Atari has a HD disk drive. What sort of drive is attached to your Atari?

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I don't understand, why are you wanting to extract files from your .st images? They are raw 720K MFM disc images. You can dump them straight to disk and they should work fine.

If you're having trouble using typical windows imaging software because of the USB floppy, try it in Linux. Just boot to linux, plug in the USB floppy, run 'dmesg' to see which device is created when you plug in the floppy, then invoke dd like this (with file names changed to fit your situation of course):......

The only thing that should give you any kind of trouble is determing whether your USB floppy can write DSDD disks. That is, unless your Atari has a HD disk drive. What sort of drive is attached to your Atari?

What I wrote is intended to Windows XP. Vista, 7 users. If floppy (image) has 10 sectors/track you can not write it onto USB connected floppy. So, not 800K or 400K sized images. And we have a lot of such. I don't think that just because of floppy writing problems people will start now to install and learn to use Linux (myself have it) .

So, problem is not only possibility of writing DSDD disks, but 10 sectors/track too.

And ... even Linux can not help over HW limits of USB floppy adapter. You will still need to extract files from 400/800K floppy images.

Instead Linux (what is good thing for sure) I can recommend to get some older PC, with internal drive and best with Windows 95. It can work with 800K floppies even without extra SW !

Edited by ParanoidLittleMan
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  • 2 weeks later...

Ok guys, appreciate the top responses here. This is indeed a worthy place to be and I have nothing but admiration for all the replies thus far.

 

Some developments:

Floppy drive I have on the ST is the 'original', make of that what you will. The ST is, for want of a better expression, FUBAR. The floppy drive is wrecked and half the keyboard don't work. I had to do a full strip down. Motherboard is perfect. Keyboard is not so good, mainly dirt/mistreatment related. Joystick/Mouse ports are good. I took it apart and after piecing each component back in(Except the floppy drive) I find that I can FINALLY boot into TOS. TOS is empty and the keyboard is of limited use (No response from the numerical keypad). As you can imagine I am not a happy bunny!! For now ST fun is at a standstill. FFS etcetcetc...

 

With regards to the Linux thing. Will any distro do the trick? Also is there 'software' that has similar functionality to floimg under Windows? Me and Linux have had a mixed relationship. If you've ever seen Gone in 60 Seconds(The Nic Cage one...) then Linux is like 'Eleanor' to me. She needs taming but am I man enough to do it???

 

Its a shame as, for now, your kind advice is a bit wasted... I want to revive my 'fallen' ST and not give up but shes on life support and the clock is ticking...

 

One thing that was on my mind:

If anyone has any knowledge of the Amiga/Workbench then are you aware of a program called Tracksaver GUI? Well this allows you to copy ADF's to floppy from an Amiga HDD to its FDD in a matter of a few clicks. I am wondering if I could get a SATANdisk and then do something similar on the ST? Is that just silliness????

 

Once again guys appreciate your time and responses thus far!

Edited by dudeydude
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  • 3 months later...

Sorry to resurrect this old topic but I felt that a new topic was not necessary for this most simplest of questions...

 

I would like to know if there is a 'noob' guide for the Satandisk? If not then can I just ask a simple question...?

If I buy all the bits and pieces as per the Atari Fan Store for Satandisk then what would be needed to either play game images via the device or be able to transfer the images to real floppy disks...??

 

I really want the device anyways but it would be awesome if it did what I was after...

 

As always any help for a noob would be gratefully received....

 

FAQ's/Advice/Whatever is all good.... I have a good working knowledge of the ST but alas not of the Satandisk or its potential uses... I basically just wanna play games as best as I can. Many thanks!!

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Sorry to resurrect this old topic but I felt that a new topic was not necessary for this most simplest of questions...

 

I would like to know if there is a 'noob' guide for the Satandisk? If not then can I just ask a simple question...?

If I buy all the bits and pieces as per the Atari Fan Store for Satandisk then what would be needed to either play game images via the device or be able to transfer the images to real floppy disks...??

 

I really want the device anyways but it would be awesome if it did what I was after...

 

As always any help for a noob would be gratefully received....

 

FAQ's/Advice/Whatever is all good.... I have a good working knowledge of the ST but alas not of the Satandisk or its potential uses... I basically just wanna play games as best as I can. Many thanks!!

 

The SatanDisk works exactly as a hard disk drive. You would set up an SD card to be bootable and use it the same as you would any computer,

There is software that will let you launch ST and MSA images on the ST if they are are your hard disk (SatanDisk).

There are also many many games out there patched to run right from hard disk too.

I have a SatanDisk and it is a really nice device.

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Yes, Satandisk, Ultrasatan works exactly like hard disk ... Actually, better :) . Because is smaller, faster (access times are much faster), uses less space and power, less noise, etc.

But maybe biggest advantage is easy data transfer with some PC or MAC - via USB card reader.

It is hard disk considering usage - and is designed to be compatible (with ACSI, ICD protocols). So, will work with most of hard disk drivers - at least with newer ones.

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So the SD card is literally the HDD???

 

So for example could I put files directly from PC to SD to go into the Satandisk? I wouldn't have to open an HDD image file in say something STeem and do it that way?????

 

If yes then is there a 'image to floppy' solution/software package for ST that I could drop onto the HDD/Satandisk?? Is there a method to make st images workable on HDD/Satandisk generally??

 

So that I don't fall into the trap of being annoying with my generic-sounding questions does anyone know of an FAQ/manual etc that I could read up on this...?

 

Is there a place to go to get the software already mentioned by you guys???? Google is not my friend today.............

Edited by dudeydude
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So the SD card is literally the HDD???

 

So for example could I put files directly from PC to SD to go into the Satandisk? I wouldn't have to open an HDD image file in say something STeem and do it that way?????

 

If yes then is there a 'image to floppy' solution/software package for ST that I could drop onto the HDD/Satandisk?? Is there a method to make st images workable on HDD/Satandisk generally??

 

Yes, the SD card is your HDD. You can set it up to be compatible with Windows and TOS. So, yes you can easily move files and images to the SD card for use on the ST.

Some media readers do not like the partition, but I have found that the cheap USB card reader work for the most part.

 

There is software called "MSA" that can write MSA images to the floppy drive in your ST. You can place an MSA image on your SD. Place SD in the SatanDisk.

Boot the ST and use MSA to write the msa image to disk.

 

"Paranoid Little Man" wrote a program that will launch an ST/MSA from HDD with no need to write out the floppy. I'm sure he will point you to it.

Edited by Official Ninja
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