Anyone use the 5.25" IB Drive?

[Tanrunomad]

It's an external floppy drive. It's supposed to run 5.25" PC software. Anyone use one before? How compatible are they?

Edited June 21, 2012 by Tanrunomad

[+DarkLord]

I think most people used those with emulators. For example, the 8bit emulator and PC emulating software.

[+wood_jl]

I don't think that would read an 8-bit [Atari] disk.

 

 

It was just for reading IBM 360K disks with the PC emulators as DarkLord said. The ST Software emulator was called PC-Ditto and was horribly slow. The internal hardware emulator was expensive and featured a complicated, involved installation. There really isn't much use for a 5.25" drive nowdays. The ST isn't going to run PC software natively.

[TwiliteZoner]

I had a 5.25 floppy drive albeit a different one than the IB. It sure was nice to have high density 1.2 meg floppies on the ST. Whats funny is to see the 5.25 disks I have with Macintosh software on them.

 

PC Ditto worked great. It let you go on a 2 week vacation while waiting for Lotus 123 to load.

Edited June 21, 2012 by TwiliteZoner

[+rdemming]

Some people used 80 track (720KB) 5.25" floppy's for storing ST software because at that time the disks were cheaper than 3.5" disks. Especially those who were collecting hundreds of cracked games.

 

Robert

[moulinaie]

I don't think that would read an 8-bit [Atari] disk.

 

 

It was just for reading IBM 360K disks with the PC emulators as DarkLord said. The ST Software emulator was called PC-Ditto and was horribly slow. The internal hardware emulator was expensive and featured a complicated, involved installation.

 

There was one solution with no installation and fast: the SuperCharger! It was an external device on the ACSI port with up to 1MB Ram and a fast NecV30 processor.

More informations on my page for example:

(français) http://gtello.pagesperso-orange.fr/supch_f.htm

(english) http://gtello.pagesperso-orange.fr/supch_e.htm

 

I used a Cumana 5"1/4 drive with a 40/80 tracks switch.

As it has been said, the 40 tracks (360k) were for PC software and 80 tracks (720k) for cheap backup of some important files.

 

Guillaume.

[+DarkLord]

I don't think that would read an 8-bit [Atari] disk.

 

You are correct. After doing a little (google) research, what I was actually prying up

from the misty depths of my long decaying Atari related memory was this:

 

http://www.emulators.com/xformer.htm

 

"In 1988 we designed a special cable to allow ST Xformer users to connect Atari 8-bit disk drives to their Atari ST computers. The same cable, with a minor modification can also be used on your PC for use with PC Xformer. Over the past 11 years thousands of Atari users have built the Xformer cable based on our design described here.

 

The cable, pictured here, plugs on one end into an Atari 8-bit disk drive such as an 810, 1050, Rana, Indus GT, or XF551, and on the other end plugs into your ST's or PC's printer port. Other Atari SIO devices, such as the color plotter and dot matrix printer are also supported, so go dig them up out of your closets!"

 

So what I was thinking about was the 8bit native 5.25 drives working with the ST...

[ParanoidLittleMan]

It's an external floppy drive. It's supposed to run 5.25" PC software. Anyone use one before? How compatible are they?

 

Well, you can use it to run PC SW on Atari - if have some emulator. But it needs some special settings considering steprate of floppy - usually must set to 12mS.

Simpler is to copy PC SW on 3.5 floppies, I think.

Additional danger is that 5.25 drives have larger load of control lines, what may destroy soundchip in ST(E). Yes, the soundchip, since it's parallel port is used for floppy drive and side selection. Allowed load it only 1mA, what is good for 3.5 drives, but not 5.25 ones.

 

And I don't see why someone should do it in 2012 ... I remember that bothered with this when PC-Ditto came out. After some struggling 5.25 drive worked with ST, but it required above mentioned measures, including adding amplifiers for floppy control lines.

Edited June 22, 2012 by ParanoidLittleMan

[AtariGeezer]

Besides PC-Ditto, there was a hardware upgrade (AT-Speed or something like that) that included a 286/386 CPU and ran alot faster. I have one installed in a 1040 and used an external 5 1/4 drive for PC progs...

 

Jay

[Jeffrey Worley]

I just bought an I.B. Drive, I am going to refurbish it and then put it up for sale.  Also an Indus GT100, an SF314, and an XF551.

 

Best,

 

Jeff

[+evg2000]

1 hour ago, Jeffrey Worley said:

I just bought an I.B. Drive, I am going to refurbish it and then put it up for sale.  Also an Indus GT100, an SF314, and an XF551.

 

Best,

 

Jeff

I have one that I've had for years, never even plugged it in!

[ijor]

On 6/21/2012 at 5:54 PM, DarkLord said:

I think most people used those with emulators. For example, the 8bit emulator and PC emulating software.

I know this is a very old post, so just for the record ...

 

You do can access Atari 8-bit disks with some limitations. The two main ones are that most 8-bit disks are single density, and the ST FDC is hardwired to double density. The second one is that many 8-bit disks are "flippy", and some PC drives can't access the flippy side at all.

 

The density issue can be solved with a custom controller like the Discovery Cartridge. Back at the day I wrote software exactly for that purpose. It still had the issue with flippies because this depends on the drive mechanism itself, not on the controller.