Got My SIO2SD Today! First Impressions

[bbking67]

I bought the SIO2SD today (chose that over the SIDE ultimately). Just got it and it looks great! Here are my first impressions:

 

- It's bigger than I expected. I thought it would be half the size.

- The quality of the construction is really good. Pictures do it no justice

- Shipping was very fast (10 days from Poland to Canada and no duty fees!)

- Packaging was fine

- The unit was supposed to come with a 2GB SD card, but I got an 8GB Sandisk Ultra Class 10! Very nice!

 

I'm pumped and I can't wait to try it.

 

Here's my phone cam unboxing. Okay it's a recreation of the real unboxing I did 5 minutes earlier.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVhF27sB-Os&feature=youtu.be

 

Can't wait to try it!

[Marius]

Love your other movie with a pretty cool groove, and a very nice shirt!

 

 

You know how to rock and how to advertise the bèst computer brand in the world

[bbking67]

Hey Atari got me into music in the first place!

 

Back in 1989 after I sold all my ST gear (I bought a Fender guitar amp with the money raised from the sale), I reverted to my Atari 130XE as my main computer. At that point I had a two monitor setup: a Commodore monitor and an amber composite monitor I used with the XEP80. I used this setup for BBSing and other stuff. I still had an MIO but no hard drive.

 

So in my city, someone decided to set up a BBS for musicians. It was great... lots of folks interested in music chatting on a BBS. It was quite Atari-centric just because many musicians owned ST's due to the built-in MIDI.

 

Anyway, eventually I saw an ad for a vocalist in a blues band... I had been playing guitar on and off in bands up to then (nothing serious, and played a total of two paying gigs ever up to then). So I tried out for the band and got the spot. A couple of the guys were heavily into Ataris, and they were using Notator on the ST to provide charts for the horn players. Eventually we got rid of the horn players, recruited a different bass player (who was an Atari 8-bitter)

 

So eventually we went on to record a little bit and were a popular local band. We won a talent competition and got to open for Three Dog Night and that opened a lot of doors for other stuff we did after that.

 

I gave the drummer (who is in the video) an Atari 1200XL with a Percom drive... don't know whatever happened to that setup.

 

Anyhow, the current band is kind of derived from that old band... just lots of changes over the years (guys moving away, other projects, etc.)

 

Here's the thing: the retro guitar, effects and tube amp hobby is just as addictive as retro-computing. Maybe moreso.

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

You absolutely need this!

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

[bbking67]

What are you referring to? The MIDI stuff?

 

My 1965 guitar and 1965 amp don't do MIDI...

[Mathy]

Hello bbking67

 

That's what I was referring to. Hence the "#midi" in the link.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

[Nebulon]

So, how well does the SIO2SD interface work?

 

Is it easy to send data from a PC to the Atari and run it (without needing a disk drive)?

 

For example, what would be the process for getting a program through the interface from the PC to an Atari 800XL and then run it?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Marius]

I'm very satisfied with this device. It's worth every penny!

 

It's easy:

You download a file with .ATR extension or .XEX extension.

With PC or Mac you put this on your SD card in the right folder

You stick the SD card in the interface.

 

With the buttons you walk through the files, and you press the enter key to put this on D1: (That is the drive number that will boot when you switch on the atari). And there you go. Works great!

 

Only downside is that the documentation needs to be done much better, that's the only thing I can think of. Should have bought this years ago. Nice little thingy.

[Rybags]

SIO2SD works best in conjunction with a SIO2PC or other means of easily getting data from the PC to Atari.

 

I did SD card swapping for a while, you soon get real sick of it. They were never intended to be used in that way either, the cards/slots aren't intended for a lot of insert/remove cycles.

[flashjazzcat]

Completely agree. SIO2PC has become far more useful to me in recent years. My two SIO2SDs have SIO2PC built-in, but in truth the SIO2PC is the only part I use in both. It may be well over a year since I actually used the SIO2SD part of either. SIO2SD is a wonderful peripheral, but I think in my case the profusion of hard disks and the readily available ways of running ATRs and XEXs direct from removable FAT media accessible five times faster than with SIO2SD really allowed those serial gadgets to start collecting dust. I never could quite get away with the button-fiddling, either.

 

SIO2PC, meanwhile, remains invaluable (particularly for development) despite its relative slowness.

[flashjazzcat]

Correction to the above: that should probably be at least two times the speed of SIO2SD rather than five (when using Ultimate/SIDE2), depending on the Pokey divisor in use, and the density of the ATRs. IIRC, Ultimate's ATR read speeds are typically just under half that of hard disk partitions of the corresponding density.

Edited February 8, 2014 by flashjazzcat

[bbking67]

So far I'm really digging the SIO2SD... I guess I like the stand-alone nature of it. For me it was between the SIDE and the SIO2SD. I kinda wish the SIO2SD had a real time clock, because with my 800xl the Rtime8 and SDX look ridiculous. Sadly I've lost the PBI extender that let me use the MIO with a 130XE.

 

There are apparently some internal mods (the the Atari) that can be done to improve the speed of SIO2SD.