Apps for reading Atari ST Floppy Disks

[RUN415]

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Apps for reading Atari ST Floppy Disks - April 2015

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A big thank you to the authors who devoted their time to create these apps and then provide for them free.

Listed here in no particular order...

= ST Recover =

Will read a floppy and then output the contents as a .ST image.

Coloured grid shows progress and dodgy/bad sectors.

Also handy is the surface scan which shows a 'disk like' graphic of the tracks.

https://strecover.codeplex.com/

= FLOIMG =

Will read a floppy and then output the contents to an image file (.st .msa .dsk .stt)

Can also import an image and write it to floppy.

Quick, handy and pretty much 'a must have'.

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

= SAMDisk =

Provides low level diagnostics via DOS.

No GUI - Runs from a command prompt.

Uses/needs the 'Fdrawcmd.sys' mentioned below.

http://simonowen.com/samdisk/

= Disk Test Pro =

Not specifically designed for ST disks but handy for diagnostics.

Snazzy little GUI...even has a clock! (Looks like a MP3 player!)

Colour coded sector grid denotes progress of user variable scan/repair/format/edit.

Cool little app - the only downside being that it won't play MP3's - lolzs

http://xistemas.home.sapo.pt/DisktestPRO.html

= OMNIFLOP =

Omniflop comes with it's own floppy driver (optional install) which adds functionality.

(Instructions are provided to install the floppy driver which is pretty straightforward.)

Program will read, write, format and diagnose disks with basic functionality.

You'll understand where the 'OMNI' comes from when you see the comprehensive list of image formats it can write to.

Through a free licensing (reporting) system you'll see they've really done their homework on obscure disk image formats.

http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm

= MSA Converter =

This is a handy little app for viewing .ST and .MSA images once you've made them.

You can save/extract a single file (or all of the files) easily from the image.

As the name suggests, you can convert MSA to ST (or ST to MSA) and also check clusters and make .zip archives.

http://msaconverter.free.fr/index-uk.html

= 'Fdrawcmd.sys' =

Simon Owens invaluable file which replaces the windows floppy driver.

http://simonowen.com/fdrawcmd/

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Important Note:

The 1.44 HD floppies have TWO SQUARE HOLES in each corner.

One is the WRITE PROTECT slider.

The second one, if open, enables the 1.44 format - so it MUST BE COVERED with a bit of tape...

...which reverts the disk back to the 720k format which the Atari probably wrote in.

(If this is NOT done the above apps will report a neverending series of disk errors.)

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