ATR Files to Real Disks?

[Tempest]

Is there a tool that allows someone to write ATR files to real disks? I know SIO2PC does a great job of loading ATR images, but that means always having my Atari hooked up to a PC somewhere. I'd like to just have a stack of floppy disks instead, like the old days. I do this with my Apple II as well, I guess I'm part of the 'Real Floppy' movement.

[Fletch]

I use ATR2DSK by Tom Hunt

atr2disk.atr

Edited August 18, 2016 by Fletch

[AtariGeezer]

Ape ProSystem

[+Larry]

Maybe I'm missing something, but no matter what you do, the atr files have to be accessible to the Atari. Getting rid of the header bytes is no problem, but to make the atr accessible to the atari, I'd think that an sio2sd would be the easiest, next to ape, etc. Isn't atr2dsk a PC utility that writes out disks on a PC?

Larry

[Tempest]

Isn't atr2dsk a PC utility that writes out disks on a PC?

 

 

Yes and that's exactly what I want to do. I want to turn an ATR file into a real disk that can be read by my Atari disk drive.

[tep392]

I don't have and SIO2PC device, so I wrote a small program to copy an ATR file from a flashcart to my 810 drive. It's not easy to use or setup for doing a bunch of disks. I just use if for the occasional ATR I want to put on a real disk. I could share it in a PM if you are interested in trying it. It's written for the Atarimax 8mbit carts.

[+Larry]

 

Yes and that's exactly what I want to do. I want to turn an ATR file into a real disk that can be read by my Atari disk drive.

 

But the key is "on a PC." AFAIK, really dicey or virtually impossible to write out a SD 90K disk on a PC.

 

Here are several Atari programs to write out a 90K, 130K, and 180K disks using an Atari drive. Wrote these years ago before I ever used SIO2PC, using a Black Box and Floppy Board to transfer files to/from the Atari. It's been years since I wrote these, so try at your own risk.

ATRdisk utility.zip

[Tempest]

I see what you're saying. I had to do something similar to write games out to my C64 (using a ZoomFloppy board). So does this program work with SIO2PC or do I need a special board to make it work?

 

Ideally if I can't use my PC drive (I do have a 360K floppy drive though) I'd like to send ATR files to my Atari using SIO2PC and then write them out to real disks using the Atari floppy. For that I have a XF551, not sure if a 810 or 1050 would be better though.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

 

you can do it on the PC with some older OS, also known as MS-DOS. I doubt that you still use it, but under MS-DOS (and not under Windows) you can re-program your FDC to operate like an A8 floppy. Thats how Hiassoft did it with MakeATR and Ataridsk:

http://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/

Do not try to fool Windows with DOSbox or similar programs, since this will not work; Hias told me that it is still not possible to re-program the FDC under Dosbox or similar programs.

 

On my MS-DOS PC (just an old 2Ghz PC) I use a 1.2MB HD Teac drive with Ataridsk and WriteATR and both programs work very good (and even though its a 1.2MB HD drive, the 1050 with Speedy can read the 130k and 180k disks). Note that Ataridsk does only 180k disks and transfers files from A8 to PC or vice versa, while WriteATR will write ATR images from the PC onto an A8 formatted disk (it also formats the disk in 130k or 180k, but it can only write and not read the disk)...

 

The problem with Ataridsk and WriteATR (and other similar programs) seems to be however, that they do not work on every 360k PC drive. I have tested more than 10 PC floppy drives (360k and 1.2MB) and only the floppy drives from Teac (both 1.2MB) did work successfully - Teac 55 GFR. Other drives did not format or did write only garbage...

 

For the A8 there exist several programs to create a) disk-images/disk-files from whole disks (best known is Diskcommunicator by Bob Puff, but there are many other and older programs), b) ATR or XFD images from whole disks or c) disks from ATR or XFD images. To create disks from images on the A8 however you must have the disk-image on an A8 diskette (e.g. a 90k or 130k ATR image must be available on a 180k A8 disk). Therefore you need a program that transfers the disk image (e.g. ATR, XFD, DCM, etc.) to the A8 diskette and most of the time this transfer program can also create the A8 disk, so quite often there is no need to transfer the disk image and then convert it on the A8 into a diskette...

 

Nevertheless, here are a few Image creators/converters for the A8...

 

Image_Conv_A8.zip

[Tempest]

Oh I still use dos. My disk making machine (a Pentium) is running 6.22 but I also have a 5150 running 5.0 that I can use in s pinch.

[+Larry]

They are just Basic programs that strip off the header bytes and write the remaining bytes to an Atari disk. But the ATR file must be somewhere that can be accessed by the Atari. So in my case, the ATR files were on a 720K floppy that were transferred by the Floppy Board and presumably written to the Black Box hard drive. It is a piece of cake to do this with SIO2PC, so you'll have to work around the issues to do it without.

 

-Larry

[flashjazzcat]

I should think the easiest way would be to mount the ATR using SIO2PC and RespeQt/APE and then run duplicate disk from DOS with the mounted image as the source drive and the real floppy as the destination. As far as the Atari is concerned, it is performing a raw copy from floppy to floppy.

[Gunstar]

FJC's way is the easiest if you have APE or RespeQt, but if you have an SIO2PC made by AtariMax, the maker of APE, or, if you have one of the old do-it-yourself dual SIO2PC/1050-2-PC adapters you can just use the PROSYSTEM app attached to APE and it is super easy to write ATR's back to floppies. VERY EASY.

 

I use it all the time to make real floppy disks. Prosystem does more than just make floppies out of ATR's, check it out! APE system is definitely worth the cost, it has so many more features than the free SIO2PC programs like AspeQt/RespeQt, Atari810 and other "free" (stripped down to the basics) programs. But even the free trial version of APE blows away the others, and includes Prosystem with it too, but you can only use one drive, which is all you need for the Prosystem to make floppies out of ATR's.

 

I've tried all the others, but they are all now once again deleted from my PC, because APE is just so much better.

Edited August 18, 2016 by Gunstar

[Tempest]

I'll try it with RespeQt and see how that works. This is a bit of a side project for me so it might be a bit before I can try it. I also eventually want to do something similar with my TI99 even though I have a CF7+. I don't know why I insist on real disks when I use flash carts instead of real carts. Odd double standard there.

 

Is the XF551 a good drive to use it should I try and get a 1050 with Happy installed?

[Fletch]

ATR2DSK is done on the Atari. On an emulator make a new disk image. Copy the .atr to the disk image. Load ATR.COM from the ATR2DSK.atr via SIO2PC.

 

Mount the disk image you created with the .atr you wish to make. Put a blank floppy in your drive and follow the instructions on the screen.

 

Its pretty straight forward.

[kogden]

To make real floppies I use a cheap homebuilt SIO2PC USB adapter in the same SIO chain as my Happy 1050. On the "PC" side for software I use SIO2OSX.

 

My method:

 

- I boot "Happy 256K Sector Copier" from virtual D1: in SIO2OSX

- Disable D1: virtual drive after boot and power up 1050 (real D1:) with blank floppy inserted

- Mount ATR image I want to copy as D2: in SIO2OSX

- Set source drive as D2: and destination as D1: in sector copier

- Do the copy

 

After that I have a real floppy. I've done this quite a bit and it works like a charm. This should work with most SIO2PC programs like RespeQT or APE. If you don't have a machine with expanded RAM, other sector copiers should work fine as well.

[kogden]

Is the XF551 a good drive to use it should I try and get a 1050 with Happy installed?

 

I use a Happy 1050 but an XF551 should be fine. Even a regular 1050 will work with SD and ED ATR images.... it's DD you need the Happy board for. Pretty sure the XF551 can do DD out of the box.

[Tempest]

 

I use a Happy 1050 but an XF551 should be fine. Even a regular 1050 will work with SD and ED ATR images.... it's DD you need the Happy board for. Pretty sure the XF551 can do DD out of the box.

 

Is there any reason to actually use DD? I don't think any Atari games used anything other than SD. Then again I suppose people may have made game compilations that use DD.

 

 

 

To make real floppies I use a cheap homebuilt SIO2PC USB adapter in the same SIO chain as my Happy 1050. On the "PC" side for software I use SIO2OSX.

 

My method:

 

- I boot "Happy 256K Sector Copier" from virtual D1: in SIO2OSX

- Disable D1: virtual drive after boot and power up 1050 (real D1:) with blank floppy inserted

- Mount ATR image I want to copy as D2: in SIO2OSX

- Set source drive as D2: and destination as D1: in sector copier

- Do the copy

 

After that I have a real floppy. I've done this quite a bit and it works like a charm. This should work with most SIO2PC programs like RespeQT or APE. If you don't have a machine with expanded RAM, other sector copiers should work fine as well.

 

So I don't even have to have the Atari on? All I need is an SIO2PC program (like AspeQT) and the disk drive?

[electronizer]

I have an SIO2SD and I use Disk Wizard II. I boot Disk Wizard II on the SIO2SD configured as drive 1 with an 810 configured as drive 2. Then, I select the sector copy option in Disk Wizard II, source D1, dest D2. Before I kick everything off, I reconfigure the SIO2SD to point to the ATR file I want to copy. Works like a charm! I've never used SIO2PC but I assume it can be configured similarly to SIO2SD to mimic any drive number and point to an ATR.

 

More info on Disk Wizard in this thread:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/174204-disk-wizard-iidiskwizii/

[kogden]

 

Is there any reason to actually use DD? I don't think any Atari games used anything other than SD. Then again I suppose people may have made game compilations that use DD.

 

So I don't even have to have the Atari on? All I need is an SIO2PC program (like AspeQT) and the disk drive?

 

I use DD images for throwing a bunch of stuff on one disk along with MyPicoDOS or something.

 

And yeah, you have to have the Atari on to run the sector copier. The PC just emulates the virtual drives. You are simply connecting the SIO2PC at the end of the existing SIO chain with your Atari and real floppy drive. In the setup I described the Atari is simply copying from the virtual drive to the real one. "Happy 256K Sector Copier" is just the software that I use on the Atari side for duplicating disks. You may want something different however if you have a 64K machine.

[Kr0tki]

Is there any reason to actually use DD? I don't think any Atari games used anything other than SD.

Some games in Poland and Germany were published in ED, because the 810 drive was non-available over here and the 1050 was the least common denominator.

[ijor]

Is the XF551 a good drive to use it should I try and get a 1050 with Happy installed?

You can use a XF551, but the Happy is way much faster for writing. Definitely worth to get a Happy (or other drive that supports buffered fast writes) if you are going to write many images.

 

So I don't even have to have the Atari on? All I need is an SIO2PC program (like AspeQT) and the disk drive?

With a SIO2PC interface you do need the Atari. It doesn't talk directly to the drive.

 

But there is the 10502PC cable adapter, or the AtariMax one. This works by the PC emulating an Atari computer in this case (instead of an Atari drive). Definitely faster than using a SIO2PC method, because the PC writes directly to the drive. The whole reading of the image into the Atari computer is avoided.

 

Depending on the adapter you still need the Atari connected and turned on, but only for the purposing of providing 5V power to the cable adapter.

 

[Probabilitydragon]

I tried copying ATR’s to floppies mounting them on my AVGCART, then using DOS 2.5 to duplicate the disk on my 1050.

 

I managed to make a copy of the DOS atr itself with J / duplicate. 
 

but no luck with ZORK I revision 88 atr’s. Wondering what might be the problem ? copy protection?

[+Allan]

12 minutes ago, Probabilitydragon said:

I tried copying ATR’s to floppies mounting them on my AVGCART, then using DOS 2.5 to duplicate the disk on my 1050.

 

I managed to make a copy of the DOS atr itself with J / duplicate. 
 

but no luck with ZORK I revision 88 atr’s. Wondering what might be the problem ? copy protection?

If it's an original disk than the copy-protection is not letting you copy it. But even if you have a bootleg copy you may not be able to copy it if was done with a Happy modified drive. You would need a drive with a Happy board in it to copy it. Most commercial disks have already been copied anyways (definitely all the Infocom disks) so don't bother with the Zork disks. There still are a lot of obscure commercial titles that have not been un-achived though.

[+DrVenkman]

I don't think the Infocom disks are copy-protected though, are they? I imaged my original ZORK I disk from BITD to an ATR that works just fine on my Atari machines. I've never tried writing out that ATR to a real floppy again, but if the ATR boots up when used with real hardware, a physical copy should work.