What to do with a somewhat busted SF314 external drive?

[6BQ5]

I picked up a SF314 drive from eBay sold as-is, untested. The drive can format disks, write to them, and read from them. However, a floppy written to on that drive is unreadable on the internal floppy drive of my 1040 STe. I have a feeling the heads must be misaligned somehow.

 

What can I do to get something functional from this and have some fun along the way?

 

Could I replace the drive mechanism with a 1.44MB drive from eBay? Or, if I can find one, a 720kB floppy drive? eBay has some drives available.

 

Could I replace the mechanism with a solid state flash memory based emulator? Maybe there is something solid state based that would give me a floppy disk that is not 720kB but several MB or GB?

 

Your ideas are welcome!

[Tillek]

The real question is... are you sure the 314 is the one that might be misaligned? Not the internal?

[6BQ5]

The real question is... are you sure the 314 is the one that might be misaligned? Not the internal?

 

I've formatted 720k floppies on my Win 10 PC and the internal STe drive reads/writes them just fine. Likewise, my Win 10 PC can read/write floppies I've formatted on my STe. That's how I would move files between from my Win 10 PC to my STe.

 

I also have another STe machine with a working internal drive. Disks can be read/written between the two systems.

 

You bring up a good point. It's important to check and double check what your "working good" is when it comes to vintage hardware.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

I picked up a SF314 drive from eBay sold as-is, untested. The drive can format disks, write to them, and read from them. However, a floppy written to on that drive is unreadable on the internal floppy drive of my 1040 STe. I have a feeling the heads must be misaligned somehow.

 

What can I do to get something functional from this and have some fun along the way?

 

Could I replace the drive mechanism with a 1.44MB drive from eBay? Or, if I can find one, a 720kB floppy drive? eBay has some drives available.

 

Could I replace the mechanism with a solid state flash memory based emulator? Maybe there is something solid state based that would give me a floppy disk that is not 720kB but several MB or GB?

 

Your ideas are welcome!

Yes, most likely it is head misalign. And no wonder, considering age. I don't think that hunting some 720 KB drive is good idea. It is lottery now. + not all is Atari compatible, not straight compatible. You can attach and use 1.44 MB PC floppy drive, but will need little mod - talking not about mod for 1.44 MB (HD) mode, but need to swap lines 10 and 12. And that may be not enough for good work - there are differences in WP signal handling too. Atari used (as many times) not standard solution for it.

http://atari.8bitchip.info/flomodam.html

Principle is same for all PC floppy drives attached to Atari ST, including 720 KB drives.

 

About "floppy disk" of several MB, GB:

First need to know how all it works, and what methods SW use for accessing data on floppy disks:

Normal way of access is via TOS functions - file access by filename, path. So, if it is path starting with "A:" or "B:" there will be access to physical floppy drive. Or today may be to some HW floppy emulator. Which could in theory operate with very large floppy sizes, but there are limitations in floppy access protocol, so in reality you can not access more than couple MB size disk. And used FAT12 filesystem self has limitation of: 2 power 12 KB = 4 MB . And of course, it depends from firmware of HW floppy emulators - does it support such extra size formats.

 

But it is possible to have Virtual Floppy sizes up to 1 GB - and really no sense to even think of something bigger in case of Atari and TOS - with my improved TOS versions.

Part of whole idea and work was to make it possible on new level, much better than Floppy Image Runner: http://atari.8bitchip.info/imgrun.php

Instead memory, data is accessed on attached hard disk, today rather some Flash card via adapter. But to make it work in all cases, code must be in TOS ROM. Then, for best compatibility, it should not use more RAM than regular floppy usage. And it is solved with improved FAT16 in TOS, which does not need anymore extra disk buffers like TOS type BigGEM partitions. In short, you can have virtual floppy disks of really huge size, which act very much as regular floppy disks - for usual SW, what accessing disk via TOS functions.

So, can for instance put all files from some multi disk SW in 1 image. Then usage will be easier - because 2 reasons: no disk swaps needed. Actually, no floppy disks needed anymore, all is on Flash card. Of course, it may be simpler to run that SW directly from hard disk, partition C or higher, but there is SW what runs only from A:

 

And it leads us to SW what works not from Virtual Floppy - mostly games, which accessing floppy not via TOS, but with code what accessing directly floppy controller chip. They will work only from regular floppy drive or HW floppy emulator. Well, unless code is changed - I say it because code is already changed in many of them - in hard disk adaptations. Basically all quality games are already adapted for hard disk run. It is with some extra RAM usage, but I have solution to make them work even with 512 KB machines - possible with mentioned disk access code in TOS ROM.

 

I don't use floppy drives normally with my Ataris in last years. It is too much hassle and unreliability. Replaced already drives 2-4x in them. And disks self are worse and worse every day. We are really at end of their usability. And nobody manufactures them anymore. There is people who bought some specialized HW for copy protected SW - like KryoFlux or SCP, there are images available online. But what some 5 years from now ? Will be very hard to find floppy disk in good shape.

Additionally, using cracks offers some extra options - like trainers, selecting start level, and even fixed errors. Surely, there are some bad, untested ones around, but there are some originals which are not tested (well), for instance. Nothing is perfect. We could have already good Atari ST SW database, what I proposed years ago, but nobody at AF stuff supported idea. So far, I see this as only 'bad games' list available: http://forum.8bitchip.info/preservation-error-reports/'bad'-games-list/

[hunter44102]

 

Search for Gotek Atari st. You should be able to install a Gotek instead of the 3.5 mechanism and use a flash drive to simulate floppies.

[tjlazer]

I put a Gotek into my SF 354 case. Below is another drive I replaced the mech and trimmed the front of the case to make it fit. A Chinon FZ354 drive.

Edited April 13, 2019 by tjlazer

[6BQ5]

And that Gotek works as Drive B: in your system in concert with your internal Drive A:?

 

If yes then I may try following in your footsteps!

[tjlazer]

And that Gotek works as Drive B: in your system in concert with your internal Drive A:?

 

If yes then I may try following in your footsteps!

Yes it will work as drive B: but the problem is most games will not boot from it. I use this as drive A: on my 520ST.