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Got my very first atari 520st no floppy. Does my screen look normal?


hobbyhands

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Hello,

I am getting into retro computers and never owned an Atari st when I was a teen.  I owned a c64, and amiga. I never had the cash as a teen to get an Atari 520st.

 

So I purchased one off ebay last week. It turns on, I get a screen. And the mouse moves.  So now for the noob questions?

 

Do I need an operating system? Or is what I see the built in TOS. Obviously there is no floppy drive icons as I don't have a floppy drive. But should I at least be seeing a trash can icon?

 

I am still trying to source a floppy drive. Or some kind of third party hard drive hook up on the back.

 

Thanks.

 

P.S. I have taken pictures of what I see.

 

 

20191112_120822.jpg

20191112_120835.jpg

20191112_120856.jpg

Edited by hobbyhands
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The OS is what you see there with the green background. What you see is GEM. The gui for TOS.

 

I don't think the trashcan is visible if you don't have a disc drive attach. HDD or floppy drive. You can't throw anything in it anyway.

 

Atari STfm or a STf has built in drive. Or STe for that matter. Good luck finding a cheap floppy drive for it. Maybe go for a Gotek and cable instead?

Edited by snarkdluG
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Yes, this is normal. There's no trash can because if you don't have a disk drive, you can't delete anything!

 

Not sure how much external ST floppy drives go for these days offhand, most of the ones I see on eBay seem to be internal ones. As others have said, your best bet may be to go for a more modern solution such as a Gotek. You'll need something though, as the ST can't really do anything at all without a disk drive! :)

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IIRC from my experience from a couple of years ago, it's going to be difficult to do the Gotek thing with a base 520ST. It's possible, it's just harder. I can't remember all the issues I had but I think you first need to get an external drive that has the right header and then install the Gotek in that. I don't think there's really an even somewhat easy way to connect one directly to the 520ST. I personally had a really hard time even finding the right drive; a lot of them have weird 14 pin headers that won't work without making your own cable. (I had decided to do that but ultimately sold my ST before trying.)

 

Your best short-term bet is probably to buy a working external drive of any kind, along with a bunch of real floppies, and just play with that. There are ways to write ST floppies from Windows too, although IIRC there are also caveats to that (like it has to be a real Windows internal floppy drive, not a USB drive).

 

I know you already have your 520 but the 1040 is just a lot easier to use nowadays, since the 1040 has an internal drive that you can easily plug a Gotek into.

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Yeah, the issue with writing floppies from Windows relates to the fact that a lot of ST disks are not quite normal 720K format. You need a PC with a proper internal floppy drive controller to be able to write images to those; external USB drives won't work for some reason, presumably because the PC doesn't have quite as much control over what they do.

 

If you do have raw ST files and/or images that are smaller than 720K, mind, you can write those with an external USB drive no problem.

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A real floppy is an easy solution and may be necessary for almost anything you try.

 

Once you have a floppy, then you can install drivers for a Hard Drive.  Once you have that you can use this program to load Floppy images using your Atari from the hard drive.

http://www.8bitchip.info/atari/imgrun.php

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, SoulBuster said:

A real floppy is an easy solution and may be necessary for almost anything you try.

 

Once you have a floppy, then you can install drivers for a Hard Drive.  Once you have that you can use this program to load Floppy images using your Atari from the hard drive.

http://www.8bitchip.info/atari/imgrun.php

 

Actually, it is possible to install hard disk driver without floppy drive or Gotek, HxC . Using USB card reader you can write short image file to SD card (or CF card in case of IDE driver) and it will autoboot on Atari, then can perform partitioning and driver install from :

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

 

 

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7 hours ago, spacecadet said:

IIRC from my experience from a couple of years ago, it's going to be difficult to do the Gotek thing with a base 520ST. It's possible, it's just harder. I can't remember all the issues I had but I think you first need to get an external drive that has the right header and then install the Gotek in that. I don't think there's really an even somewhat easy way to connect one directly to the 520ST. I personally had a really hard time even finding the right drive; a lot of them have weird 14 pin headers that won't work without making your own cable. (I had decided to do that but ultimately sold my ST before trying.)

 

Your best short-term bet is probably to buy a working external drive of any kind, along with a bunch of real floppies, and just play with that. There are ways to write ST floppies from Windows too, although IIRC there are also caveats to that (like it has to be a real Windows internal floppy drive, not a USB drive).

 

I know you already have your 520 but the 1040 is just a lot easier to use nowadays, since the 1040 has an internal drive that you can easily plug a Gotek into.

 

I agree. Someone posted a similar question within that past week or so and I told them they would need an external floppy drive as well, in order to setup a Gotek, but it looks like that isn't necessarily true, even though I still think that is your best bet.

 

You can read more here if you wish to:

 

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/297930-atari-external-gotek-floppy-cable/

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1 hour ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Actually, it is possible to install hard disk driver without floppy drive or Gotek, HxC . Using USB card reader you can write short image file to SD card (or CF card in case of IDE driver) and it will autoboot on Atari, then can perform partitioning and driver install from :

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

Exactly how do you connect that card reader to this Atari ST?  Is it easier than attaching a real floppy?

 

Which is why I said "A real floppy is an easy solution and may be necessary for almost anything you try."

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4 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

There are well known and popular devices like UltraSatan, Satandisk .

Yeah, I want to get one of those for my ST. I hate the name though. I mean, why give something a name that you know will be inflammatory to a large portion of the population if you don't need to. I mean, what purpose does it serve?!

 

Here's my new Atari device. You guys are gonna love it. I call it, The Baby Raper!!!

 

Just seems childish and stupid.

 

Is there some other meaning behind the name that I'm missing?

 

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Well the price was right, and it works.   I am not in a rush to get it working.  I will take my time, and I'm sure a floppy drive will pop up eventually.  Thank all I appreciate it.

 

What about this?  Would I need a floppy drive to get this going?

Edited by hobbyhands
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8 hours ago, bfollowell said:

Yeah, I want to get one of those for my ST. I hate the name though. I mean, why give something a name that you know will be inflammatory to a large portion of the population if you don't need to. I mean, what purpose does it serve?!

Here's my new Atari device. You guys are gonna love it. I call it, The Baby Raper!!!

Just seems childish and stupid.

Is there some other meaning behind the name that I'm missing?

 

I think that some people just think that it's cool to use words like devil, satan ... Like it has 'satanic' power. 

In any case, I told to Jookie (the designer and namer) that there were some problems with that name (Satandisk), and some sites even filtered it out. Similar was with game Virus. I even needed to change it's name on my site to V*rus to avoid filtering, or blocking page on some places.

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15 hours ago, bfollowell said:

Yeah, I want to get one of those for my ST. I hate the name though. I mean, why give something a name that you know will be inflammatory to a large portion of the population if you don't need to. I mean, what purpose does it serve?!

 

Here's my new Atari device. You guys are gonna love it. I call it, The Baby Raper!!!

 

Just seems childish and stupid.

 

Is there some other meaning behind the name that I'm missing?

 

You can change the name of the device in it's configuration to remove that name, but it is printed on the PCB.  I do not own one and will not just because of the name.

There is an alternative.  The SCSI2SD device made by Michael McMaster.  http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=SCSI2SD

I recently installed two of them along side of 2 Mega File 44s.  You can read about it here.

They are installed and work great.

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Sorry, but SCSI2SD is not real alternative to 'Satans'. Atari ST, STE have ACSI port and no SCSI port. So, you can not attach there that SCSI2SD device.

I really don't get this nitpicking because of name. Fact is that UltraSatan is in latest years most popular mass storage adapter for Atari ST, STE. And works fine with TT too.

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15 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

I really don't get this nitpicking because of name. Fact is that UltraSatan is in latest years most popular mass storage adapter for Atari ST, STE. And works fine with TT too.

I agree. I'm religious, but I'm quite that extreme about things. Anyway, I figure I didn't name the device, so I'm not overly worried about it. Yes, it's printed on the circuit board, but that will be in a case and I'll never see it. The name isn't printed on the case anywhere and, like you said, I can change the device name. I plan on buying one and doing that.

 

To me, nitpicking over this and boycotting a product for this reason is like someone saying, "I'm never gonna eat Devil's Food Cake because it has Devil in the name" or "I don't eat devilled eggs because I'm a good Christian"

 

To each his own. I don't like the name, but I'm not going to avoid the product because of it. I certainly respect anyone that makes that decision though, even if I don't personally take it that far.

Edited by bfollowell
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6 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Sorry, but SCSI2SD is not real alternative to 'Satans'. Atari ST, STE have ACSI port and no SCSI port. So, you can not attach there that SCSI2SD device.

I really don't get this nitpicking because of name. Fact is that UltraSatan is in latest years most popular mass storage adapter for Atari ST, STE. And works fine with TT too.

You are correct, you will need an AdSCSI, Link, Link97, Link II or some other ASCI to SCSI interface it you are not attaching it to a Falcon or TT, like this one here.  The fact is,  it IS a viable alternative to avoid that name.  The Mega File 44's I have updated have the ACSI to SCSI interface, one is Atari's and the other is an AdSCSI.

I do not require you to understand why I do not want that name in my house.

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Well, if someone has too much money and wants to overcomplicate things, will go that ACSI-SCSI + SCSI-SD adapter train.

And: it is just name. Designer spent lot of time with it, and did it for free. So, it was for people benefit. Nothing bad in that.

Much worse is when really bad people hides behind fake good actions, projects. And World is full of it nowadays. Like some charity organizations, which advertise self how helping poor people by organizing collecting of help. And then take large %-age of it for their 'hard work', and poor people get some 10-20% of it. 

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3 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Well, if someone has too much money and wants to overcomplicate things, will go that ACSI-SCSI + SCSI-SD adapter train.

And: it is just name. Designer spent lot of time with it, and did it for free. So, it was for people benefit. Nothing bad in that.

Much worse is when really bad people hides behind fake good actions, projects. And World is full of it nowadays. Like some charity organizations, which advertise self how helping poor people by organizing collecting of help. And then take large %-age of it for their 'hard work', and poor people get some 10-20% of it. 

You are not required to understand or like what one does for them to enjoy their system.

It is no more complicated of a train of adapters than plugging in Mega File 44.  ASCI -> Atari SCSI Board -> HD along with SCSI2SD as a second HD.  Same train of adapters.  Not complicated at all.

It is not just a name!  But I will not get into the religious connotations as this is not the forum for that.  If you would like to discuss it in a religious forum, pick one.  I'll join you there.

As far as The designer, fake goods and charity organizations.  I have no idea what your point is there.

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  • 2 weeks later...

If you get an external drive make sure you get a SF314 which is 720k. Once you get it you could copy some ST software to 720k disks on a PC even with USB drive. Format disk and copy files over. But you won’t be able to write ST or MSA images without a legacy Floppy drive on older PC.

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