Win7-10 transfered to Floppy.

[MoonJammer]

 I would like to know if it's possible to put Atari software from a win(7-10) machine computer on to a floppy 5.1/4 floppy to use on a Atari 8 bit.  I have a working xe130 with two floppy drives. Would like to expand the floppy library I have.  Like a dummy I discarded most of my library with the advant of Windows computers.  I did have the wisdom to keep some floppys like dos 2.5 as well as a few games on floppys.  Plus I have blank floppys that I could use.  I never thought I would have a renewed interest in I did keep.  Currently typing in typo II.  To use with Antic listings programs.  Rather time consuming. Any help with this would be just great.  Thanks. 

[erichenneke]

57 minutes ago, MoonJammer said:

 I would like to know if it's possible to put Atari software from a win(7-10) machine computer on to a floppy 5.1/4 floppy to use on a Atari 8 bit.  I have a working xe130 with two floppy drives. Would like to expand the floppy library I have.  Like a dummy I discarded most of my library with the advant of Windows computers.  I did have the wisdom to keep some floppys like dos 2.5 as well as a few games on floppys.  Plus I have blank floppys that I could use.  I never thought I would have a renewed interest in I did keep.  Currently typing in typo II.  To use with Antic listings programs.  Rather time consuming. Any help with this would be just great.  Thanks. 

Do you have a sio2pc device, or some kind of SD or compact flash memory device for the 8bit?   If so you can transfer all your atr images to become real disks, or move xex and basic files,  etc., to real disks via such a device. 

 

Assuming that is what you are interesting in doing,  right? 

 

-Eric

 

[RodLightning]

You might try building a SIO2PC over USB cable.  A minor obstacle there is making the physical connection to the Atari SIO port.  If you are comfortable splicing or soldering wires together, it's not too difficult to put something together cheaply using a FTDI based breakout board or a cable.

Building your on cable requires either cutting a real Atari SIO cable or buying a SIO end connector (more expensive).

 

Read this thread for more info: 

You can spend more on ready made solutions like 10502PC Sio2PC USB REV2 by Lotharek:  https://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=157

or alternatively the APE interface by Atarimax:  https://www.atarimax.com/sio2pc/documentation/

 

There are different ways to achieve what you are wanting to do, most will involve attaching modern hardware to the Atari SIO chain.

For instance RespeQT software emulates a real Atari floppy drive.  https://atariage.com/forums/forum/184-respeqt-sio2pc-software/

 

When connected via SIO2PC over usb, a PC acts as one of your floppy drives and can be copied to and from, as if it were a real disk drive.  ATR image files can be mounted and ejected in software.  With the proper setup, real floppy drives can be eliminated altogether, unless you prefer using real disks for nostalgia.  Hopefully some of the above links will be enough to get you started.  There are yet others with a similar approach.

 

Edited March 28, 2020 by RodLightning

[Mclaneinc]

Just to be sure, what you want to do is transfer old digital ATR's on to real floppies?

[Voxel]

Wow! I was doing the opposite.  You'll hook up your disk drive to your 8-bit. Then add a SIO2SD at the end of the daisy chain. You'll configure your drive as D1 and your SIO2SD as D2 for example. Your Drive will have the blank formatted disk and your SIO2SD your ATR image.  Depending on the type of disk you'll either copy from DOS, or use a disk copier.  Good luck!

[_The Doctor__]

or with APE connect the sio2pc with the windows box and the disk drive and write directly to the drive cutting your time to create a disk down greatly...

Edited March 28, 2020 by _The Doctor__

[SenorRossie]

11 hours ago, RodLightning said:

You might try building a SIO2PC over USB cable.  A minor obstacle there is making the physical connection to the Atari SIO port.  If you are comfortable splicing or soldering wires together, it's not too difficult to put something together cheaply using a FTDI based breakout board or a cable.

Building your on cable requires either cutting a real Atari SIO cable or buying a SIO end connector (more expensive).

I keep reading that you _need_ to cut a SIO cable. As these cables are not readily available anymore and most users don't have a stash of working cables, may I suggest a different approach? 

If you get a solid metal (copper) wire that is pretty stiff and cut four or five lengths of say 2cm from it. Insert them into the SIO cable at the lines you need and make sure there is enough length to connect an alligator-clip wire. The other end of the alligator clip wire goes to the male end of a dupont wire, which connects to an FTDI USB board or something similar. No need to harm a SIO cable in te process... Zoom in for details, this was used with the SIO2Arduino build below:

 

Sorry for the interruption, back to the topic.

 

I have used the SIO2PC USB from lotharek.pl for archiving, as well as homebrew things like SIO2PI. All work great for regular dumps (unprotected disks). I was unable, at the time, to copy the protected disks, but a lot has changed since (newer versions of respeqt for one) so ymmv. 

[RodLightning]

9 minutes ago, SenorRossie said:

I keep reading that you _need_ to cut a SIO cable. As these cables are not readily available anymore and most users don't have a stash of working cables, may I suggest a different approach? 

If you get a solid metal (copper) wire that is pretty stiff and cut four or five lengths of say 2cm from it. Insert them into the SIO cable at the lines you need and make sure there is enough length to connect an alligator-clip wire. The other end of the alligator clip wire goes to the male end of a dupont wire, which connects to an FTDI USB board or something similar. No need to harm a SIO cable in te process...

 

I actually did do something similar.  I enclosed a FTDI board with solid wires into a clear tic-tac candy box and stuck a SIO cable end into the opening.  I don't have a picture handy, but that did save a cable.   Another possibility is to buy a FTDI cable with dupont type female pin connectors on one end and slip them directly over the proper SIO pins on the Atari.  It can be tedious to disconnect and reconnect the wires manually, but it works.

 

I agree that it is a shame to cut up a SIO cable.  Lotharek sells new cable ends or just use an APE device with existing SIO cable.  There is always an elegant alternative for those willing to pay.

[Rybags]

First impression was putting the Windows installer onto floppy (people were doing this into the 98 days and beyond).

Based on around 5.05 Gig for the current 64-bit Windows 10 installer that comes to about 35,000 1.44 Meg floppies.

 

Alternate to this, there were program/s that allowed creating Atari type floppies using a 5.25" PC drive and brand new disks.

I used it probably 15 years ago with pretty poor results.

 

Fairly sure my first ever Atari to PC transfer was by doing an Atari program that did Gr. 1 screen dumps with a custom font of the hex data of the file.

Then on the PC side, used a video capture card to grab the video of it cycling through the screens and OCR'd static pics of each one.

And for what was probably a ~ 4K game, a fair bit of work + manual correction.

[+DrVenkman]

Just to let people know, if you’re opposed to cutting a vintage SIO cable or removing one from a non-working 410 Program Recorder or something, a few people have stated 3D printing SIO cable plugs and are now selling full and half-cables. Lotharek does this (though I understand postal service from Poland is frozen right now). I believe @Gavin1968 sells them as well. 

[_The Doctor__]

Yep, plenty of roll your own plugs and sockets these days....

[+skr]

Maybe this is helpful (Win and Mac) :

 

http://www.abbuc.de/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=6102&hilit=sio2miniusb

[bfollowell]

4 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

Just to let people know, if you’re opposed to cutting a vintage SIO cable or removing one from a non-working 410 Program Recorder or something, a few people have stated 3D printing SIO cable plugs and are now selling full and half-cables. Lotharek does this (though I understand postal service from Poland is frozen right now). I believe @Gavin1968 sells them as well. 

 

Yeah, my 1088XEL is about 50% completed and most of Exxos' madatory ST fixes are complete on my 1040STE, and I'm sitting here waiting for a VBXE, an Ultrasatan, US cable & SD card from Lotharek. I probably would've received them a week or so ago but everything's coming to a halt for a bit and he hasn't had an opportunity to ship yet.

 

[+DrVenkman]

2 minutes ago, bfollowell said:

 

Yeah, my 1088XEL is about 50% completed ...

 

Well, VBXE is definitely optional for a 1088XEL. You may have to wait a month - or several - to get those parts. You should just go ahead and finish the basics, stick the standard UAV in it and start enjoying it while you wait.

[Gavin1968]

5 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

I believe @Gavin1968 sells them as well. 

Thanks @DrVenkman I have the half cables, used for SDrive-MAX's as well as full cables in 3' and 5' lengths.

Half - https://www.vintagecomputercenter.com/product/sdrive-max-cable

5' - https://www.vintagecomputercenter.com/product/5-atari-sio-cable

3' - https://www.vintagecomputercenter.com/product/3-atari-sio-cable

[bfollowell]

2 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

Well, VBXE is definitely optional for a 1088XEL. You may have to wait a month - or several - to get those parts. You should just go ahead and finish the basics, stick the standard UAV in it and start enjoying it while you wait.

 

Well, that's true. I'm putting a VBXE, Sophia DVI, and UAV in it, so I'll have no end of video output options. I just look forward to having it 100% complete.

 

[vitoco]

Instead of cutting a SIO cable, I put a SIO jack connector I got from a dead 1050 drive to my SIO2SD board. Then, I can use any standard SIO cable to connect it to my 800XL.

 

[BillC]

On 3/28/2020 at 10:39 AM, MoonJammer said:

 I would like to know if it's possible to put Atari software from a win(7-10) machine computer on to a floppy 5.1/4 floppy to use on a Atari 8 bit.  I have a working xe130 with two floppy drives. Would like to expand the floppy library I have.  Like a dummy I discarded most of my library with the advant of Windows computers.  I did have the wisdom to keep some floppys like dos 2.5 as well as a few games on floppys.  Plus I have blank floppys that I could use.  I never thought I would have a renewed interest in I did keep.  Currently typing in typo II.  To use with Antic listings programs.  Rather time consuming. Any help with this would be just great.  Thanks. 

Hias has some tools that allow reading/writing Atari DOS format DD floppies on a PC. I don't think they work on Windows 7-10, the description says MSDOS. You could make a USB flash drive that has DOS on it and use this if necessary.

https://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/#ataridsk

Edited April 1, 2020 by BillC

[erichenneke]

or with APE connect the sio2pc with the windows box and the disk drive and write directly to the drive cutting your time to create a disk down greatly...

Agreed, GREATLY reduces your time this way to transfer using the PC. In fact, if you use prosystem from atarimax it seems the fastest way to transfer entire disk images that I have seen. Especially if you also have a happy enabled physical drive.

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