Jump to content
IGNORED

Mega STe hard drive question


Recommended Posts

Hi, I am looking to pick up a cheap hard drive for my mega STe to use until I can afford a Ultrasatan drive.  There was a HD in mine until it got pulled, so right now there is the mounting hardware and the adapter.  What do I need to look for in a cheap HD on ebay that will work with the Mega STe?  Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The cheapest is to get a SCSI2SD 5.1 since real HD's are going for over $100.  I have one in mine and it works ok.  I use it with a 1GB SD card.  Was a  pain to get the HD DRIVER software working but it will work with some tweaking.  HD DRIVER and AHDI work, as well as one from ParanoidLittleMan's.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It (SCSI2SD) might be little cheaper than UltraSatan, but there is big drawback - you are limited to 1 GB because of Mega STE internal adapter. And now you will hardly find so low capacity cards.

Really hard to find now some older, working SCSI drive, all it gone bad because of age. 10 years ago was easy to find some in GB capacity range, now really rare, so prices gone high. And to work with MSTE internal adapter drive must support parity off mode, and that's rare. Mostly IBM drives were such.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, videofx said:

My Quantum Fireball SCSi is still working. But I have an Ultra Satan Coming to make it easy to move files with PC

Thanks, V.  BTW, what had drive utilities will I need to install and use a SCSI drive in my Mega STe?  I have a SCSI drive on the way that I will use until I can afford an Ultra Satan...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Randy said:

Thanks, V.  BTW, what had drive utilities will I need to install and use a SCSI drive in my Mega STe?  I have a SCSI drive on the way that I will use until I can afford an Ultra Satan...

HDDRIVER or ICD should work fine to get your Mega to recognise the new hard drive.

 

https://sites.google.com/site/stessential/hdd-tools

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

Has anyone ordered a replacement HDD from Best Electronics? They have them listed on their website for an attractive price, and I thought I'd try it out. I tried making backup copies of "Phantasie III" using the (one) stock floppy on my Mega STe (no UltraSatan yet!) and oh my god, the struggle was real. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, davidcalgary29 said:

Has anyone ordered a replacement HDD from Best Electronics? They have them listed on their website for an attractive price, and I thought I'd try it out. I tried making backup copies of "Phantasie III" using the (one) stock floppy on my Mega STe (no UltraSatan yet!) and oh my god, the struggle was real. 

I thought about doing that as the price of SCSI drives on ebay was just getting more ridiculous by the day, with many that are usable on retro computers seeing prices that are even more than a US!  If I had to go with a HD, I would recommend the BE drives, at least you know what you are getting, and BE is good people from my experience.  OTOH, having a US is just so much better than I thought it would be, mine came loaded with games and it is so easy to use that I would recommend just waiting and going that way.  Also, I believe the Mega STe internal version may be cheaper that the external one.  One last thing, running floppies is a bit tricky, I did it and still do it as I have a bunch from ebay I got with ST buys, but many disks will be/are bad and can leave blobs of the coating on your drive heads, which then need to be taken apart and cleaned, no cleaning disks will remove that blob.  And if you don't do that, the blob will remove the coating from subsequent disks, rendering them unusable, lost a retail disk Dungeon Master that way!  HTH

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/31/2020 at 2:34 AM, ParanoidLittleMan said:

It (SCSI2SD) might be little cheaper than UltraSatan, but there is big drawback - you are limited to 1 GB because of Mega STE internal adapter. And now you will hardly find so low capacity cards.

Really hard to find now some older, working SCSI drive, all it gone bad because of age. 10 years ago was easy to find some in GB capacity range, now really rare, so prices gone high. And to work with MSTE internal adapter drive must support parity off mode, and that's rare. Mostly IBM drives were such.

But you can store quite a lot of ST software in 1GB.   I only had about 170mb hard drive space for my ST, and I never filled it completely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/12/2020 at 2:53 PM, davidcalgary29 said:

Has anyone ordered a replacement HDD from Best Electronics? They have them listed on their website for an attractive price, and I thought I'd try it out. I tried making backup copies of "Phantasie III" using the (one) stock floppy on my Mega STe (no UltraSatan yet!) and oh my god, the struggle was real. 

I wouldn’t waste money on any HD today. Even the “new” ones are years old now. You could get one that last 20 years, you could get one that last 20 days. The Best drives are $75, you can get a UltraSatan for $25 more. It’s a much better solution because it allows you to transfer files without a floppy.

 

You can also use NetUSB which cost about $60. You have to load drivers from a floppy.  Not the best solution, but it works. I use one on my STE. You will need more than 1mb of memory if you use a NetUSB. 
 

I have a SCSI to SD in my TT and my Amiga 2000, it works great. They cost more than an UltraSatan however and you do have the 1GB limit as mentioned before. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/30/2020 at 11:34 PM, ParanoidLittleMan said:

It (SCSI2SD) might be little cheaper than UltraSatan, but there is big drawback - you are limited to 1 GB because of Mega STE internal adapter. And now you will hardly find so low capacity cards.

Really hard to find now some older, working SCSI drive, all it gone bad because of age. 10 years ago was easy to find some in GB capacity range, now really rare, so prices gone high. And to work with MSTE internal adapter drive must support parity off mode, and that's rare. Mostly IBM drives were such.

Just so you have correct information.  The Mega STE does have the 1 gig limit, but that does not translate to needing low capacity cards.  I am using a 32 Gig UHC 10 in a SCSI to SD on my Mega STE internally.

 

Yes, only 1 gig is used, but as you see I can use larger cards to get that 1 gig.  The SCSI2SD utility allows me to set up "DRIVES" on any card. I have to limit the drives and capacity using the utility to make that 32 gig card look like just 1 gig to the ST.

 

So any card will work with these, you just have to use the utility to limit it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, SoulBuster said:

Just so you have correct information.  The Mega STE does have the 1 gig limit, but that does not translate to needing low capacity cards.  I am using a 32 Gig UHC 10 in a SCSI to SD on my Mega STE internally.

 

Yes, only 1 gig is used, but as you see I can use larger cards to get that 1 gig.  The SCSI2SD utility allows me to set up "DRIVES" on any card. I have to limit the drives and capacity using the utility to make that 32 gig card look like just 1 gig to the ST.

 

So any card will work with these, you just have to use the utility to limit it.

I did not say that it will not work with larger capacity cards.  "limited to 1 GB" - there is no word card in it.

Actually, I never had SCSI hard disk under 2 GB, except original 46 MB one with my Mega STE. And they worked fine with internal ACSI-SCSI adapter, and unlike that SCSItoSD did not need any settings for it. It just could access first GB on drive, other area was never accessed.

And again 'it's just' that using some 32 GB SD card so, that only 3 % of it's capacity is accessible is really sad.

And I already made corrections for such problems, back in 2007 : http://atari.8bitchip.info/modmste1.html

Very simple, but needs special driver, what is on page too.

Ah, btw. correct formulation is: The Mega STE internal ACSI-SCSI adapter does have the 1 GB limit   . 

Mega STE limit is actually TOS version limit: 14x max 512 MB partitions = 7 GB - still much less than 32 .

But some TOS 'versions' have exactly that 32 GB limit, and no, it's not with FAT32, it's still with FAT16 .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
On 5/30/2020 at 11:34 PM, ParanoidLittleMan said:

It (SCSI2SD) might be little cheaper than UltraSatan, but there is big drawback - you are limited to 1 GB because of Mega STE internal adapter. And now you will hardly find so low capacity cards.

 

Nowhere in my post does it say that, you said it won't work with larger capacity cards. But, the way the above reads, someone could be confused about how large the capacity of the card can be.  I just wanted to clarify it.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK, I was not enough detailed. The meaning of what you quoted is: limited to 1 GB - not saying 1 GB max capacity cards. "Limited to first 1 GB on cards" would be better, I guess.

And  if you are forced to use some 8 GB card-because it will be cheaper to get such new in shop than buy some old 1 GB one, with shipping etc., and then can access only 1 GB of it, that's just sad.

Actually, I really see lot of cases when people recommends not rational mass storage solutions. Multiple adapters instead one. That self is bad enough, even without capacity limitation. Less adapters = less chances for failure, less space used, and usually cheaper. And in most cases faster - well, if not buying/using some very old adapter and drive.

Attaching SSD to Falcon ? That's good only for bragging - in reality it is nonsense. You need PATA-SATA adapter to connect it to Falcon IDE (what is still better than Falcon SCSI, btw.) . Plus SSD is waaaaay too fast for Falcon. 300 MB/sec, while Falcon top data rate on IDE is some 3.2 MB/sec. Then, 64 GB on Falcon? Another nonsense.  What works very well, takes very little space is Sandisk CF card + cheap passive IDE-CF adapter. Was simpler case 10 years ago, now is little harder to find Compact Flash cards, but they are still manufactured.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Back in the day I bought a 1.6gb Baracuda drive off of a friend (Full height drive, it was a huge brick, but was a fast one (can't remember if it was 10k or not, I don't think so though).  But I never could get it to work with the MegaSTe... wasn't until a few years ago I had read that it was limited to 1gb... Then again when I first got the MegaSTe... "50mb!  That's huge, I'll never run out of space!" - me.  A year or so later, "I need a bigger hard drive!" 

 

Granted, the 1.6gb sat in a box for about a year or so... until we got a PC.  Now I can't recall which one I put it in, but it was one of those cases where the outer shell was a single upside down U, and for some reason I tried putting the case on while the computer was on and the HDD was mounted on the top.... accidentally hit the bare board and zap, it was dead...

 

About a year after that, I found out they have a 5 year warranty... and Seagate replaced it!

 

Anyhow, sorry for the off-topic, I do have an internal UltraSatan for mine, but I haven't installed it yet.  Does it still have the same 1gb limitation for SD cards (where it'll only read the first 1gb).  I also thought someone posted a mod to get to 2gb?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Mega STE internal ACSI-SCSI adapter works only with drives where can disable parity. And that's rare case in latest 20 years.

 

Yeah, interestingly enough the 7 disc CD changer I bought does allow that, though I'd need an external ACSI->SCSI to use it on the MegaSTe, it does work on the Falcon / TT.  Though I found last night as I was trying to install extendos, that it wants 7 continual drive letters to assign to it... and as I have 4 hard drive partitions, plus G for USB on the CosmosEx, plus the N and O, and then U for Mint/Magic... there aren't 7 letters in a row anywhere to be able to use it... Tried it with just 6 (H-M) and then it'd crash upon start up!  So guess that's a thing I'll use on the TT (where I don't have a CosmosEx, though I may install the 3.0 one there).

 

Really the UltraSatan is awesome, and works on every ST except the Falcon (no ACSI).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, leech said:

Then again when I first got the MegaSTe... "50mb!  That's huge, I'll never run out of space!" - me.  A year or so later, "I need a bigger hard drive!" 

One thing that kept me from buying a hard drive for ST was that the capacities never seemed high enough for the money spent.   I finally bit the bullet when I found a second-hand 128mb drive with case and ACSI-SCSI converter.   The case had an extra bay so I added a 40mb bare unit to it.

 

I never actually filled those disks on ST,  so it was enough storage for me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, zzip said:

One thing that kept me from buying a hard drive for ST was that the capacities never seemed high enough for the money spent.   I finally bit the bullet when I found a second-hand 128mb drive with case and ACSI-SCSI converter.   The case had an extra bay so I added a 40mb bare unit to it.

 

I never actually filled those disks on ST,  so it was enough storage for me.

50mb was fine...  until I got Internet access in '93...  Which still amazes me at how much patience I had back then... I downloaded Dark Side of the Spoon demo (1mb) at 1200 baud, and with people picking up the line, and other issues, it took like 3 or 4 days to download it... Only to find out it didn't work on the Mega STe!

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/7/2020 at 12:25 PM, leech said:

Yeah, interestingly enough the 7 disc CD changer I bought does allow that, though I'd need an external ACSI->SCSI to use it on the MegaSTe, it does work on the Falcon / TT.  Though I found last night as I was trying to install extendos, that it wants 7 continual drive letters to assign to it... and as I have 4 hard drive partitions, plus G for USB on the CosmosEx, plus the N and O, and then U for Mint/Magic... there aren't 7 letters in a row anywhere to be able to use it... Tried it with just 6 (H-M) and then it'd crash upon start up!  So guess that's a thing I'll use on the TT (where I don't have a CosmosEx, though I may install the 3.0 one there).

 

Really the UltraSatan is awesome, and works on every ST except the Falcon (no ACSI).

 

At one time I had two Pioneer multi-CD disk changers on DarkForce. Worked great, but that

was with a Link 2...

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, DarkLord said:

 

At one time I had two Pioneer multi-CD disk changers on DarkForce. Worked great, but that

was with a Link 2...

 

Man, I bet some of the old multi-line BBS setups were crazy, I think I have onlyseen a few pictures of some.  Those were fun times though.  As much as kids these days think 'Retro' computing is cool, they can't really recreate the days of dial-up services and BBS's where you chat or download random stuff and the hunt for more software or like-minded individuals.

It is all too easy these days, not enough adventure in it.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, leech said:

Man, I bet some of the old multi-line BBS setups were crazy, I think I have onlyseen a few pictures of some.  Those were fun times though.  As much as kids these days think 'Retro' computing is cool, they can't really recreate the days of dial-up services and BBS's where you chat or download random stuff and the hunt for more software or like-minded individuals.

It is all too easy these days, not enough adventure in it.

 

The word they would probably use for us is "fossils".   :)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, leech said:

Man, I bet some of the old multi-line BBS setups were crazy, I think I have onlyseen a few pictures of some.  Those were fun times though.  As much as kids these days think 'Retro' computing is cool, they can't really recreate the days of dial-up services and BBS's where you chat or download random stuff and the hunt for more software or like-minded individuals.

It is all too easy these days, not enough adventure in it.

I can just imaging sitting one of today's kids in front of a BBS

 

"this is so dumb!  how do I even take a selfie?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...