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ATR8000, GreaseWeazel and FlashFloppy


svhovater

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hi all

A bit of a journey here.. dusted off the old ATR8000. I have quite a few CP/M (ATR8000) disks that I'd like to recover, but.. but I can't seem to boot

the ATR, and read the disks. So... I got a GreaseWeazel (blue pill) thinking - read the disks, convert the scp to something that I could load onto FlashFloppy,

and move forward.


Well, the GreaseWeazel is assembled, FlashFloppy installed (on Gotek) acquired.

 

Now, reading the disks.

 

It's comforting to hear/see the drive step through the tracks, and an scp file *does* get created.

However... the HxC software track analysis (using MFM and/or FM) says the disk is blank.


While it's possible that the disks got erased in the last 32 years, I guess I have a hard time believing that,

given that other (Atari) disks were stored in proximity and read ok in Atari 1050.

 

So.. anyone else playing in these spots? Advice? (besides the obvious "hey NOOB" ;) ) 

 

Steve

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update. appears I have bad drives. Swapped out with a different drive, and I'm getting data. Which is encouraging.

Side 0 seems to be problematic, side 1 seems to read better. So, another bad drive, but one side is working.. 

Guess we're off to Ebay to find a known good drive.

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

So, the new quad-density drive (720k 5.25inch) is connected and the new 1797 is in. I'm able to boot a quad-density CP/M boot disk.  (yay!)

 

I've connected a flashfloppy-enabled GoTek, and now we're off to the next hurdle.

 

I'd like to use the gotek as a second drive. In fact, I can define an image (we'll get to that) and have it appear as drive B.

That's great! I can format drive B with DDINIT, however, I'm unable to ddsysgen it and unable to copy files to the formatted disk.

 

I don't know how else to get an image for the init, so I just copied a text file and renamed it appropriately. I just thought,

"it's bits that will get overwritten during the format", but I have my doubts as to whether this approach will work.

 

Anyone having success with flashfloppy/gotek & ATR8000 cp/m ?

 

thanks!

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Well .. good tip from Kier, of FlashFloppy fame.. 

Using a blank HFE file instead of an IMG allows me to format the HFE file without

having to take into consideration the weirdness of the ATR8000 CP/M disk geometry.

 

I formatted (ddinit) the blank HFE image and wrote system tracks (ddsysgen) to it.

 

And now I've booted from it!

 

I'll gather up files and post in the morning. All you should need to get CP/M

going on your ATR is the gotek+FF, and the coming HFE file.

 

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Yes it is HFE compat. It connects to the ST with the 34 pin floppy connector.

I tried plugging it into the ATR the other day but I got no activity beyond getting power. Though I may have had the jumpers in the wrong places. I am gonna give it another try today or tomorrow.

I attached the jumper settings for the st and pc from the manual. I am thinking I probably should use the pc settings. What do you think?

d4dafd8255bfd0f43293873bc8dae702.jpg
3bea585bca89f575f56818da09fe2956.jpg

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On 9/23/2020 at 10:01 AM, moonlight_mile said:

I attached the jumper settings for the st and pc from the manual. I am thinking I probably should use the pc settings. What do you think?

Probably yes. ST drives normally are jumpered as drive B. You probably need, at least, to change the jumpers for drive A.

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