XF551 w/3.5" Hyper-XF and Fat12a.sys

[Mark2008]

So I have a drive, it's an XF551.  It has a 3.5" mech in it.  It has the hyper-xf rom.

 

It works just fine with 720k disks.   However, I wanted to go ahead and try reading a fat formatted pc disk.

 

Freshly formatted 720k disk not 1.44mb of course.  No hole on the left or right.  Meaning 720K disk and not write protected.

 

I put it in the drive. In SDX I load fat12a.sys.

 

If I try to read the drive, it just says Write protected or bad sector.

 

Is xf551 wiht hyper-xf supported here?  Any other ideas?

 

thanks

Edited February 13, 2021 by Mark2008

[+Nezgar]

The hyper XF firmware supports reading PC style 512-byte sector disks, but no software has been written (yet) to support that mode.

 

The SpartaDOS X FAT12 driver is primarily intended at cartridge or PBI-attached media...

[drac030]

43 minutes ago, Nezgar said:

The SpartaDOS X FAT12 driver is primarily intended at cartridge or PBI-attached media...

Not true. FAT12 driver is intended at any media which can read/write 512-byte sectors the "normal" way, i.e. with density detection/selection via PERCOM commands and doing the I/O via R/P/W SIO commands. The Hyper-XF apparently cannot do that.

 

Also, it is not even a SIO driver, it is an FS driver which does not deal with reading/writing sectors directly. So it should be able to access any media which SPARTA.SYS is able to access.

Edited February 13, 2021 by drac030

[+Nezgar]

1 minute ago, drac030 said:

Not true. FAT12 driver is intended at any media which can read/write 512-byte sectors the "normal" way, i.e. with density detection/.selection via PERCOM commands and doing the I/O via R/P/W SIO commands. The Hyper-XF apparently cannot do that.

 

OK I was close then. Maybe the "normal" way would still present challenges reading more than 128 bytes from sectors 1/2/3? The "missing link" is just the special translation/driver for the unique Hyper-XF 512 byte/DOS/ST sectoring mode.

[Mark2008]

From my perspective, I want to accomplish the task of writing a 720K disk on a pc, and reading it on the atari.

 

What I see as the most likely possibility is buying a percom disk.  It'll come with a 5 1/4" drive, but will allow me to attach a 3.5" 720K externally to the controller.

 

As a far less likely solution - mod my XF551 with the CSS mod, which had some kind of IBMREAD program written for it.

 

But, I doubt I will ever find that.  Percom disk I can find.  But - just want to confirm, that I'm not misunderstanding something an AT88-s1pd, presumably supports percom commands?  I'm guessing they invented hte standard, but pays to double check.

Edited February 13, 2021 by Mark2008

[drac030]

Supporting PERCOM commands does not automatically mean that 512-byte per sector density is also supported. This depends on the drive's firmware.

 

8 minutes ago, Nezgar said:

Maybe the "normal" way would still present challenges reading more than 128 bytes from sectors 1/2/3? The "missing link" is just the special translation/driver for the unique Hyper-XF 512 byte/DOS/ST sectoring mode.

It is quite possible that this can be solved with a driver which would on the fly translate SIO commands to and fro so that the Hyper-XF PC/ST sectoring mode could be used under SDX in a transparent way. The only problem is to find someone who a) has XF-551 with Hyper-XF ROM, b) is able to write an SDX driver of this kind, c) wants to do that

 

 

[+Nezgar]

@Mark2008 Percom drives don't even support reading PC formatted disks. Yes Percom's commands that facilitated setting and querying sector size, sides, tracks, sectors per track became the "defacto" standard, but no floppy drives (that I know of) support other than 128 or 256 bytes per sector for "normal" use with percom commands.

 

The Happy 1050 enhancement had a rudimentary utility that could access files from MS-DOS formatted 180K (512 bytes per sector, single sided) disks, transfer them to a DOS 2.0 disk using a proprietary combination of the hardware enhancement in the 1050 drive, plus software in the computer.

[drac030]

6 minutes ago, Nezgar said:

but no floppy drives (that I know of) support other than 128 or 256 bytes per sector for "normal" use with percom commands.

These do:

 

http://atariki.krap.pl/index.php/TOMS_Turbo_Drive

http://atariki.krap.pl/index.php/TOMS_Multi_Drive

http://atariki.krap.pl/index.php/TOMS_360

http://atariki.krap.pl/index.php/TOMS_710

http://atariki.krap.pl/index.php/TOMS_720

http://atariki.krap.pl/index.php/Karin_Maxi

 

The first two are not standalone drives, but just enhancements/mods for LDW 2000 Super and CA-2001 drives. The following three are complete drives that were built by that company from scratch. Karin Maxi is a PBI floppy drive which originally does not support 512-byte density, but there is a modded ROM by @trub which supports 512-byte sector r/w.

 

 

[Mark2008]

1 minute ago, drac030 said:

The only problem is to find someone who a) has XF-551 with Hyper-XF ROM, b) is able to write an SDX driver of this kind, c) wants to do that

 

 

Oh, XF-551 with Hyper-XF, I thought we were talking about something else....yeah, never heard of it.    No need to check those other qualifications, we can stop right there.

 

Well I appreciate teh answers, it looks like exotic equipment such as the CSS upgrade with IBMREAD.COM or the Spartados X with a TOMS drive would work, but that's exotic equipment.

 

hah, I guess that might also describe an xf-551 with hyper-xf rom and 3.5" disk.

 

One last question, remember this: https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=DeviceMatrix

 

The abbuc usb master cart supported a teac 3.5" 1.44mb drive.  Or so it says.....I assume this 'support" doesn't really mean reading  a pc format fat12 disk tho?

 

Or does the fact that I made that assumption automatically mean it is supported by SDX and works just fine.....I'm beginning to see the pattern

 

 

 

 

[drac030]

14 minutes ago, Mark2008 said:

Oh, XF-551 with Hyper-XF, I thought we were talking about something else....yeah, never heard of it.

Ok, in simple terms: FAT12 does not work with XF-551/Hyper-XF, because that drive does not handle this density in the standard way the drives are supposed to handle the media. In other words, it is the drive's "fault". And no, the support for FAT is not limited to TOMS drives: it will work with anything as long as the drive can support 512-bps densities the same way it supports 128-bps or 256-bps densities.

[Mark2008]

I think I have my own answer to the question on the abbuc cart driver for the teac floppy drive.  The atariwiki says status "working" .

 

Which is curious, until I found the post saying that it works, except it needs a driver, the post is linked below.  Which of course, actually means the status is it not working as yet....I get what he meant, but anyway, not really an option.

 

@drac030, sure I didn't mean the toms drive alone, but unless I'm mistaken, a sio device is a drive and controller combination.

I would need a bare drive - that's easy, got one already, and a controller for that drive that responds to percom commands, and my xf-551 is not that. A genuine percom responds to percom commands, but probably has at most a 256 byte sector in DD mode.

 

I don't yet understand another choice to put together a sio based controller/drive that would meet all the specs, apparently the toms does, but, byeond that....dunno

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He

 

Edited February 13, 2021 by Mark2008

[Mark2008]

p.s. that Karin Maxi looks interesting, but I'll never find one, lol....

[BillC]

1 hour ago, Mark2008 said:

From my perspective, I want to accomplish the task of writing a 720K disk on a pc, and reading it on the atari.

There are some PC utilities that can access Atari format floppies, I don't think any of them are 720KB capable though.

 

There are some utilities by Hias though, Dir2ATR can create ATR images of various containing files in the source directory, these ATRs could then be mounted/copied to an XF551 disk by the Atari.

• atarixfer - a small tool to read/write Atari disk images to an Atari disk drive connected by a 1050-2-PC or ProSystem cable
• adir, dir2atr, ataricom - tools for Atari disk images and executables.
• Ataridsk is a program for MSDOS-PCs that allows you to access Atari floppy disks in double density (180k). All you need is a PC (XT or 286 should be sufficient) and a 5.25" floppy drive.
• With WriteAtr you can write double density ATR-images to Atari floppy disks on your MSDOS-PC. You can also create ATR-images of double density floppy disks! All you need is a PC and a 5.25" and/or a 3.5" floppy drive.

These are available <click here>

 

[Mark2008]

ah, yes, thanks, my wording wasn't entirely correct, I see that now.  I wasn't merely looking to accomplish the task of using a pc xt or at to write to a floopy readable on the atari.  Rather I was more specifically hoping to create  workflow with either my windows 10 pc or mac to atari transfers, that improves upon what i do today.

 

What I do today, is browsing the internet on my mac, I find a xex.  As an example, lets consider the case, that someone posted a standalone xex to a thread on atariage, not an atr.   Today I download that to my downloads folder.  Then  I open an atari emulator, built wihtin the atari emulator is an atr editor.  I then drop the xex within a previously created atri image.  I copy that created image to the sd card, my mac has an sd card reader on the side.  Then I walk the sd card over to the atari and put it in my sio2sd.  Then I hit the button on the sio2sd about 15 times and eventually I've mounted that atr image, then I'm ready to ocpy it from D4: drive to D3: drive.  The D3 drive being my ataris permanently attached "hdd" (side2 cart really)

 

I was going for a simpler, slightly purer workflow here.  Which is, download the xex directly to the attached floppy.  Then walk the floppy over to the Atari, stick it in the drive and copy it.  Saves quite a few steps, plus I like that workflow, really pure.

 

I know some folks swear by their fujinet, or sio2pc and all that, but the sneakernet, floppy drive solution would appeal to me....if only I had one of those mythical drives, maybe someday.

Edited February 13, 2021 by Mark2008

[BillC]

2 hours ago, Mark2008 said:

ah, yes, thanks, my wording wasn't entirely correct, I see that now.  I wasn't merely looking to accomplish the task of using a pc xt or at to write to a floopy readable on the atari.  Rather I was more specifically hoping to create  workflow with either my windows 10 pc or mac to atari transfers, that improves upon what i do today.

 

What I do today, is browsing the internet on my mac, I find a xex.  As an example, lets consider the case, that someone posted a standalone xex to a thread on atariage, not an atr.   Today I download that to my downloads folder.  Then  I open an atari emulator, built wihtin the atari emulator is an atr editor.  I then drop the xex within a previously created atri image.  I copy that created image to the sd card, my mac has an sd card reader on the side.  Then I walk the sd card over to the atari and put it in my sio2sd.  Then I hit the button on the sio2sd about 15 times and eventually I've mounted that atr image, then I'm ready to ocpy it from D4: drive to D3: drive.  The D3 drive being my ataris permanently attached "hdd" (side2 cart really)

 

I was going for a simpler, slightly purer workflow here.  Which is, download the xex directly to the attached floppy.  Then walk the floppy over to the Atari, stick it in the drive and copy it.  Saves quite a few steps, plus I like that workflow, really pure.

 

I know some folks swear by their fujinet, or sio2pc and all that, but the sneakernet, floppy drive solution would appeal to me....if only I had one of those mythical drives, maybe someday.

AtariDsk, already mentioned in my earlier post, can write files to an already formatted Atari SSDD floppy on a PC with 360KB 5-1/4" drive. This floppy can then be read by a SSDD capable Atari drive, this does limit you to 180KB but otherwise does what you want.

 

The Happy 1050 V7.1 software also has a feature on side 2 that allows the 1050 to read a SSDD PC formatted disk and transfer files to an Atari formatted floppy. If you have 2 Happy 1050s it can read from one and write to the other, also limited to 180KB SSDD.

 

 

[sup8pdct]

6 hours ago, Mark2008 said:

 it looks like exotic equipment such as the CSS upgrade with IBMREAD.COM or the Spartados X , but that's exotic equipment.

 

 

Not really. Just need a slightly modded rom for the css upgrade to work. Dongle is purely copy protection.

 

James

[+CharlieChaplin]

Afaik,

 

the XF has only 256 Bytes of RAM, so it cannot read a 512 Byte sector directly (in one go). The author of Hyper-XF-OS wanted to create a special program that would read/write/copy a 512 Byte sector in two passes, first half and second half. Alas, he never did. So the ST/PC mode is there in Hyper-XF-OS, but you cannot use it until someone releases such a special program for it - nowadays highly unlikely.

 

(And to tell the truth, I mostly used the Hyper-XF-OS partition mode with four partitions per diskette, e.g. 4x 90k, 4x 130k, 4x 180k or mixed formats on one and the same disk. But in the last five years or so I did not use the XF with 3,5" drive anymore and besides the 1050, I more and more used SIO2xyz devices and multicarts like AVG, so the XF with 3,5" became obsolete for me and I have just sold it.)

 

[+CharlieChaplin]

5 hours ago, BillC said:

There are some PC utilities that can access Atari format floppies, I don't think any of them are 720KB capable though.

 

There are some utilities by Hias though, Dir2ATR can create ATR images of various containing files in the source directory, these ATRs could then be mounted/copied to an XF551 disk by the Atari.

• With WriteAtr you can write double density ATR-images to Atari floppy disks on your MSDOS-PC. You can also create ATR-images of double density floppy disks! All you need is a PC and a 5.25" and/or a 3.5" floppy drive.

These are available <click here>

 

 

Well, I used a Teac 55GFR (HD) PC drive successfully with Ataridsk (180k) and WriteATR (130k, 180k, 360k, 720k). With WriteATR and the Teac drive I could even write 130k A8 diskettes - but it did only write them, reading was not possible. Alas, not every PC 5,25" drive works with Ataridsk or WriteATR, back in the 90s we tested 10-12 different PC drives and only the Teac drive worked. Nowadays it is not that easy to find a good + working 5,25" PC drive and one must own an old(er) PC with a FDC to be able to use it.

 

[+Larry]

Here's a "shot in the dark:"

You might try the CSS IBM/ST disk reader.

 

http://nleaudio.com/css/Files.htm

 

This was written for the CSS XF551 upgrades, and it only will READ, not WRITE.  This works great on my CSS upgraded drives, but I've never tried it with a HyperXF drive.  It was written for an Atari Dos system, but probably will execute OK with SDX.

 

 

[+kheller2]

Isn't there a SIO2PC (SIO2OSX) software that lets the Atari read a directory off the PC as if it were a disk?

Or do they all require them to be ATR?

[_The Doctor__]

pclink, pcmirror and their equivalents, possibly fujinet... but I think he wants to do it by sneaker

Edited February 13, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[Mark2008]

14 hours ago, kheller2 said:

Isn't there a SIO2PC (SIO2OSX) software that lets the Atari read a directory off the PC as if it were a disk?

Or do they all require them to be ATR?

The issue for me, alone perhaps, is sio2osx tethers, the tethering is not desired. fujinet doesnt represent a workflow with reduced number of steps.   both are excellent.  and the sio2sd solution I use today is ok.   but download, remove disk from mac/insert at atari/copy id a simple workflow.  here is an even better one... use an atari age browser on the atari, direct download. done! thats the real ultimate experience.  obviously not acailable some bbs version that shares the message base, one can dream

[BillC]

30 minutes ago, Mark2008 said:

fujinet doesnt represent a workflow with reduced number of steps.

 

On 2/12/2021 at 10:29 PM, Mark2008 said:

I was going for a simpler, slightly purer workflow here.  Which is, download the xex directly to the attached floppy.  Then walk the floppy over to the Atari, stick it in the drive and copy it.  Saves quite a few steps, plus I like that workflow, really pure.

Fujinet can come close, set up a folder on PC/MAC/Linux as a network share for Fujinet, when downloading files for the Atari you save them to this shared folder instead of to a floppy. Once the network share protocols are setup on the host machine and the Fujinet is configured the Atari will have access to the shared folder, and can then copy files to local storage from there instead of from the floppy.

[drac030]

On 2/13/2021 at 6:04 AM, Mark2008 said:

p.s. that Karin Maxi looks interesting, but I'll never find one, lol....

There was a rerun in 2012 (Karin Maxi II), I do not know, however, how many have been produced.

[+Larry]

I have one of the rerun Maxi's.  But the track layout is not compatible with the typical XF disk -- it does (I think) IBM style where the tracks are alternated on sides A then B.  XF numbers tracks 1-80 on side A, then 81-160 on side B. (Think I said that right, and the IBM style is actually more efficient.)  Anyway, since I had 200+ XF style 720K disks, the Karin became less than useful to me.

 

If anyone wants it (U.S.), make me an offer (via PM).

 

Here's a thread with a lot of Maxi info: