Most hardware-efficient method to get A8 text files onto SD cards or thumbdrive?

[phc_joe]

Hi; One of the reasons I'm hanging on to a lot of my old Atari 8-bit equipment is to recover a bunch of text files I wrote back when A8 was my only word processor.  I've got these file (mostly written with TextPro or some other PD word processing software...maybe some in AtariWriter).  But I'm thinking, even with a Black Box and Floppy board, the best I'm going to be able to do is get these files on 3.5 floppies and I don't even have any computers that have those sorts of drives anymore!

 

I'm not up to date with the modern world of the Atari 8-bit aficionados, but it seems to me I have heard mention of magical cartridges that can be stuck in an A8, that have an SD card slot and therefore CAN be used for moving the files from the old 1050/XF551 disks to the new world (yes, I know I'll have to do some sort of fancy search/replace for the line feed/carriage return characters).

 

If I'm not dreaming, can someone point me to where/for how much I could acquire one of these magical devices?

 

Thanks! 

[+Nezgar]

There's so many fancy devices out there, but I always find myself falling back on a simple lotharek sio2PC-USB adapter along with RespeQt software. Simply copy the file to the virtual SIO drive. From RespeQt you can then drag the file out of the disk image to the pc desktop with carriage return/linefeed translation too.

 

Even fancier if you use the PCLINK driver in spartadosX, and copy files to PCL2: for example, and the file is deposited directly to your PC filesystem in whatever folder you've designated that drive to. This method also preserves date/timestamps, but maybe not text file translation...

 

https://www.lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=108

[phc_joe]

Wow. Thanks for that quick reply. I have looked at the lotharek sio2PC-USB adapter a few mins ago and may try to order one.  But also saw a YouTube video just now of how to make an SIO2PC cable (cheap!) Would this serve the same purpose?  Might try this if I have an extra Atari SIO cable but won't sacrifice one if I don't.

 

[chevymad]

You could also use a fujinet. Both to send the file to your pc, or you can use your atari to print your text to a pdf on the pc. It can also put the file on an sd card, but that seems like an extra step. 

[_The Doctor__]

sio2pcusb, self made with respeqt using pc link will do the job just fine, AVG cartridge is my next favorite, I use APE with AtariMax sio2pcUSB as well but it costs more. It's easy enough to use either, I back up a mix of hard drive partitions using SDX and a batch file the partitions are 16 and 32 meg partitions and few disk image files... PCLINK driver on SDX at divisor zero, it still takes hours but is actually screaming fast in that it is unattended...

 

If you just want the data from it and it's on floppies you can feed it over the same way but will have to feed the disk drives.... so you will be at it a while.

If you want each disk as is and turned into atr's, hand down APE has always done the best for me using the prosystem method.

 

You can sector copy to blank atr's in respeqt but APE and the AtariMax SIO2PC is the only combination that can handle XF551 drives as high speed...

 

edit- okay I understand, moving the files to 3.5 isn't really a great way to go... it is best to move them all to modern storage and pc hard drive... that way you are backed up and have it for your real Atari at high speed. This make using Altirra emulator easy as well.

Edited January 16 by _The Doctor__

[+Nezgar]

10 hours ago, phc_joe said:

Wow. Thanks for that quick reply. I have looked at the lotharek sio2PC-USB adapter a few mins ago and may try to order one.  But also saw a YouTube video just now of how to make an SIO2PC cable (cheap!) Would this serve the same purpose?  Might try this if I have an extra Atari SIO cable but won't sacrifice one if I don't.

 

This will work in a pinch, but this particular hack won't support any faster than 1x SIO (no faster ultraspeed modes) and I think had other issues like not being able to be on a shared SIO chain with other peripherals due to missing signal wires required for that and other reasons I can't remember. Lotharek's SIO2PC-USB thingy I previously recommended supports all of that.

 

You don't want to backup a 16MB hard disk partition to the PC at 19200bps

[flashjazzcat]

Ultimate 1MB/SIDE allows you to mount FAT-hosted ATR disk images on the parallel bus and get... um... unparalleled R/W transfer speeds. You could have the real floppy on - say - D1: and the FAT-hosted ATR on D2:, and copy the contents of the floppy to the ATR, either file-by-file or as a 'raw' sector-by-sector copy. Obviously you'll be limited by the read speed of the floppy drive, but the writes to the disk image will commonly be at least twice as fast as the fastest possible (127Kb/s) serial IO speeds. The higher the ATR disk density, the faster the writes.

 

You can accomplish the same thing with other devices (such as IDE Plus 2.0) which require no internal modifications to the machine (U1MB being an internal mod), but you won't be able to host the disk images in a FAT partition which is directly readable by a PC or Mac. Likewise, there are many external serial-IO solutions (as described above) which will permit the exact same backup/duplication procedure, but at somewhat slower speeds.

 

I once tested backing up (via sector copying) an U1MB/SIDE hard disk partition to a FAT-hosted 32MB ATR, and I recall that process taking some twenty minutes or so on the Atari.

Edited January 16 by flashjazzcat

[Mathy]

Hey Joe

 

Try this one:

 

 

It's SIO2PC, but with a USB connector instead of a cable.  Nice and small.  No extra cables lying around or tangling up.  All you need is one of the USB cables you probably already have.  And it works both ways: You can hook an Atari to your PC/Mac or for instance hook a 1050 to your PC/Mac.  You can get them here.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

Edited January 16 by Mathy
Oops, wrong link

[_The Doctor__]

as mentioned the one that is linked is not capable of XF high speed though it is inexpensive compared to AtariMax one. AtariMax version also works with more than one phyical drive, so as I copy from one physical disk I am loading up the other physical disk to copy from as well saving some time... that allows me to keep going and it sure does add up over many disks.

 

Edited January 16 by _The Doctor__

[phc_joe]

Thanks to everyone who responded. There are a lot of possibilities to explore. While I have a ton of old disks (I used to be the PD software librarian for our local Atari user group back in the early '90s) there are probably only a couple dozen disks with the personal stuff.  Once I know what I'm doing maybe I can copy the old PD stuff into some form that can be shared here (but likely this is all stuff you folks have seen before I would imagine). 

[phc_joe]

HOORAY! I bought the "10502PC SIO2PC USB R2" through Vintage Computer Center (https://www.vintagecomputercenter.com/product/10502pc-sio2pc-usb-rev2), installed KAFAR, virtual COM port drivers and RESPEQT software on a Windows 10 PC and after a little initial confusion found that it works great!  The KAFAR read my old disks into .ATR files, and RESPEQT showed me the file names in each, and allowed me to save the atart text files (my highest priority) into individual PC-readable text files. It even has a toggle to change the Atari CR/LFs into regular PC type carriage returns!  YAY! 

 

My first go-around was unsuccessful as I tried to use an XF551 drive which did not seem to work. But luckily I also have a 1050 which did fine.

Edited February 4 by phc_joe

[_The Doctor__]

Looks like your on your way! Glad it all worked out and you are well on your way to getting through the disks!