Dumb questions

[Red 5]

As a proud new(ish) owner of my first Atari computer (800xl)

what is the best floppy drive to get?

 

Is the 1050 compatible with the 800xl (I assume it is) ?

Is that the way to go?

 

Is there any benefit to having 2 instead of one?

I don't plan on doing any writing to disk. Just want one for

games not on cart.

[Rybags]

Any Atari drive (or 3rd party compatible) works with any Atari 8-bit computer model.

 

For just general gaming the 1050 is fine.

 

2 drives would benefit very few games. Alternate Reality (and AR: The Dungeon) is one of those few games (and should be on your must-have list).

 

An APE cable is what you really need. http://www.atarimax.com

[Gregory DG]

Wasn't the 1050 in the same style as the XL series? Pretty sure it was meant to work with that computer.

[Nukey Shay]

Any double density-compatable drive will do. IMO it's better to have an SIO2PC to go along with it. For a mere 20 bucks or so, it's well worth it.

And 2 drives is not really necessary...for the very few games out there that take advantage of this, they'd also have the option of using 1 drive only.

[accousticguitar]

I am new to this stuff. If you don't have the sio2pc, how do you get files from a pc to the atari using the flash multi-cart? Also, can the usb master cartridge be used to transfer files from a pc to an atari?

[Garrett]

Another question that may be dumb: can I load .rom or .bin or even .car images to my real 130XE using SIO2PC? I can find several of these images that I'd like to try out but I can't figure out how to load from them or convert them to an .atr disk image. Probably makes me dumb huh?

[Rybags]

It would be fairly simple to make a front-end to allow cartridge images to be loaded onto 48K + machines.

 

But, you're limited to standard 8 and 16K carts which don't use bank-select. Plus you have to count on someone having already removed any self-destruct code from the cart.

[classics]

Another question that may be dumb: can I load .rom or .bin or even .car images to my real 130XE using SIO2PC? I can find several of these images that I'd like to try out but I can't figure out how to load from them or convert them to an .atr disk image. Probably makes me dumb huh?

 

Look for the EXE/XEX/COM equivilant of the same game.

 

BIN/ROM files are probably raw dumps, many of which will not run properly when loaded from disk. An EXE/XEX/COM version of the same file is probably just the same program, but already modified so it will run properly from disk.

 

If you are using APE you can load EXE files by setting the PC-Mirror to drive #1 and booting your Atari from it.

 

Steve