800K disk image (boot menu disks) to real atari ST?

[chaoticjelly]

Hey guys

 

I have an Atari ST 520, im trying to put some games on disk, they are 800kb in size

Ive tried LOTS of different programs.. mostly on the PC but I tried one on the Atari ST and still would not make 800K disk images work..

 

720K disk images work fine using WFDcopy

 

Anyone got any ideas? whats the easiest method.. step by step for a real noob

[chaoticjelly]

Anyone got any ideas?

[+DarkLord]

Anyone got any ideas?

 

Back in the day, there were a couple of floppy formatters that would let you

do extended sectors and wind up with more disk space - the catch was that

not every floppy you tried it on would read it, and the floppy often was very

unreliable.

 

Can you tell what was used to create the image? Perhaps you can use that

to uncompress it. Maybe its 2 disks in the 800k?

 

HTHs.

[+remowilliams]

If you're creating the disks on a PC, you've got a problem. I don't think the PC will ever read/write the 10 or 11 sector format 3.5s. 9 sector (aka 720K) are the ones that you can read on both the ST/PC.

[Goochman]

I forgot the name of the utility, but there was one out that that could format all kinds of sector setups and copy disks in this formats - Def not readable on the PC.

[ijor]

I have an Atari ST 520, im trying to put some games on disk, they are 800kb in size

Ive tried LOTS of different programs.. mostly on the PC but I tried one on the Atari ST and still would not make 800K disk images work..

 

Anyone got any ideas? whats the easiest method.. step by step for a real noob

 

Two question:

 

- Are you using a standard floppy drive on the PC (not an USB one)?

Otherwise, forget it on the PC.

 

- Can you run pure DOS, or Win 95/98?

If so, makedisk shouldn't have any trouble. The PC, hardware wise, doesn't have any problems in reading/writing 800k disk. It's a software issue under modern Windows.

 

Otherwise ... it's possible on the PC but rather complicated. You would get better luck on the ST.

 

On the ST, use MSA (Magic Shadow Archiver). But you need enough hard disk (or ram disk) space to hold the whole image. What program you tried on the ST that didn't work?

[jens]

PaCifiST, an emulator, on a PC can be used to access the floppy drive without windows stepping in between.

You can use formatting tools with it.

 

Shouls run under win 9x or under plain DOS as well.

[Greenious]

Fastcopy Pro works well to do exotic diskformats.

 

I have yet to see an ST that couldn't handle a 80 track/10 sectors formatted disk (giving 800k on a DSDD).

 

But 81, 82, 83 or even 84 tracks could cause problems, most however, can do 82 tracks.

 

11 sectors per track is borderline, most managed that aswell in the old days, but I can imagine it can give some drives a challenge, especially when the equipment is getting a little bit old.

[chaoticjelly]

Hmm I got 800K disks working.

 

I used a program called "SamDisk" to format the DS/DD floppy disk in my PC to 800K, and then used SamDisk again to copy the .ST image file (after renaming it to an extension that SamDisk can recognise) onto the disk.

 

The disks now work, however I have some disk images .st that are 819KB, so I suppose I need a disk formatted to 82 tracks to fit this on?

 

The SamDisk program does not go above 80 tracks, I tried fastcopy pro on my Atari ST but couldnt figure it out (too complicated).

 

Im using Windows XP and I dont have any means of running Win9x or pure DOS..

[ijor]

Hmm I got 800K disks working. I used a program called "SamDisk"

Im using Windows XP and I dont have any means of running Win9x or pure DOS..

 

Under XP the only solution for extended formats is a custom kernel driver. SamDisk is one of those.

 

So you are limited to whatever SamDisk would let you. You can format 82 tracks on the ST, but it would be useless if SamDisk won't let you write an image with more than 80 tracks.

 

There is another XP program with a custom driver, but I don't recall the name. Try googling for "Windows-floppy-extended-format".

 

The other possiblity is to bring the whole image to the ST. Then use MSA.

[chaoticjelly]

I have used a program called "Omniflop" for 820K images now, with some success, so far I wrote two discs, one works perfectly, the other mostly did not work.. so seems like a decent program so far.

 

I have no idea how to use MSA etc, its very techy lol