Back to Atari ST

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Back to Atari ST

Postby ZergOne on Fri Nov 22, 2013 10:45 am

Back in the days I had an Atari ST 1040 and for my 50th I got one from my brother-in-law. Now I'm trying to get everything up and running but modern technology is bringing in some issues too. I'm hoping that this community can help me solve some of them.

Zorko
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Re: Back to Atari ST

Postby acsi on Fri Nov 22, 2013 7:03 pm

What issues are you having?
'acsi' on trademe
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Re: Back to Atari ST

Postby ZergOne on Fri Nov 29, 2013 12:32 pm

My biggest issue is writing images to floppy disks. I have posted it to Atari forum (http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=25490) and it should work but I can't make it work. It could be the PC floppy drive or ST floppy drive. It is hard to troubleshoot without access to another ST machine or another PC.

Since then I bought 200+ floppy disks from eBay and I can read most of them. Some are programs are bombing out, some spit out TOS error #35 and some disks are unreadable.

If you have suggestions how to test/configure things please let me know.

Regards,
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Re: Back to Atari ST

Postby acsi on Fri Nov 29, 2013 10:46 pm

Hmm first question would be, have you cleaned the drive heads? as it sounds like drive errors.

From memory most PC drives have trouble writing to tracks 81 and 82 which is ok as long as your disk image is only 80 tracks or less.

Also i've never had any luck with USB floppy drives.

The best device I have ever bought for my retro computers has been the HxC floppy drive emulator. It allows the use of floppy drive images via an SD card.

The other device you should consider is a ultrasatan. It uses an SD card as a hard drive on the ST.
Having a hard drive helps out when it comes to converting disk images to floppy using the ST.

Let me know if you don't have any luck as I could send you a few known to be working disks.
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Re: Back to Atari ST

Postby ZergOne on Mon Dec 02, 2013 12:41 pm

I have a suspicion it could be the drive on ST, but on the other hand it reads Xenon original disk without any issues. Most likely, I'll buy ultrasatan but it is pricey...

Another test would be if I send you couple of disks I created for you to test. If they work for you I know where the issue is. Send me a PM if you would like to test.
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Re: Back to Atari ST

Postby acsi on Mon Dec 16, 2013 7:51 pm

I picked up the disks today and have tested them using my STacy4.

None of the disks would read correctly (2 error'd and 1 failed completely), off the three only 1 would format but with errors.

What I've done is written some disks using some new old stock disks (HD converted to DD) and ill send these back to you tomorrow so you can check that your drive is working.
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