Atari ST Computing

[kn2000]

Hi, All!

This is my first post! I just recently came across an old Atari 540STm computer with SF354 floppy drive. Everything works great, for almost 30years! I wanted to know if any one could point me in the direct where I could start creating game disks for it. I have an old Windows XP pc with a 3.5" floppy on it and a bunch of old 720K diskettes. I would like to download Atari ST games and transfer them to the disk and play them on the Atari computer. I would appreciate any information.

Thanks!!

[Bumcake]

Hi, you can use a rather nifty bit of software called "Make disk", it runs best under a real Dos enviroment and is command line based.
I have just obtained a seperate PC just for making disk's for various systems, I have a seperate Dos 7 partician setup with a folder for Atari/Commodore etc images along with the Makedisk.exe and others in the Dos folder for easy usage.

There are a few more alternatives listed in the link below that work just as well.

Code: Select all

[url]http://www.atari-forum.com/wiki/index.php?title=Make_disk_Tutorial[/url]

[kn2000]

Thanks!! I will try this out. Do you know when I could get the game files? All I seem to find are the emulator files. Not the actual ST compatible files.

Thanks again!

[Bumcake]

You could do a great deal worse than registering with the main site here!.
There is an eye wateringly obscene amount of old software available and I guarantee you'll run out of disk's long before you get everything you would like, for very little outlay...

Main site
http://www.theoldcomputer.com/index.php

Atari ST haunt
http://www.theoldcomputer.com/roms/inde ... r=Atari/ST

[kn2000]

Puzzling question. I have and Atari SF354, 3.5" drive and according to its specs its a single sided, 360K drive. I have never seen or used 3.5" diskettes at 360K, only 720K or the 1.44K flavor. Am I missing something? I formatted a 3.5" diskette at 720K added some files and computer doesn't seem to read it. The drive works (I'm assuming) cause it knows when there is a disk in and when not. I've never owned a Atari ST computer before I was 9 when these first started rolling it out.

Thanks all!

[Bumcake]

Your going to struggle to get a modern high density drive to play ball with 360k formatted disks, (I'll have a try later on) other than changing the drive internals for an Atari compatible double sided drive (around £20) and possibly some fiddling with wires.

You can try covering over the hole on a HD disk with some tape and see if you can format it in the Atari, this works to some extent creating 720k double sided disk's, only 1 out of the 3 Ste's I have will read these disk's done this way, so your mileage may vary, try saving the desktop back to the disk.
You will have to look for rom disk images of the single sided 360k variety anyway, your present drive will not read double sided disks at all!.

Or there's the possibility of using a SD card based floppy drive emulator such as the HxC and forget about floppies totally,

Or pick up another STE or external double sided drive.

[kn2000]

So, does the sf354 drive only read diskettes formatted at 360K? I have seen seem such an animal....lol....

Sorry for all the questions and thank you for all your info.!!

[Bumcake]

From what I can see yes it wont read anything but 360k disks (well it may read side 1 of a double?), however I did try creating a single sided disk and it works perfectly on mine, now will your drive tolerate HD disks...

Theres only one way to find out

[kn2000]

Cool!! Where can I download the MakeDisk software?

[Bumcake]

Code: Select all

http://www.atari-forum.com/wiki/index.php?title=Make_disk_Tutorial