hi everyone im new to atari but a freind of mine gave me an old 520st the internal floppy drive dosent work apparently but i have an external drive that seems to work but i only have one double density disk (apparently u cant use normal floppys??) that has some cubase files on it that wont load, i cant figure out what to do next
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you can use normal floppys, block the hole at the upper left corner, and format the disk with this parameters
format a: /t:80/n:9
now they should work 
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Slovakia / European Union
Buy Lotharek´s SD card floppy emulator and you will have 32GB floppys ;o).
http://www.lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=42
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Germany
It could be you have a single-sided external floppy drive. There is SF314 (double-density / 720 kb) and 354 (single density / 360 kb). And fedepede04 is right, if you have normal hd disks, you can use some e.g. tape to cover the left hole to "convert" it to double-density, but for single-density it is rather hopeless. Good luck 
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Joliette, QC, Canada
fedepede04 wrote:
you can use normal floppys, block the hole at the upper left corner, and format the disk with this parameters
format a: /t:80/n:9now they should work
You can do it with windows too ! (if you have XP or older !)
Tinctu wrote:
Buy Lotharek´s SD card floppy emulator and you will have 32GB floppys ;o).
http://www.lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=42
Talking about SDs...don't forget about Satandisk or Ultrasatan !!! 
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uk
Thanks guys I will be having a bash at this tonight. What software would you lot recommend for music making ATM I'm using lsdj and lgpt but want to involve. The Atari
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Germany
Well, for YM-chiputnes the usual picks MaxYMiser (http://www.preromanbritain.com/maxymiser), Musicmon, Triplex, Sidsound Designer. Download at http://dhs.nu/files.php?t=chipeditor
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Joliette, QC, Canada
XLR8 if you are stuck with an high res monitor !
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Seattle, WA, USA
+1 for MaxYMiser assuming you aren't using a monochrome screen.
I have had some bad experiences with floppies made with Windows running on an ST. Rainbow TOS seems to be the solution. Check the about screen: http://www.larwe.com/museum/img/tos_about.gif
If it says 1985, you have an older (stock) TOS. Rainbow TOS will say something like 85, 86, 88, 89.
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The Rubber Man
kimbersprophet:
> Thanks guys I will be having a bash at this tonight. What software would you lot recommend for music making ATM I'm using lsdj and lgpt but want to involve The Atari
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What 505 said.
With a note, however, that we don't actually know what amount of RAM You have in the 520.
If You have only stock 512Kb, then MusicMon will not work (I've just checked it out). You'd need at least 1Mb.
But worry not - there is a special version of maxYMizer that works on 512Kb machine.
Still, I suspect You should have 1Mb after all.
________EDIT_______
If You'd prefer to use the Atari as a digital background for Your GameBoy, then You might also take a look to this small article -
http://www.atarimusic.net/forum/topic?f=124&t=107
.
Last edited by YERZMYEY (Nov 22, 2012 9:25 am)