iamEVE-X
Offline
Sydney

hey chippers.
a dear friend handed down his old atari 1040 st to me a few weeks ago.

Im pretty noobey to this, it came with a floppy with cubase and some other stuff on it, which i promised i would back up for him, I would also like to run some trackers and all that stuff, I know finding the right tracker will just be trial and error, musicmon looks impressive.

I just wanted to check with some dudes who have a bit of expirence.
The only other computer I have is an 18mnth old mackbook pro, (with virtual box & windows 7)

Does anybody know if them USB floppy drives work on preferably OSX, and the ability to back up/ write ST stuff.

I know thats pretty noobey stuff, and I do apologise.

Thank you very much

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA

Hi, welcome to the Atari!
For dealing with floppies, take a look here
http://atari.8bitchip.info/floimgd.php
But it wouldn't help with the USB floppy drive. The floppy on the PC/Mac side need to be controlled at a low level that the USB interface doesn't do.
So  the options are: install a floppy on a machine OR get a SD floppy emu for the ST; like this
http://www.lotharek.pl/category.php?kid=7
Then you can transfer stuff with SD cards.
For trackers, well there are a lot of choices.
maxYMiser is a good start http://www.preromanbritain.com/maxymiser/
Yerzmyey has a break down on what he uses http://ym-digital.i-demo.pl/soft.html
But there are lots more, so look around. You'll find some great stuff out there
Yogi

irrlichtproject
Offline
Nomad's Land

I don't know about Mac and USB floppies, but generally speaking you should be fine with just about any of them, especially when using virtual box w/ windows. For the Mac side, obviously, for ST the USB drive is going to be useless of course.

Just remember the magic command to properly format floppies: 

format a: /t:80 /n:90

As for software, Musicmon is very easy to get started with. MaxYMiser is rather complex, but also more powerful.

To run Cubase, you will need a little hardware extension called the Cubase Dongle.

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA

In order to read and write ST disks on a PC/Mac, you need access to the floppy drive's controller; to setup the correct low level and high level format. A USB floppy drive doesn't allow this.
http://info-coach.fr/atari/software/FD- … dd_formats
The best solution, IMO, is to go with a HxC SD or something similar. If you are archiving some old disks it will be a bit of a pain transferring on the ST from the floppies to the SD; but you will only need to do it once. In the long run SD cards are way more reliable and moving data between the ST and PC/Mac is way easier. Just my $0.02 wink
Yogi

irrlichtproject
Offline
Nomad's Land

Ah, I didn't know that. Never bothered to back up any ST floppies tbh. I only do it the other way around, and hope the disks don't die on me during a show wink Anyway, thanks for the info, yogi.
If you want to dig deeper into things I'd certainly recommend an SD card based solution as well, but just for having a quick play with the machine it seems a bit too pricey.

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA
irrlichtproject wrote:

Ah, I didn't know that. Never bothered to back up any ST floppies tbh. I only do it the other way around, and hope the disks don't die on me during a show wink Anyway, thanks for the info, yogi.
If you want to dig deeper into things I'd certainly recommend an SD card based solution as well, but just for having a quick play with the machine it seems a bit too pricey.

Cool.
Well the OP only has a Macbook so if he wants to do anything with the ST disks, will have to commit to 'some' HW. Could think about a old A$$ PC (can find em on the side of the road) just to use the floppy interface. Keep it in a closet most the time, till you needed to transfer files. With Win98 SE and a USB thumb drive you're all set. Would definitely be very cheap if you have the space.
Yogi

irrlichtproject
Offline
Nomad's Land

Btw keep an eye on http://cortexamigafloppydrive.wordpress.com/, the guy is planning to do add firmware for Atari eventually.

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA

Interesting, Cortex ARM based ? Liking the thumb drive.
EDIT- the above link didn't show much, but this has some info
http://cortexamigafloppydrive.wordpress … -emulator/
Oh man this looks cool, really liking the 'HDD-to-USB-to-EMU Floppy'. Hoping this makes it to the Atari smile

Last edited by yogi (May 7, 2014 2:11 am)

katsumbhong
Offline
Taichung, Taiwan

St, ste, stfm?

gwEm
Offline
London

I used to use a USB floppy drive on my laptop to transfer data between Atari and OSX all the time using 720k disks. Its not ideal, but it works perfectly well and its a cheap option.

iamEVE-X
Offline
Sydney

Hi all, Thank you very much for all your replies, Im most likely going to go with the SD option, Seems to be the quickest way to do it all.

Thank you very much