There is a big banker box about ¾ full of floppy disks for the Atari8bit sitting next to my hobby bench. They are from several systems that were purchased just before putting my 8bit equipment into storage. I’m starting on a quest to see if their content is of any interest.

I was waiting to get an SIO2SD but the label glue is drying out and the labels don’t always fall into the sleeves with the disk. I guess that is part of what’s going to make this interesting.

Disk #001 was an unlabeled back up copies of a recent Diamond project. After checking to be sure it wasn’t my archive copy, the disk got formatted using Atari DOS 2.5.

Disk #002 – Side 1 Has DOSII Double Dens.V2 and the MMG BASIC compiler on it. Side 2 is Atari DOS 2.0s compatible with many S.A.M. programs. This disk is a keeper. I just hope I remember it the next time I find my S.A.M. Boot Disk.

Disk #003 – The surprise I was looking for.

Booting up with this disk took me to the “DOS XE System Function Menu”. Having never formatted a disk with DOS XE I figured this was not from my collection. At the bottom of the screen it said, “SET TO WHAT DATE?” I hesitated long enough to think that this could be my first Y2K problem, but not long enough to read how the month had to be entered. OH, well.

Once I figured that sending the directory to S: made it much easier to read. It appeared that the disk was created on or around 27OC91(October 27, 1991). What was surprising was that three of the files were MIXMATCH.APP, VIEW83.APP, and DESKTOP.INF. Could this possibly be a DIAMOND disk?

Rebooting with the Diamond cartridge took me back to the Set Date option. Got to the MAIN MENU and hit Exit to Cartridge. That is when the Diamond Desktop appeared. Most of the files listed in the window were DOS XE system files or Diamond files that I had seen before. At this point there were 2 files with unknown content; WELCOME.BAS and S.

This appeared on the screen when I quit to BASIC and ran WELCOME.BAS.

“WELCOME TO DOS XE AND ATARI BASIC

THIS SAMPLE PROGRAM IS PROVIDED

SO YOU CAN EXPERIMENT WITH THE

‘SETUP.COM’ PROGRAM.

GOOD LUCK!

READY”

The file “S” was clicked and the view option selected. This file contained the disk directory, which was puzzling until I remember that when trying to get the directory in DOS XE it asked me for a destination. Once I typed “S” and when I didn’t see the directory I tried “S:”. Mystery Solved and the disk is now on top of my “ok to format” pile.

There remains one last question that is unlikely to be answered. If I bought this guy’s system and he had disks for Diamond, how come I only have the Diamond cartridge I purchased direct from Reeve Soft?