SIO2SD--make real floppies

[nd2003grad]

I can't figure this out and I'm new to this whole thing.

 

I've got quite a few new old stock types of floppies. I successfully (I think) formatted them. I have a couple of questions about what I'm trying to do.

 

1. Do I put a "Dos" on all of them?

2. I want to copy files from SIO2SD to them to make game and other disks. How do I do this? I'm having some trouble with setting the drive number on the SIO2SD as I know it is multiple drives, but I'm not sure how the 800 sees the floppy drive (currently set as "1") vs. the SIO2SD.

2 1/2: If I copy an .atr file to a floppy, does that take up the entire floppy, or can another ATR be extracted to it as well if room?

3. I didn't even want this system. I love it so much; how wrong I was.

4. Thanks!

 

Looking forward to hearing. Have tried MyDos, Dos 2.5, and Disk Wizard with differing errors.

[Guest]

one way of tackling the "multi games to disk" issue is to use disk create - see below

 

as reagrds your second question, an ATR is a complete disk image file - so you can't really add to these "on the fly".

the only way you can "add" to an ATR is to use a pc program like makeatr to edit the contents

or, create a real disk and edit the contents using your atari/1050.

 

disk create.zipmakeATR_v0.06.zipATRutil.zip

Edited September 4, 2016 by Guest

[FifthPlayer]

Q1: You only need to put DOS on disks you want to boot from. Once the system boots from a disk with DOS, you can load files from other disks even if they don't have DOS on them.

 

Q2: The SIO2SD unit actually emulates more than one disk drive. I'd go into the SIO2SD menu and make sure that you have turned "OFF" any simulated disk drives that exist in real life. For instance, if you have a real 1050 as disk 2, make sure disk 2 is turned "OFF" in the SIOS2SD.

 

Q3: As brenski said, an ATR is a complete disk image. It's not an archiving format like ZIP. You can't mix/match.

 

 

Once you have an ATR mounted in the SIO2SD, you can copy individual files to a real floppy from the Atari DOS menu. You can copy the whole disk to a real floppy disk using the "Duplicate Disk" feature in DOS, or by using one of the many sector copier programs available for the 8-bit.

 

Finally, if what you want to do is make an auto-boot multi-game disk that lets you pick a game to run, you don't need to use Atari DOS. There's several different mini-DOSes that provide just enough support to load games, and let you choose the game you want to run from a menu. These DOSes are smaller so leave more disk space for games. A good one is MyPicoDOS: http://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/#mypdos

Edited September 4, 2016 by FifthPlayer

[nd2003grad]

So if I'm hearing this right, the first thing I really need is a floppy with one of the DOS's on it. I can run drive 2 from that system, and mounting the ATR to say, Drive 3 with SIO2SD I can duplicate all the files of the games to the floppy. This sounds excellent. I'll try it tonight.

[nd2003grad]

one way of tackling the "multi games to disk" issue is to use disk create - see below

 

as reagrds your second question, an ATR is a complete disk image file - so you can't really add to these "on the fly".

the only way you can "add" to an ATR is to use a pc program like makeatr to edit the contents

or, create a real disk and edit the contents using your atari/1050.

 

disk create.zipmakeATR_v0.06.zipATRutil.zip

I just realized you misunderstood me. I know you can't add to an ATR file, I meant can you add the contents of additional ATR files to the same physical disk. I do believe this has been answered in the positive. Thank you!

[nd2003grad]

Additional question I've got on this--is it possible to boot disk 2/run said auto-boot multi-game disk with SIO2SD still mounted as "disk 1?" Or, if I change in the config setting the number of SIO2SD temporarily and always leave 1050 as disk 1 in the back, will that revert to letting me boot from the floppy drive? SO MUCH TO LEARN.

[FifthPlayer]

Additional question I've got on this--is it possible to boot disk 2/run said auto-boot multi-game disk with SIO2SD still mounted as "disk 1?" Or, if I change in the config setting the number of SIO2SD temporarily and always leave 1050 as disk 1 in the back, will that revert to letting me boot from the floppy drive? SO MUCH TO LEARN.

 

The Atari will boot only from drive 1. So if your SIO2SD is configured as disk 1, you need to mount an ATR image on the SIO2SD with a bootable DOS in order to boot the system.

[Rybags]

The easiest way to create floppies would be to create the ATR images on a PC first. Either in emulator or using PC based tools to populate the images.

Keeping in mind of course that you have the physical limit imposed by whatever drive type you're using, ie 88K for 810, 130K for 1050 as opposed to 16Meg for large ATR on emulated devices.

 

Once you have your images then just drop them all onto your SIO2SD's SD card and copy them to real disks using the Atari.

[Guest]

I just realized you misunderstood me. I know you can't add to an ATR file, I meant can you add the contents of additional ATR files to the same physical disk. I do believe this has been answered in the positive. Thank you!

no i didn't.

i've answered your question correctly.

you can't stick 2x ATR files to the same physical floppy disk - well not on the same side of the disk in any case.

 

reason:

ATR files are a complete disk image - usually 90k, 131k or 180k. these comprise an entire side of a physical floppy disk and include the formatting instructions.

therefore your ATR - when written out - will format the disk to the size of the image, leaving no space on the disk for another ATR.

 

hope this helps to explain

 

 

my solution (above) is the way round this

[Madi]

I just realized you misunderstood me. I know you can't add to an ATR file, I meant can you add the contents of additional ATR files to the same physical disk. I do believe this has been answered in the positive. Thank you!

If I understand your words correctly, you want to add individual files from another ATR image to the 5.25 disk inside a physical drive. The answer is generally yes.

Suppose, You have a floppy disk in 1050 drive that contains 5 files (e.g. two of the 5 files are DOS.SYS and DUP.SYS) the free sectors are 134 sectors.

If you you configure your SIO2SD as DISK #2.

You could boat the disk on 1050 as drive #1 go to dos. look at the files inside disk image in drive 2. and copy files form DOS menu from D2: to D1 (phisical).

In this example, you can move 2 8k games or 1 16K game to the physical disk before it becomes full.

As brenski had explained, you can not copy more than one ATR image to one side of the 5.25 physical disk, but you can copy many/few of containing files from the ATR image to the physical disk as much as the free space allows.

 

Of course you can boot from SIO2SD as disk #1 as FifthPlayer had mentioned and configure the physical disk as drive #2 and perform the copy task.

 

Edit: If the ATR image is a self booting sequential program (one segment) like most of the commercial games are, then you "generally" can not. (needs further work).

 

madi

Edited September 5, 2016 by Madi

[Spanner]

I had a problem with the computer seen the drive,what I did was..

 

I copy atr files with Copy 2000,so you load up the atr of Copy 2000 in slot 1,made sure you change the switch at the back of the drive so the computer(atari) sees it as D2(the swich is on the left,facing the back of the drive,you need a pen or a screwdriver,put it in the slot and push it to the right to change device number),press and hold Option while turning on the computer,when Copy 2000 says you disk drive,EG D2,D3,make sure you don't have a image in that slot.

 

If you don't need to format use Select to change it before starting to copy,when you are ready,put the disk in the drive and press the Start button on the computer twice.then it will start reading from your PC and them start Formating then writing to your drive,once done,if you want to boot from the drive put the switch back to the way it was and disconnect the PC from SIO2PC,Press and hold Option and turn on the computer and it will boot the disk.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited September 5, 2016 by Spanner

[Madi]

I had a problem with the computer seen the drive,what I did was..

 

I copy atr files with Copy 2000,so you load up the atr of Copy 2000 in slot 1,made sure you change the switch at the back of the drive so the computer(atari) sees it as D2(the swich is on the left,facing the back of the drive,you need a pen or a screwdriver,put it in the slot and push it to the right to change device number),press and hold Option while turning on the computer,when Copy 2000 says you disk drive,EG D2,D3,make sure you don't have a image in that slot.

.

.

 

Please see the replay HERE at the original post.

madi

[Spanner]

 

Please see the replay HERE at the original post.

madi

Replied to it,I had the problem,all ok now,just loading Cas files to sort out now.Can't get them to load.

[nd2003grad]

All right, I am missing something really simple here. How do I run a program from, say, D2 in DOS? I don't see any option to run programs or execute files. Let's say I have a game on a real floppy D2. How do I get that to run?!

[Madi]

All right, I am missing something really simple here. How do I run a program from, say, D2 in DOS? I don't see any option to run programs or execute files. Let's say I have a game on a real floppy D2. How do I get that to run?!

There are many DOSs and their derivatives around.

As a summery, see pictures.

madi