For those of you that love the look of your original equipment Hard Drives. Why not Modernize them?

[+SoulBuster]

I have several MF30s, MF44s, No-Name brands with an AdSCSI/Supra installed, ICD HD, Supra, etc.  Several of these items do not work, are hard to find parts and hard drives for, but damn it, I just like the looks of this old equipment.  So I though about modernizing them and keeping the retro look in my Atari Setups.

 

It is possible to modernize them and make use of these old cases with two items plus the old case

1. ACSI-SCSI Adapter Series II from Inventronik GmbH - This item is an ACSI to SCSI adapter, similar to ICDs AdSCSI.  I have not had an experience with these. I have so many AdSCSIs and Link IIs, I will not need to buy one any time soon.

2. codesrc - SCSI2SD or even a real Hard Drive

 

The ACSI-SCSI Adapter Series II comes with the 20 pin and 50 pin cables needed for connecting drives.  If you de-solder the 19 pin D-sub from the case's original interface and solder the 20 pin cable included with the ACSI-SCSI Adapter Series II to it, you can use regular ACSI cables on the outside of the case to connect your modernized drive to your Atari.

 

You can see a modified MF44 that I have that uses this technique, but uses an AdSCSI interface here. An ACSI-SCSI Adapter Series II would work just as well.  You will need to scroll down a bit.  As the caption in the other thread states, I received that MF44 with the AdSCSI installed in it already.  I secured it down better, replaced the SyQuest 44 with a SyQuest 200 and added the SCIS2SD to the extra HD drive bracket that MF44s come with.

 

What do you get when you do this?  The SCSI2SD that I used was version 5.0, and can be configured to use up to 4 SCSI IDs.  Newer ones may be able to have more IDs, not known for sure.  The ICD AdSCSI and Link II do not have the 1 gig limit like a straight ACSI device and the ACSI-SCSI Adapter Series II most likely does not either, since it is newer.  I am using 32 gig Micro SD cards and have them configured for 1 SCSI target at 32 gigs and partition from there. From my experience, this is not possible on an original MF44 motherboard as it only allows 1 drive per port (there are 2) and each drive is limited to 1 gig.  I partition everything for TOS 1.04 at 512 MB a partition so I can move the devices between any of my Atari Computers (ST, STE, Falcon with SCSI case, TT ACSI or SCSI case) and it remains compatible.

 

For the MF44, you get the SD card for partitioning how you like, plus the external port which can be any external accessible SCSI device.  SyQuest XXX, CD ROM, Zip Drive, Jazz drive, etc.  With a blank faceplate, it can also house a regular SCSI HD.

 

The MF30/MF60/SH204, get converted to being SCSI devices and you can eliminate the MFM/RLL drives that are needed for those units.  It is getting very tough to find these drives any more.  Of course you lose the external accessible drive, but a regular SCSI HD can be installed.

 

Similar to the above, Supra/ICD/No-Name brands can be setup in the same fashion.

 

Post your experience here on your conversion of your device.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Well, considering sizes of old and today 'in' mass storage, it is really not problem to place some modern adapter and media (in most cases SD card) in case of old hard drive case. For me biggest question is noise - how to achieve that it produce similar one as old hard disks + maybe cooling fan ? Well, if old disk still spins, PSU is operational, that's solved pretty well.

 

"The external limit per drive on the ACSI port is 1 gig," - that's just not correct.  It is actually SW, original ACSI protocol limit. And ICD overrode it some 25 years ago, by solving sending 8 byte SCSI commands instead by ACSI protocol used  5 byte (SASI) commands.

Funny thing to read such thing when plenty of people using UltraSatan attached to ACSI port, with SD cards of 4-16 GB typically now. And that 16 GB stays for 1 drive only (1 target #) . I tested UltraSatan with 32 and 64 GB SD cards, and 30x 1 GB partitions (iTOS) ant it works fine - single target.  And 30 GB fills well 32 GB SD card, as real  capacity is always less. 

The real limit is TOS, Basic ACSI protocol. But that was made more than 30 years ago. And it is possible to modernize both, while keeping original TOS, Desktop look ?

[+SoulBuster]

11 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Well, considering sizes of old and today 'in' mass storage, it is really not problem to place some modern adapter and media (in most cases SD card) in case of old hard drive case. For me biggest question is noise - how to achieve that it produce similar one as old hard disks + maybe cooling fan ? Well, if old disk still spins, PSU is operational, that's solved pretty well.

I like the retro look of the older drives, so the noise is really not a problem for me and it is expected.

12 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

"The external limit per drive on the ACSI port is 1 gig," - that's just not correct.  It is actually SW, original ACSI protocol limit. And ICD overrode it some 25 years ago, by solving sending 8 byte SCSI commands instead by ACSI protocol used  5 byte (SASI) commands.

ICD overrode it some 25 years ago?  Is that because of their HD software?  if so, HDDriver and your SW does the same thing?  I stand corrected.  I will have to test this out on my modified MF44.

20 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Funny thing to read such thing when plenty of people using UltraSatan attached to ACSI port, with SD cards of 4-16 GB typically now. And that 16 GB stays for 1 drive only (1 target #) . I tested UltraSatan with 32 and 64 GB SD cards, and 30x 1 GB partitions (iTOS) ant it works fine - single target.  And 30 GB fills well 32 GB SD card, as real  capacity is always less. 

The real limit is TOS, Basic ACSI protocol. But that was made more than 30 years ago. And it is possible to modernize both, while keeping original TOS, Desktop look ?

We have discussed this before. I will never buy that unit because of the name.  There are others that agree with me, but I will test the single target on my Modified MF44 and see how large I can go.

[+DarkLord]

Hmm, just so I've got this right. You're saying you won't buy a Satandisk or an Ultrasatan

because it has "satan" in it's name? Just curious.

 

Oh...never mind...I guess you won't reply to my post because I use the alias "DarkLord".

 

 

 

[ParanoidLittleMan]

There are other devices what can over 1 GB - Gigafile, original ICD ADIplus adapters for SCSI disks  - they established so called  ICD ACSI protocol, and modern devices use it too. Or Mega STE internal ACSI-SCSI adapter modded by me, and others after:

http://atari.8bitchip.info/modmste1.html

I mentioned UltraSatan simply because it is most spread.  Blame Jookie for name.

[+SoulBuster]

41 minutes ago, DarkLord said:

Hmm, just so I've got this right. You're saying you won't buy a Satandisk or an Ultrasatan

because it has "satan" in it's name? Just curious.

 

Oh...never mind...I guess you won't reply to my post because I use the alias "DarkLord".

 

 

 

Because of the name? Yes

To me, your handle is not the same.

16 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

There are other devices what can over 1 GB - Gigafile, original ICD ADIplus adapters for SCSI disks  - they established so called  ICD ACSI protocol, and modern devices use it too. Or Mega STE internal ACSI-SCSI adapter modded by me, and others after:

http://atari.8bitchip.info/modmste1.html

I mentioned UltraSatan simply because it is most spread.  Blame Jookie for name.

You mention ADIPLUS, do you mean AdSCSI plus?  So I should be able to put on a drive over 1gig on my AdSCSi devices? Does that also work for Link II devices?

[ParanoidLittleMan]

9 hours ago, SoulBuster said:

You mention ADIPLUS, do you mean AdSCSI plus?  So I should be able to put on a drive over 1gig on my AdSCSi devices? Does that also work for Link II devices?

That could be correct name, I just saw that ADIPLUS somewhere recently. I had it, but not anymore. Probably that plus in name means exactly that is capable over 1 GB - with their driver, for instance. Can't say for Link II, but I'm sure that google is smarter in it than me ?

 

[+SoulBuster]

18 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

That could be correct name, I just saw that ADIPLUS somewhere recently. I had it, but not anymore. Probably that plus in name means exactly that is capable over 1 GB - with their driver, for instance. Can't say for Link II, but I'm sure that google is smarter in it than me ?

 

It'll do some testing and report back

 

 

 

[+SoulBuster]

So after some testing. I am able to set up the SCSI2SD device as 1 target at 32 gigs and partition from there from either an AdSCSI or a Link II.  I even copied the entire C drive to the P drive (the last partition) and then erased it with no malfunctions.  I know using a 32 gig SD card is a waste, but when you have tons of them and they all cost near nothing, who cares.

 

I modified the OP to reflect the changes.

 

Thanks PLM.

[+SoulBuster]

So I decided to also test the Supra interface.  The Copyright 1989 version is limited to 1 gig drives. But unlike the MF44, it does allow you to use all 4 SCSI IDs the SCSI2SD has available. for TOS 1.04 that gives you 8 partitions at 512 MB each.  I supposed you could use a second SCSI2SD to get your partitions out to Drive P.  I personally like to withhold a couple drive letters for temporary add-on drives.

[+SoulBuster]

So all you guys that have an ICD AdSCSI Plus interface or a Link II, can add a SCSI2SD interface to your existing HD case and have massive storage relatively inexpensively.

 

If you have a Supra Interface, you can get up to 4 gigs out of it, depending your number of open SCSI IDs.

 

If you have a case with a non-working Interface, you can also get an ACSI-SCSI Adapter Series II plus a SCSI2SD and get massive storage.  Remember, you will need to use one of the DB19 ports from the old interface soldered to the 20 pin cable that is included with the ACSI-SCSI Adapter Series II.  This allows you to use regular external ACSI cables.

 

You can get all this while maintaining the retro look (original cases and ICD/Supra Interfaces) of your system.

[+SoulBuster]

I just read up on the ACSI-SCSI Adapter Series II.  The ACSI-SCSI Adapter Series II can use SCSI III disk drives and is compatible with the AdSCSI plus, so it will work with single target 32 gig SD Cards as a single drive.

 

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Well, problem of how to use space above  7 GB (as TOS limit of max 14 parts. of max half GB capacity) was already present many years ago - then with larger capacity drives, not Flash cards which had max capacity under 1 GB around 2006-8.  And solution was to create FAT32 or Lunux type partitions on extra space. That was usable with Mint for instance.

Or there was BigDOS - program for STs, Falcon, what supports DOS FAT16 partitions up to 2 GB size.  And maybe more than 14 partitions, don't remember exactly. It is well made SW, but eats some RAM (of course) and compatibility with diverse SW might be problem.

 

Then, there are IDE drives, which are supported by factory Atari Falcon and ST Book. TOS 2.06, TOS 4.xx .  And they were always cheaper than SCSI, IDE adapter was cheaper too, only that needs some soldering work, as it must go inside computer - except if goes on cartridge port.  And there were diverse capacity limits with IDE drives, called in begin AT-Bus disks.  Like max 512 MB capacity, the reason was CHS addressing of sectors, what originates from MFM drives with which early IDE was driver SW compatible. Around 1990 was time to introduce new, LBA addressing mode (what was present by SCSI at beginning). LBA used 28 bits for sector addressing, what means max 128 GB capacity - was fine for some 15 years.  And around 2005 LBA 48 was introduced - I let you, reader to calculate how big hard disk capacity can be addresses with 48 bits ?

I mention this, because I had some 160-200 GB IDE drives, and that needed adding LBA 48 mode into driver, so can access area over 128 GB . Well , then appeared that Mint versions of that time couldn't handle very large FAT32 partitions. Damn HW manufacturers, always step ahead ! ?

OK, back to our good old TOS, and good new Flash and cheap cards:  32 GB SD cards were mentioned, and yes, they can be now bought for about 10 bucks.  We have now diverse adapters (or combination of 2 adapters in row) with which can use such cards, so not only those with evil name. But what about OS for Atari ST(E), so we can access more than 7 GB area on modern storage media ?

Yeah, that was why I went in hard work of improving TOS 1.04, 1.62 (pretty much the same, 1.06 is from same year as 1.04, and 1.62 did not change anything in disk code) - 3 years ago, knowing that it will be very hard. The result is visible here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RCAt_2B5s8

Same thing can be achieved with IDE adapters, drives, CF cards, SCSI hard disk drives ...

And if you look better can see that driver uses only 2506 bytes - not only max sector sizes, count is better, but logical sector sizes too, what makes possible work with smaller buffers (which eat most space when hard disk driver is activated under regular TOS) .

 

Couple more interesting things:  29520 MB is capacity detected for 32 GB SD card - bug in driver SW ? Of course not, that's exact capacity, because real capacity is always less - that makes possible so low prices.  Yes, storage (Flash EPROM chip(s) have capacity of that 32 GB when manufacturing (so 32 G x 8 cells), but plenty of it appears unreliable, not working, so they are excluded when it is tested. It is possible to make it with all cells OK, but then manufacturing would cost like 100x more . And don't forget, it will not last forever - every write is a bit destructive.

This reminds me about Simbo - he claimed that I talk stupidity, and when it says 1 GB that's whole 1 GB . Should stick to soldering iron only ?   Btw. someone sent me some 10 years ago SD card marked as 2 GB because worked unreliable and strange, to examine.

On my surprise, capacity detection shown exact 2 GB capacity. Then, it appeared that when accessing area above 1GB it starts to write to begin of card . Yes, clear case of forged capacity - it was actually 1 GB card, sold as 2.  And nicest thing is that it died by me after only few hours of usage - end of story and time wasting because thieves.

Supporting more than max 14 partitions is welcome too in case of attached multiple drives, media - because TOS limit stays for total count of partitions, on all attached medias. So, if on first there is for instance 12 of them on first, only first 2 from second can be handled by TOS, and that's not really practical when want to do some file transfers between cards, disks .

 

Edited April 25, 2021 by ParanoidLittleMan
clarifying

[+SoulBuster]

There is some good info in there, thanks.

 

For me, I like to keep to the original TOS for the most compatibility but I do use Teradesk for the desktop.  I also run SyQuest drives on all four of my setups.  This gives me an easy way to transfer files between computers and also gives me a way to store stuff on removeable media when necessary. The way I setup the SD cards internally in the HD case, it is not practical to use them to transfer files or for removeable media storage.

[+DarkLord]

You probably already know this but I thought I'd throw it out

there anyway.

 

You can change the bootup name of those devices. Of course

that won't change their original name but at least on screen,

you'd get a different name.

 

Just a thought and HTHs...

 

PS And I'm like Peter - I have no earthly idea why Jookie named

those devices what he did. Also wish he had chosen differently.

 

[+SoulBuster]

7 hours ago, DarkLord said:

You can change the bootup name of those devices. Of course

that won't change their original name but at least on screen,

you'd get a different name.

 

That actually does not matter as it is imprinted on the PCB

 

[ParanoidLittleMan]

On 4/25/2021 at 5:32 AM, SoulBuster said:

...

For me, I like to keep to the original TOS for the most compatibility  ...

Original TOS is for sure most compatible with old, classic Atari SW. But as we know that's still not enough for all SW, some just don't like newer TOS versions, for instance.

However, what about compatibility of original TOS with modern computer components, file sizes, and 'modern' years ?

Yes, people who still using old Ataris with original TOS versions have pretty good chances to experience:

No Y2K compatibility.

Crash when it is set to textual mode in Desktop, with file sizes at 10 MB and more.

Limited compatibility with wide spread and still supported on modern computers FAT16 partitions.

Limited count and size of partitions. Better said, those limits are now too bad, when like 32 GB SD cards are really cheap, and it is hard to find lower capacity ones.

 

All those flaws can be fixed without losing compatibility.

Fixing Y2K, large file sizes displaying was simple.  Fixing FAT16 was very hard. Yes, I say fixing - because it was just not done properly. Atari and DRI decided to make compatible FAT12 for floppies, and compatible FAT16 for hard disks. Clear indicator of it is using low Endian byte order in that. And yes, hard disk partitions are compatible until size of 32 MB.  Floppies are compatible, better said were, MS is who limited floppy support somewhere around 2000, so can not read usual Atari formatted floppies.

Why partitions above 32 MB size are not compatible with wide spread DOS FAT16 ?  I say, after years of examination, reading diverse articles, some C source comments - the main culprit is used Alcyon C Compiler . It was just not grown up to task - and programmers needed to avoid 32-bit unsigned integers. Which are well supported by 68000 CPU. And here is the core of problem: at 32 MB size sector count goes over 2 POW 16 = 65536, and then need to use 32-bit variable for that.

But no, TOS programmers kept it on 16 bits. And I'm pretty much sure that it was because had no other choice with that compiler - well there was one - doing all it in ASM ? No way then, especially not in limited time. + DRI programmers attitude was:  C is king, ASM is for amateurs. And they solved it with so called large logical sectors.  And it looks like:  partition size: 260 MB - sector count must be less than 65536, so logical sector size is (and it must be power of 2): 8 KB, or 16 normal sector size.   That self means not so efficient work, especially with shorter files, need for larger buffers, etc.

I was aware above it long time ago. And without C sources, proper compiler for it only solution was accurate disassembling, and correcting all it in ASM.

The good thing is that despite new FAT16 code is little longer, all it was shorter for some 3 KB because optimizations used - another flaw of old compiler - lack of optimizations (like using short address when it is possible).

And nicest thing is that so improved FAT16 in TOS is fully compatible with usual hard disk drivers, disks which use them. So, it is not mod, but as I call it: improving - making it more flexible, without losing ability to work with old formats. Plus, it does not need extra RAM for buffers when works with DOS or TOS/DOS compatible partitions.

Then, there is no more 32K cluster limit, it is 64 K, as should be in FAT16 - btw. it was 16K with TOS 1.00-1.02 .

And I did not change RAM layout at all, all original variables are on same place, no extra RAM needed, SW will start on same addresses as with regular 1.04 or 1.62. Pardon, if using mass storage, will start on lower addresses because of smaller buffers - ergo more free RAM for it.