3.5" Floppy drive?

[Peri Noid]

I'll just leave it here

😉

[Peri Noid]

And this as well

[Vyvyan B.]

I had looked up the Zaxon board when it was mentioned earlier in this thread, that one seems to use a slimline laptop drive with a ZIF connector that is intended to be mounted (and powered) internally. This one seems quite a bit different with more components and uses the 34p connector so a full height 3.5" can by used in an external enclosure.

 

Edited October 9, 2022 by Vyvyan B.

[Mark2008]

I had a zaxon Toms 720 clone, with 3.5" mech.  Also an Iomega USB Floppy drive.  I could format a disk on the PC/Win10 machine, download xex file and plop that drive in the Toms 720, and read it on the Atari, thanks to the Fat12a.sys driver in spartados x.

 

Of course people are achieving that workflow, that interopability with their PC using SD cards.... but I liked doing it with a 3.5" floppy.  I'm using past tense, because the drive didn't survive "the purge" where once a year it's OK to kill Atari equipment.    That was entirely my fault.  The 5v barrel is the same size as also my  9v power supplies. I was moving the drive, got called away...came back, plugged the wrong plug in it...boom, dead.

 

Sigh....which is why my current setup is all XF551, pure stock..and all my power supplies are labelled right on the plug now, but they are all also 9v, no mismatches.  It's 5.25", high speed, 360k, pure stock goodness for me now.  Frankly 360k is swimming in space.    I still download on the pc and move files over, but with a sio2sd these days.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Mark2008

[TopGunBBS86]

On 9/12/2022 at 12:37 AM, oracle_jedi said:

I have a 3.5 inch modded XF551 for my Atari 8-bits - using Dropcheck's replacement PCB.   I like the format.   It holds enough 8-bit games that one disk can keep me entertained for a while, and the label is large enough to list out most of the titles, so I can flip through the disks in a disk box to find the one I am interested in.

 

If you really want a 3.5 drive for your 8bit get an XF551, one of Dropcheck's replacement PCBs, a Hyper-FX ROM and a 720k drive mech.  If you're like me you'll love it and have fun creating huge PicoDOS game menu disks with all of your favorite games on them.

oracle_jedi,

I'm with you 100%.  There's something VERY satisfying about the 3.5in floppy.  In the early 90s, When I finally upgraded to my first Windows PC with a 3.5in drive, I always said, "Damn, I wish I had one of these for my 800 XL all these years.  My nostalgia of the format made it a no-brainer to spend a few bucks on Zaxxon's FIRST generation A8 3.5in drive.  I painted it off-white and marked it as a poseur 1055 drive.  I know the storage media is not as secure as 5-1/4", and an SD card solution would put everything in one basket.  I don't care.  I just love the CLICK of a 3.5in floppy.  I want my data backup up onto MULTIPLE formats.  I still have all my original 5-1/4 disks in storage, but PLAY off 3.5in disks.
.

May I consider you a veteran with this format?  I have a few questions:

1) The only A8 DOS's that support 720kb are SpartaDOS X, MyDOS 4.5x, and LiteDOS correct?
2) Do you know of a good SECTOR COPIER that will read from and write to 720kb disks?

I have ported over a bunch of 130kb physical floppies and ATR images onto 3.5in, even if it is a waste of space.
I tried to create large *.EXE game archives onto 3.5in disk using MyPico DOS.  I only got so far.  It crashed before I maxed out the 720K (2867 free sectors).
I have even compiled a bunch of 720kb ATRs in Windows using AspeQt.

3) How can I copy these MAXED out 720kb ATRs onto blank 3.5in disks?

If you figured out the best process for compiling *.EXEs onto 3.5in disks, I am kinda stuck.
Thank you for the help.

[TopGunBBS86]

On 10/9/2022 at 8:49 AM, Peri Noid said:

And this as well

That is how we say in America...HAUTE!

Same question as I asked OracleJedi...do you know of a sector copier that will read and write 720kb disks / ATRs?

[Peri Noid]

16 minutes ago, TopGunBBS86 said:

Same question as I asked OracleJedi...do you know of a sector copier that will read and write 720kb disks / ATRs?

I use HDSC copier that works under SDX. It is a command line tool so no fancy GUI available but does it's job. 

[TopGunBBS86]

13 minutes ago, Peri Noid said:

I use HDSC copier that works under SDX. It is a command line tool so no fancy GUI available but does it's job. 

Thank you for the feedback.  I am not super-fluent in SpartaDOS X.  Maybe you can help me?
Say I have a 720kb ATR loaded onto a virtual drive D2 (via AspeQt),
and a blank formatted 720kb floppy disk inserted into by 3.5in drive, allocated as D1.
What would be the complete command line syntax for the HDSC copier, to copy D2 onto D1?
Thanks again.

[Peri Noid]

Try this:

 

HDSC -I -B -C=2880 D2: D1:

Edited December 31, 2022 by Peri Noid

[Peter Kmet]

With technology like Fujinet NOS, does it even make sense to further develop 3.5"-IDE-drive-to SDX hardware/software? Having Fujinet with USB Mass storage would let you use standard 3.5" mass-storage floppy drive with FAT32 for compatibility. NOS offloads filesystem management to external CPU (ESP32) in the similar way like 1050's 6807 offloads sector reading back in the day.

[Peri Noid]

Why? Because we can. That's why. 

[Peter Kmet]

15 minutes ago, Peri Noid said:

Why? Because we can. That's why. 

Because it's 2023 first of all. And yes, because we can today. We can make it simple. We can save valuable Atari RAM for application, not for fiddling with sector-to-file translation. We couldn't do that in 1980.

[+CharlieChaplin]

9 hours ago, TopGunBBS86 said:

That is how we say in America...HAUTE!

Same question as I asked OracleJedi...do you know of a sector copier that will read and write 720kb disks / ATRs?

 

There are several sector copy programs for the A8 that will copy up to 16MB (HDSC being one of them), but I don't like that I have to type in parameters like in, ermmm, MS-DOS. I prefer simple menus, e.g. for 720k choose DS (double-sided), DD (double density), 80T (80 tracks) and off you go. Attached are two copy programs that can copy 720k without problems.

 

- for Copymate 3.8 press TAB, then Return (or Return then TAB) to copy a 720k diskette. The program supports up to 256k XRAM, Rambo/Newell type (320k RAM total) and afaik, ultraspeed for USD and / or Happy, but NOT Speedy and afaik also does not support Hyper-XF speed - so when copying 720k this runs with 1x SIO, except you have an alternative OS with built-in ultraspeed, then it may run faster...

 

- for Disk Duplication 2.0 choose: 1) copy whole disk, then 4) 80 Trks, DS, then 2) double density, then enter source and destination drives, format Yes or no, display sector yes or no; alternatively you can choose to copy sectors: 2) sector copy, starting sector: 1, ending sector: 2880, 4) 80 trks, ds, 2) double density, source drive, destination drive, format, display sector; thats quite a lot of menus and options to choose from, but sooner or later you will know what to choose; the program will read/write approx. 20k in one go, so either use two drives or use your XRAM (e.g. if running this program under MyDOS, you can choose almost all available XRAM, except a small portion reserved for DUP.SYS so you can return to DOS/DUP when finished; you can also install an ultraspeed driver and the program will then work with ultraspeed or Hyper-XF speed)

 

NOTE: *.COM and *.XEX are the same programs (backups)...

COPY720K.zip

[+CharlieChaplin]

The following A8 DOS versions do support 720k disks:

 

- SpartaDOS 3.x (disk-based), SDFS;

- SDX (cart-based), SDFS

- Bewe-DOS (can read+write 720k, but not format; can be copied onto a SDFS 720k disk),

- Real DOS, SDFS

- MyDOS 4.5x (I guess also several older versions?)

- LiteDOS

- any others I forgot? (Maybe DOS XE with the external DOS XE formatter?)

 

* SDFS = these DOS versions use the Sparta DOS File System