Atari 520STfm ... copying games to floppy disk!

[somacast]

hi,

 

I am really in a vortex trying to get a single copied game to work on real atari hardware with no luck, below are list of things done/ checked so far:

 

1- brand new floppy disks used

2- used makedisk in free dos , by trying (makedisk /write xxx.st /auto) , when the program starts it auto detects and says 2 sides, but i don't really understand, I did cover the second hole, it means this disk should be 1 sided right? or am I missing something?!

3- no matter how many times i try, the atari says disk is not responding .. it seems that the floppy drive in it is single sided as it has on top head only foam-like pad not another reading head.. 

4- tried formatting in the atari first, didn't help !!

5- tried many roms from different sources, msa and st ..

6- replaced pc fdd , no luck.

 

i am new to atari , a commodore&amiga person entire life , so I would really appreciate any good info , i dont want to buy stuff unnecessarily. 

 

thnx

[anzac]

You should take pictures of your drive so we can say if it’s single sided (360k) present on early machines, double sided (720k) all machines up to MegaSTe with high density (1.44MB) drives. TT and Falcon only had 1.44 drives IIRC

 

You seem to have 1.44MB high density floppies and covering the second hole is a “trick” to make the host system think it has a low density disc and format it and write to it, but the media is slightly different so your results will vary.

 

if you have a very old drive (and they all are one way or another now), cleaning the mechanism is essential and sometimes even caps replacement 

 

I haver never tried nor remember hearing about trying to format a high density disc to 360k.

 

if you have a single sided drive you really need either a dual sided drive or an alternative like USB

 

 

Edited September 26, 2023 by anzac

[Tillek]

Model numbers of the equipment and perhaps even the name of one or more of the games might help.

[Tillek]

Locations are also sometimes helpful as you might have an "expert" close by.

 

[zzip]

3 hours ago, somacast said:

2- used makedisk in free dos , by trying (makedisk /write xxx.st /auto) , when the program starts it auto detects and says 2 sides, but i don't really understand, I did cover the second hole, it means this disk should be 1 sided right? or am I missing something?!

I think "second hole" indicates that it is a high-density disk, and they never worked properly in my double-density ST drive,  maybe others will have other luck,  but I'd recommend trying to find double density disks, if you can.    Or skip floppies and go to a gotek drive.

[+DarkLord]

I too always found HD (1.44) disks in my Atari ST's to be problematic (unless they were already

equipped with 1.44 drives like my Mega STe and STacy)

 

You can still get DS/DD disks from places like Amazon and more:

 

https://tinyurl.com/26bzjenr

 

I think Best Electronics still has some:

 

https://www.best-electronics-ca.com/accesori.htm

 

You can also search Ebay and find items... HTH's. 

 

[somacast]

Thank you all for the useful tips, as requested please find some photos, i know the drive isn't as clean as it should but its not the reason of the issue as i have cleaned the reading head tip with alcohol , i have taken photos of the disks i used 

 

the system serial number is a17 6 j4013987 , its 520 stfm

 

so far tried (i think) 1943.st , F1 something .st , sysinfo.msa , barbarian . st 

faulty drive of the st is really highly possible 

thnx

[TGB1718]

@somacast those floppy's are not going to work, as others have said, they have a different format/media, I've certainly

never had one even format.

 

Your drive is a single sided 360K drive, so any double sided disks are not going to work either even with the right floppy's.

 

You need to get some 720K floppy disks and try format one single sided to see if the drive is ok.

 

You said you were an Amiga person, do you have any spare disks from that system, unless it's been upgraded to HD floppy's

it's highly likely they will be 720K disks.

 

[somacast]

Thanks , in fact i do have some.. might try and see

 

but its 90% a bad drive in the atari , I've used those floppies with excellent success rate for the even more stubborn amiga format and made about 30 disks all working, struggled a bit with MSX but got 1 to work finally, however the same irresponsive behavior of the drive at first read attempt makes me doubt.

 

now I am also confused, how do i change settings auto created by makedisk ? for instance it says your rom is 820kb , so it auto selects 2 sides !! i wanna make it 1 side , funny is that it writes and verifies error free 2 sides as it says despite the fact that i have the other hole covered !! weired stuff..

 

 

also, if i buy a double side atari floppy disk drive, is it just plug & play? thnx 

 

 

anyway i will try and c 

[anzac]

You have fundamental misconceptions about how floppy drives work.

 

you've been told that the second hole has NOTHING to do with single or double sided and you keep fixated on that 

[somacast]

13 minutes ago, anzac said:

You have fundamental misconceptions about how floppy drives work.

 

you've been told that the second hole has NOTHING to do with single or double sided and you keep fixated on that 

hi , thnx for replying, i might have missed a line in the replies, no intention of opposing those who answers my lack of knowledge/ forgotten info due to long time since last done .. 

 

 

[TGB1718]

40 minutes ago, somacast said:

if i buy a double side atari floppy disk drive, is it just plug & play? thnx

Yes, as long as it's a 720K model, the 1.44MB one requires some modifications to the ST.

https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/

40 minutes ago, somacast said:

I've used those floppies with excellent success rate for the even more stubborn amiga format and made about 30 disks all working

I don't know anything about how the Amiga formatter works or what Floppy Disk controller is in the Amiga, that might be the controller

is the reason why you have some success with 1.44MB disk on the Amiga, but the ST just does not like those floppies, I've got

box fulls of them from my PC days and I know not a single one will format correctly.

Edited September 27, 2023 by TGB1718

[TGB1718]

43 minutes ago, somacast said:

for instance it says your rom is 820kb , so it auto selects 2 sides !! i wanna make it 1 side , funny is that it writes and verifies error free 2 sides as it says despite the fact that i have the other hole covered !! weired stuff..

As you now know, the hole is not for the sides, one is the write protect and the other is HD floppy detect.

As for the format completing, during the format, the software looks like it's only writing to the floppy, so will not

detect errors, when it write the FAT(disk directory) it only writes it to side A of the floppy so it will be successful.

Just down to poorly written software.

[somacast]

thnx , that was informative 

 

btw , is there a suggested name of a 320 kb rom which is will fit on a single side dd ? thnx

Edited September 27, 2023 by somacast

[somacast]

update : tried an original Amiga disk , formatted it, copied barbarian to it, doesn't read it on atari.

 

however before I give up i will need an iso thats originally just correct sized to fit , because still makedisk suggests and forces 2 sides , which wont work on my single side drive (as confirmed as per photo above)

 

 

[anzac]

16 minutes ago, somacast said:

update : tried an original Amiga disk , formatted it, copied barbarian to it, doesn't read it on atari.

 

however before I give up i will need an iso thats originally just correct sized to fit , because still makedisk suggests and forces 2 sides , which wont work on my single side drive (as confirmed as per photo above)

 

 

If you have 720k discs just try and format them on the Atari

 

if a known to be working on Amiga disc doesn’t format on the Atari to 360k you have a faulty drive, fixes to do on the power rails, you said you cleaned the drive already so if it doesn’t work…

 

if you have an Amiga, you can use its drive on the Atari. They are both 720k drives. You might have to change DS1 to DS0, might be a jumper or a resistor 

 

I know this is valid for PC drives not sure for Amiga drives 

[somacast]

22 minutes ago, anzac said:

If you have 720k discs just try and format them on the Atari

 

if a known to be working on Amiga disc doesn’t format on the Atari to 360k you have a faulty drive, fixes to do on the power rails, you said you cleaned the drive already so if it doesn’t work…

 

if you have an Amiga, you can use its drive on the Atari. They are both 720k drives. You might have to change DS1 to DS0, might be a jumper or a resistor 

 

I know this is valid for PC drives not sure for Amiga drives 

thanks alot 

 

in fact for the few diskettes I've been using, i first attempted formatting on the atari , most of them were formatted successfully (single side selected of course to match the drive type).

 

good info about atari power rails check , never knew its known for issues there , i will have to dig on that ..

 

i remember having a spare amiga floppy drive , i will c if that just works ..

 

now for trying purposes, is there an Atari game rom that is 360 kb ? it will help me verify things too..

 

in fact this atari when i bought came with 2 original atari disks , they just lead to quickly go to disk top, however when i access it from floppy a folder it says some bla bla not responding.. the only difference with those i copy is that the ones i copy are not even causing fast load to desktop so they are not even recognized..

 

[anzac]

I’m sorry

 

im Getting confused. 
 

please remember that we, as readers, don’t necessarily know by instinct to what you’re exactly referring when you say “this” or “the ones before”.

 

when possible be specific to what you’re referencing, an old 360k disc that is probably 40yo or a known to be working 720k disc.

 

also, if you really have a single sided drive, my memory says that the dual sided option to format shouldn’t even appear as an option…. 🤷‍♂️

 

should be greyed out at least 

 

in your photo of the drive I didn’t see a label with model number.

 

my steps would be to take a KNOWN to work 720k disc, format it on PC internal drive (not USB) using the proper command, copy a text file to the disc and try 

 

you can also image an empty 360k floppy on steem and copy sysinfo 

[somacast]

sorry about confusing part , its a built in feature in me , lol

 

i will c what i can do , the disk i tried was fine despite the age ..

 

good point about it should be grayed out , not sure why its selectable on a single side drive.

 

i will c what can be done , thnx alot for sharing info 

[somacast]

final update I guess as I figured out the case:

 

my Atari 520st is equipped with single sided drive

 

it formats all disks (original dd, or hd with left hole closed) , formats them to single sided 

 

how did i know? well , floimg software has the ability to read what the inserted disk is and it recognized all formatted by Atari as single sided

 

and as I have requested multiple times above i wanted a 320 kb game to confirm,  so i searched by date for oldest games nearest possible to 1985 release date and found borderzone to be so , copy , working , tried even the hd floppy with hole batched , working too ..

 

so i need to buy a double sided floppy drive , as most of roms are so ..

 

now the thing is , it looks like this atari is 512kb ram ? because post this screen with music in the game when i hit space it reads as if it will play then goes to desktop again .. ram ? 

 

thnx

 

Edited September 27, 2023 by somacast

[somacast]

here is another meaningless (((game))) ,a bouncing ball, the game is called Boeing, lol , it doesn't even auto play i had to start the file manually from disktop

 

 

[somacast]

sorry for multiple posts, first game wasn't ram issue, same thing running it from the folder its just story ? not sure

 

 

[zzip]

1 minute ago, somacast said:

here is another meaningless (((game))) ,a bouncing ball, the game is called Boeing, lol , it doesn't even auto play i had to start the file manually from disktop

 

 

Boing,  I know the game well

 

One thing that's important to know-    There are three main methods of auto-booting games

 

boot loader - game is loaded from master boot record and just loads

Auto Folder - You can put apps in here, and they will auto load as long as they don't require GEM calls

Auto Loading GEM Apps-  this is only supported by TOS 1.4 and up, you edit the properties of the app, and set it to auto-load, then save your desktop to create a new desktop.inf,  next time you boot, that game should auto load.  

[somacast]

highly informative, thank you very much 

[Jfcatari]

I would highly recommend a greaseweazle for any ST or image copying to images!

 

I used this to create .ST file from all of my old ST 3.5 disks.  I was even able to get the Spectre formatted ST (mac on ST) disk images.

 

https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle