Imaging ATR8000 floppy disks

[dely]

I would like to make floppy disk images for the ATR8000, but before I do I would like to make sure how to do it. I have a Greaseweazle and a 720 KB disk drive. 

Should I image the floppies described 80 Track Master as follows?

 

>gw.exe read --revs=5 --raw --drive=0 --tracks=c=0-79 C:\temp\disk-80.scp

 

Floppy disks labeled 2x 40 track DS:

 

>gw.exe read --revs=5 --raw --drive=0 --tracks=c=0-39 C:\temp\disk-40.scp

 

How do I prepare the images so that I can check them in Altirra? If a8rawconv supports this type of image?

 

Thank you for your help.

[Beeblebrox]

Excuse me if I read this wrong, but you are wanting to images atari 8 bit 5 1/4" floppy disks yeah? If so, having a 720k drive 3.5" is no good here. 😀

[dely]

I apologise for the not very accurate description. I have a 5.25 disk drive that does a good job of handling 720 KB floppy disks Of course I want to make images from 5.25 floppy disks.

[_The Doctor__]

ah so you're disk are not dsdd they are quads, dsqd? Starship utilized quads on an AT8000 for the BBS across many years.

You actually still have real quads not HD 1.2 in some oddball wannabe config?

This not only would be question for the hardware creator, but the software and firmware fellows. Maybe @phaeron has played around in this ballpark?

Edited September 11 by _The Doctor__

[dely]

The floppy disks are labelled as follows:

• DS/QD 80 Track CP/M 
• 40 Track DS CP/M
• 80 Track DS CP/M
• DS/DD CP/M
• 80 Track DS/QD Games

[phaeron]

In general, there is no harm in imaging a full 80 tracks double-sided even if the disk actually ends up being 40 track or single sided. It just results in unformatted tracks in the .scp image that can be safely ignored, and that way you won't need to redo a fragile disk if it turns out you missed tracks the first time.

 

When imaging a 40 track disk on an 80 track drive, you need to make sure that the imaging software double-steps the head when imaging 40 tracks. a8rawconv automatically does this when imaging with a SuperCard Pro device since it forces you to specify the track density of the drive on the command line, but you'll need to check whether the Greaseweazle software requires a manual parameter for this.

 

If imaging an original software release, the general recommendation is to image 81 tracks since there is often a duplication signature on track 80. This doesn't affect running the disk on the computer but can have historical interest.

 

If possible, do some initial tests with throwaway disks before trying the real ones. You can reduce the revs when doing such a test, since five revs is recommended for real reads but only two revs are minimum needed for testing. a8rawconv's -t and -l options are useful for this as it allows you to quickly spot check a single track.

 

For bootable CP/M disks, note that the only two formats they can safely be decoded to are ATX and XFD. ATR will lose critical data on the boot sectors.

 

[dely]

Thanks @phaeron

 

Given that this is not the original floppy I imaged 80 tracks (0-79) and two sides of the disk marked DS/QD and tried to convert to ATX format using a8rawconv. Unfortunately although Altirra with ATR8000 emulation enabled shows the directory, I get a Device NAK message when I try to view the directory contents.

 

What am I doing wrong? I am attaching the image in SCP format and the resulting ATX file.

disk-80.7z disk-80.atx

[sup8pdct]

ATR8000 default format is 1024 byte sectors for data area. Other sector sizes, 128, 256 and 512 are also supported.

ATR8000 boot however is 1 x 128 byte sector followed by 9 512 byte sectors marked as 1 to 10, 2nd track is similar but the 512 byte sectors are marked as 1 to 9 and the 128 byte sector is marked as 64.

How does that affect the software you are using?

 

[phaeron]

1 hour ago, dely said:

Thanks @phaeron

 

Given that this is not the original floppy I imaged 80 tracks (0-79) and two sides of the disk marked DS/QD and tried to convert to ATX format using a8rawconv. Unfortunately although Altirra with ATR8000 emulation enabled shows the directory, I get a Device NAK message when I try to view the directory contents.

 

What am I doing wrong? I am attaching the image in SCP format and the resulting ATX file.

disk-80.7z 12.31 MB · 0 downloads disk-80.atx 50.05 kB · 2 downloads

OK, looks like there are a bunch of issues here I'd forgotten about.

 

First, double-density ATX support is still gated in Altirra behind a cvar (Tools > Advanced Configuration > image.disk.atx.full_sector_support). I need to flip the default on that, the support has been stable for a while now.

 

Second problem is that a8rawconv doesn't currently support writing out ATX files with more than 40 tracks or a single side, which I need to fix.

 

ATR would be the next go-to, but that then leads to the third unfortunate problem, which is that ATR is mapped by logical sector instead of physical track/sector, and Atari disk drives weren't consistent in how they mapped side 2. In particular, the ATR8000 maps side 2 forward and the XF551 maps side 2 reversed. Normally Altirra handles this mapping internally based on the drive type it's emulating, but a8rawconv actually needs to know the type of mapping to use, and currently it's hardcoded to XF551. So the entire second half of the ATR is getting flipped, and changing the drive type doesn't help because the emulator's auto-mapping prevents you from arranging two-wrongs-make-a-right to unflip side 2. That's why the ICET subdirectory is not reading properly. Bleh.

 

Gimme a bit to work through a couple of these. The SCP image at least should be good, it's the SCP -> ATR/ATX translation that's the problem right now. If you know enough to write a program to manipulate file data, you can try converting to ATR and then manually reversing the sectors on side 2, and see if that reads.

 

[dely]

Thanks @sup8pdct @phaeron

[+DjayBee]

28 minutes ago, phaeron said:

First, double-density ATX support is still gated in Altirra behind a cvar (Tools > Advanced Configuration > image.disk.atx.full_sector_support). I need to flip the default on that, the support has been stable for a while now.

 

Second problem is that a8rawconv doesn't currently support writing out ATX files with more than 40 tracks or a single side, which I need to fix.

Now this is a surprise. Up to now I thought that you and @ijor are still finalizing the DD implementation in ATX.

 

Did I understand correctly that we now should be able to create ATX files from fluxdumps with a8rawconv 0.95?

Would this also work with 815 disks (plus inverting sector data)?

Does this also mean that I should be able to create a protected ATX Frankendisk of our Atari Accountant dumps?

[Frankie]

This is off-topic, but ATR8000 related. I figured maybe someone might know this basic question. When attaching drives to the ATR8000 should they be able to read regular Atari disks? I have a 1.2 MB floppy attached and I can format it up to 1.0 MB (like an 8" - 77 tracks, DS/DD), and it works just fine, but I can't read regular atari disks from it.  Do I need to have a 360 KB floppy to do that?

 

Frank

[sup8pdct]

4 hours ago, Frankie said:

This is off-topic, but ATR8000 related. I figured maybe someone might know this basic question. When attaching drives to the ATR8000 should they be able to read regular Atari disks? I have a 1.2 MB floppy attached and I can format it up to 1.0 MB (like an 8" - 77 tracks, DS/DD), and it works just fine, but I can't read regular atari disks from it.  Do I need to have a 360 KB floppy to do that?

 

Frank

You will need a 360 kb mech. The atr8000 can read regular Single Sided disks written with other drives except for enhanced density. Double sided drives however is a very mixed bag. There are 3 differing ways the 2nd side is handled between xf551, ATR and percom.

[+kheller2]

43 minutes ago, sup8pdct said:

You will need a 360 kb mech. The atr8000 can read regular Single Sided disks written with other drives except for enhanced density. Double sided drives however is a very mixed bag. There are 3 differing ways the 2nd side is handled between xf551, ATR and percom.

Really?  The ATR8000 can't use the 1.2 as a 180K or 90K ReadOnly drive?

 

[sup8pdct]

3 hours ago, kheller2 said:

Really?  The ATR8000 can't use the 1.2 as a 180K or 90K ReadOnly drive?

 

Not in Atari mode. There is no provision to double step unless you wish to modify the rom. I will say the the rom is copied to high ram so modifying ram is entirely possible.

I believe it is possible in CP/M mode using disk define utility.

[+kheller2]

13 hours ago, sup8pdct said:

Not in Atari mode. There is no provision to double step unless you wish to modify the rom. I will say the the rom is copied to high ram so modifying ram is entirely possible.

I believe it is possible in CP/M mode using disk define utility.

Interesting but it makes sense.  I had never considered the problem that you can't boot a commercial disk off the ATR.

[_The Doctor__]

There are disks on this forum that turn the ATR8000 drives emulate into others- was it US doubler or what not? Don't remember specifics, I suspect it could be used to access other geometries etc.

[sup8pdct]

3 hours ago, kheller2 said:

Interesting but it makes sense.  I had never considered the problem that you can't boot a commercial disk off the ATR.

Never used my ATR8000 to boot disk commerical disk. Would say game disks would be a 'suck it and see' method as to what works and what doesn't.