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INDEX
Atari Floppy Drives
Virtual drives/printers
Atari Floppy Drives:
Picture Gallery soon.
FAQ(how to use, DOS, disk sizes, find, models).
FAQ on fixing, parts.
Drive Formats: All ATARI drives do SINGLE DENSITY, 18 sectors a track, 40 tracks a side. This is 128 bytes/sector. The 1050 also does Enhanced format in single density(not medium density, bytes/sector does not change), using 26 sectors a track. The 815 and XF551 do single and double densities. Double is 256 bytes/sector. And the XF551 does double sided. Flippy is done by adding a write protect notch to the other side. Each side is treated as a separate disk. This cannot be used as double sided.
A note on High Capacity:do not use 1.2 meg high density mechanisms in any Atari drive, the controller can't use it, and can't make it dbl step to emulate a 40 track drive. Also, do not use HD disks in any Atari drive, they will not format correctly. The Black Box and ATR8x00 are the only controllers that can use 5.25" HD drives and disks. 1.44/2.88 3.5" can NOT be used either, they need at least a 16mHz step clock that isn't available without an additional circuit. High capacity drives format a disk with 256 byte sectors, 26 sectors a track and up to 80 tracks a side, two sides.
HIGH DENSITY is 512 bytes a sector(and up to 1K or 2K. Data CDs tend to be 1K) and is not used by any atari drive. SCSI and IDE Hard drives do use 512 bytes and up per sector, but require very special hardware/software to access it.
810 Drive: does 88K single sided, single density. An upgrade lets it do dbl dens and copy protected software.
815 Drive: does 88K single sided, single density, or 180K double density. This was to be a business drive. It was two drive mechanisms in one case.
1050 Drive: does 88K single density, & 126K ENHANCED single sided, still single density. An upgrade lets it do dbl dens and copy protected.
Soon I'll have a mod on adding a write normal/always/never switch.
XF551 Drive: does 88K single single, 126K ENHANCED single, 180K dbl dens all single sided, and 180K/360K dbl sided. CSS has a rom that fixes the density problem, and an upgrade to support 3.5" drives to 720K. This is the first Atari drive that uses an industry standard embedded mechanism-easy to find and replace.
At the present time(2004), it is difficult to use 1.44 meg 3.5" drives and floppies. You need a 16 mHz step rate clock and a controller that understands the format/capacity. While the drive and disks are readily available, using them is difficult. There is hope in being able to use a USB drive with the new USB cart, pretending it is a 720K/1.44 meg removeable hard disk.
Soon I'll put up my mod on adding a drive selector switch, that should work on any model.
Here is a link to some floppy disk media specs:FloppyDisks.htm
Here is a link to the very interesting info at Wikipedia:FloppyDisks.htm
VIRTUAL Atari 8 SIO:
Connect your A8 to an ST to emulate your drives with its hardware.
DJ800.html 380K zip.(16jun2k RLD), also at: umich archive This site is about software to let you connect your A8 to the ST to use its hard drive as virtual drives. You will need an SIO2PC compatible cable. There are no docs, just an info file, mostly development/bug fixes.
Version 2:revised 01Nov01:
My notes on virtual Atari 8 SIO(SIO2ST and SIO2PC). or get it as a 330K zip file.
Ed Biaz has a review of his experiences at Good Deal Games.
Other links for virtual peripherals are at software links
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