>> > I'm about to pick up an ATARI with 5 1/4" 1050 floppt drive,
>>
>> If it's got a 1050, it's not using TOS. AFAIK TOS floppies are nothing but
>> a FAT filesystem. However, I think you're interested in Atari DOS
>> floppies, and I'm afraid I can't help much there. But I'm pretty sure the
>> answer is no.
> OK, I'm pretty clueless about these old ATARI 8bit boxes. The
I should have been more clear about what I meant, the TOS systems aren't
the 8-bit ones like you're talking about, they're 16 or 32 bit.
>crux of the issue is wheter they used standard SS/DD drives of the
>era, or used some nonstandard head tracking or somesuch. If it's just
>a standard drive a PC _should_ be able to write out a boot image. dd
>would be my tool of choice for this, but I suppose rawrite would work
>just as well.
This is an interesting question, and something I've really been meaning to
try. I'm pretty sure the Atari DOS floppies are in a format that can't be
read on normal PC drives. I say this, because there is this cool board for
PC's and Amiga's that you attach standard PC floppy drives to, and the
Atari floppies are one of the things it lists it can read (I really have to
get me one).
Unfortunatly I think the answer is no, 'dd' won't be able to, because it
was written using diffent tracks.
> So, is anyone here educated on the innards of these old 1050
>drives? Also, what about FTP archives? None on the net? And are
>there any logical hard drive drivers which I could use to then hook
>the ATARI up to my PC via a serial or parallel port and use the PC as
>a virtual hard disk (sort of a mini serial NFS to an ATARI client)?
There are resources on the net, including a real nice list of what
powersupplies go to what. I believe I've seen something about hooking a
IDE hard drive up to a 8bit Atari. In fact I've seen stuff on basically
everything you are asking about here, only one thing, all I can find is my
Atari ST links, ARGGGGHHH! Sorry, I don't know where it's at.
> God, I used to have _thousands_ of these things. I can't
>believe these are unavailable in bulk via mail order... wasn't there
I'm sure there must be some places doing mail order, however, it seems most
places can't even get DD 3.5" disks, and a lot of the Amiga and Atari
dealers are selling used ones. Now might be a good time to stock up on a
supply of HD floppies, especially 5.25" ones!
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh_at_ix.netcom.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh_at_holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| For Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| see
http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
| For the collecting of Classic Computers with info on them. |
| see
http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/museum.html |
Received on Thu Feb 19 1998 - 20:08:58 GMT