VOGONS


First post, by GabrielKnight123

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I have a friendly fellow I'm trying to help out he has many 3 1/2 DSDD 720k floppy disks formatted on an Atari ST with MIDI files on them that he needs to transfer to an XP PC so he can access them and edit them or I can build him a Pentium 1 with Dos/Win 3.11/95/98, he made the MIDI files in Cubase on the Atari ST with 1MB of ram which he doesn't have the Atari anymore but his XP PC has an internal floppy drive. I read there is "Gemulator Explorer" or "Floppy Imager" will these work on his XP PC? I read as well that Dos wont read the Atari ST disks because of the extra allocation table ST uses in its formatting and because of this Dos will overwrite the second allocation table and make the disk useless, is this true?

He was using his PC gear some 20 years ago with a Roland Soundbrush which he still has the Soundbrush I'm wondering if a Pentium 1 Dos/95/98 PC could be used to connect the Soundbrush by using an ISA sound card's joystick/MIDI port with one of the joystick/MIDI adapter to MIDI out cables for sequencing and editing as I have no experience with a Soundbrush even though I have one here collecting dust 🤣 or does the Soundbrush need a dedicated MPU 401/MPU IPC T for intelligent vs dumb

Reply 1 of 5, by Caluser2000

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If he has access to ACORN Risc system he should be able to transfer the contents of an Atari formatted disc to a fat12 formatted disk quite easily. They can read, write and format Atari disk media.

Last edited by Caluser2000 on 2021-08-08, 05:43. Edited 1 time in total.

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Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 2 of 5, by Jo22

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GabrielKnight123 wrote on 2021-08-08, 04:48:

I read there is "Gemulator Explorer" or "Floppy Imager" will these work on his XP PC?

Yes, that works (I tried) . Gemulator Explorer also has a special 2k/XP floppy driver that can be used as a substitute for the normal floppy driver.
That special driver allows reading more exotic formats.

Anyway, in case the Atari diskettes was formatted with a TOS older than 1.04 (Rainbow TOS) or uses an odd capacity,
things might be a bit tricky.

Because, starting with Rainbow TOS, the Atari ST started to use a MS-DOS compatible filesystem (FAT12).
The previous versions also used FAT before, but with differences.

In such a case, you can try Disk2FDI. It's primarily useful for Amiga floppies, but Atari disks may work, too.
It runs on DOS and needs two diskette drives and a blank floppy.
It really works, I've made a video years ago..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GOp-_Tmo4TE

The idea is to trick the floppy controller.
Variable speeds aren't something the PC floppy controller was intended to support.

Alternatively, it might be possible to use TOSBOX.
That's a DOS-based emulator for the Atari TOS operating system.
It's like a spiritual sibling of DOSBox.
Unlike all these ATARI ST emulators, it's an high-level approach that focuses on emulating TOS.
It also has floppy support, if memory serves (I'm not certain).
If so, it could be used to read or duplicate the diskette.
It supports booting TOS 1.04 and 2.x, so maybe it can correctly read the older Atari diskette format.
It also supports folders as drives, if memory serves. So yeah, a lot like DOSBox! 😁

Edit: Please make sure the floppies are all write-protected.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-08-08, 05:14:

If he has access to ACORN Risc system he should be able to transfer the contents of an Atari formatted disc to a fat16 formatted disk quite easily. They can read, write and format Atari disk media.

Yeah, these Acorns are really neat. 😎
I really wished they were more popular over here in Europe.

Edit: Screenshot attached.

Last edited by Jo22 on 2021-08-08, 07:27. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 3 of 5, by Caluser2000

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Jo22 wrote on 2021-08-08, 05:41:
In such a case, you can try Disk2FDI. It's primarily useful for Amiga floppies, but Atari disks may work, too. It runs on DOS a […]
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GabrielKnight123 wrote on 2021-08-08, 04:48:

I read there is "Gemulator Explorer" or "Floppy Imager" will these work on his XP PC?

In such a case, you can try Disk2FDI. It's primarily useful for Amiga floppies, but Atari disks may work, too.
It runs on DOS and needs two diskette drives and a blank floppy.
It really works, I've made a video years ago..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GOp-_Tmo4TE

It wont work with Atari disks at all unfortunately. X86 and Atari drives are the same. Amiga drives are not the same as anything else.

An ACORN emulator may do the job. This one is very good http://b-em.bbcmicro.com/arculator/

I haven't tried this one yet. http://arcem.sourceforge.net/

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 4 of 5, by GabrielKnight123

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We're going to try the first two gemulator and floppy imager tonight over the phone I'll read all the documentation first I'm hoping without reading anything about them that they just read the disks instead of convert them in case of an unsuccessful convert, thanks all

Reply 5 of 5, by BitWrangler

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Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-08-08, 05:51:

Amiga drives are not the same as anything else.

The drives themselves aren't a million miles off, PC drives can be modded to be Amiga drives, it's the controller that's a lot more flexible, whereas the PC controller can only do things one way.

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