29 Jan
2009
29 Jan
'09
7 p.m.
I'm trying to recover some files off of a couple of Atari SH204 hard
drives but I only have a 520ST and need to find an external floppy
drive to bootstrap my system. Does anyone have a spare Atari SF314
floppy drive around that they'd be willing to part with? I don't have
much classic stuff left so I guess this will have to be a sale rather
than a trade.
Thanks,
David
30 Jan
30 Jan
9:32 a.m.
On 29 Jan 2009 at 22:00, David Betz wrote:
I'm trying to recover some files off of a couple
of Atari SH204 hard
drives but I only have a 520ST and need to find an external floppy
drive to bootstrap my system. Does anyone have a spare Atari SF314
floppy drive around that they'd be willing to part with? I don't have
much classic stuff left so I guess this will have to be a sale rather
than a trade.
AFAIK, there's nothing magic about the 520ST floppy drive--if you can
find that multi-pin DIN connector, you can easily take a stock 3.5"
720K or 1.44M drive and use it. I've got the pinout for the
connector (and may even have one in my hellbox) if you want to tackle
rolling your own.
Cheers,
Chuck
9:39 a.m.
On Jan 30, 2009, at 12:32 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 29 Jan 2009 at 22:00, David Betz wrote:
Sure, that would help! I figured there was some other electronics in
the drive like the Atari 800 and C64 drives. If it's just building a
cable, I can probably handle that.
Thanks!
David
I'm trying to recover some files off of a
couple of Atari SH204 hard
drives but I only have a 520ST and need to find an external floppy
drive to bootstrap my system. Does anyone have a spare Atari SF314
floppy drive around that they'd be willing to part with? I don't have
much classic stuff left so I guess this will have to be a sale rather
than a trade.
AFAIK, there's nothing magic about the 520ST floppy drive--if you can
find that multi-pin DIN connector, you can easily take a stock 3.5"
720K or 1.44M drive and use it. I've got the pinout for the
connector (and may even have one in my hellbox) if you want to tackle
rolling your own.
10:02 a.m.
On 30 Jan 2009 at 12:39, David Betz wrote:
Sure, that would help! I figured there was some other
electronics in
the drive like the Atari 800 and C64 drives. If it's just building a
cable, I can probably handle that.
Yup, that's all it is. The connector's a 14-pin DIN, which is
perhaps the hardest thing to find, but I may have one somewhere.
The pinout is as follows:
1 - Read data
2 - Side select
3 - Gnd
4 - Index
5 - Drive 0 select
6 - Drive 1 select
7 - Gnd
8 - Motor on
9 - Step direction
10 - Step
11 - Write data
12 - Write gate
13 - Track 0
14 - Write protect
You'll need a small power supply for the 3.5" drive, but a 5 volt
"wall wart" should do--and you can tuck two drives in the same box if
the mood strikes you. If you use a PC-type 1.44MB drive, make sure
that your disks don't have the high-density aperture uncovered (you
don't want the drive thinking that they're 1.44s).
Cheers,
Chuck
6 Feb
6 Feb
1:11 p.m.
Thanks for the floppy cable pinout. I now have a spare floppy cable I
can cannibalize if necessary.
However, I now have thought of another way around this problem. In
addition to the 520ST that I have that needs a floppy drive, I also
have a Mega4 ST that is missing its keyboard and mouse. I see that the
keyboard connector is just a 6 pin RJ12 style connector that probably
just carries serial data. What would be required to make a cable to
connect a serial port on a PC to this connector in order to use
something like Hyperterminal to act as the keyboard for the Mega ST?
Is this simply a matter of making a cable and setting the baud rate
right or would there be more to it than that? I'm assuming that
something other than just ASCII is sent over the wire since somehow
the mouse movements are carried on the same cable as the keyboard key
press events.
Thanks!
David
On Jan 30, 2009, at 1:02 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 30 Jan 2009 at 12:39, David Betz wrote:
Sure, that would help! I figured there was some
other electronics in
the drive like the Atari 800 and C64 drives. If it's just building a
cable, I can probably handle that.
Yup, that's all it is. The connector's a 14-pin DIN, which is
perhaps the hardest thing to find, but I may have one somewhere.
The pinout is as follows:
1 - Read data
2 - Side select
3 - Gnd
4 - Index
5 - Drive 0 select
6 - Drive 1 select
7 - Gnd
8 - Motor on
9 - Step direction
10 - Step
11 - Write data
12 - Write gate
13 - Track 0
14 - Write protect
You'll need a small power supply for the 3.5" drive, but a 5 volt
"wall wart" should do--and you can tuck two drives in the same box if
the mood strikes you. If you use a PC-type 1.44MB drive, make sure
that your disks don't have the high-density aperture uncovered (you
don't want the drive thinking that they're 1.44s).
Cheers,
Chuck
5:07 p.m.
On 6 Feb 2009 at 16:11, David Betz wrote:
However, I now have thought of another way around this
problem. In
addition to the 520ST that I have that needs a floppy drive, I also
have a Mega4 ST that is missing its keyboard and mouse. I see that the
keyboard connector is just a 6 pin RJ12 style connector that probably
just carries serial data. What would be required to make a cable to
connect a serial port on a PC to this connector in order to use
something like Hyperterminal to act as the keyboard for the Mega ST?
Is this simply a matter of making a cable and setting the baud rate
right or would there be more to it than that? I'm assuming that
something other than just ASCII is sent over the wire since somehow
the mouse movements are carried on the same cable as the keyboard key
press events.
David,
I can't help you much on the Mega4 ST keyboard issue, having left the
Atari universe before the Mega4 came out. However, it seems
reasonable to assume that the Mega4 follows the 520 and 1040 in the
keyboard design.
If this is so, there are several problems. The first is that the
serial signal levels are TTL, not RS232C, so a generic serial port
interface is out of the question. The second is that the bitrate is
a little odd (7812.5 bps) and not one you'll find on a PC serial
interface.
On the ST, the keyboard processor also handles the mouse and joystick
as well as the time-of-day clock. Keypresses are simple key-number
depress/key-number+128 release codes, but there are also a couple
dozen commands from the CPU that the keyboard understands, so we're
not talking about a simple terminal interface here.
It might be possible, if you're handy, to take a PC keyboard and a
microcontroller and concoct what you require for the Mega4 with
little more than a bunch of programming. But I'll leave that
exercise to you!
Best regards,
Chuck
5:27 p.m.
I can't help you much on the Mega4 ST keyboard
issue, having left the
Atari universe before the Mega4 came out. However, it seems
reasonable to assume that the Mega4 follows the 520 and 1040 in the
keyboard design.
If this is so, there are several problems. The first is that the
serial signal levels are TTL, not RS232C, so a generic serial port
interface is out of the question. The second is that the bitrate is
a little odd (7812.5 bps) and not one you'll find on a PC serial
interface.
On the ST, the keyboard processor also handles the mouse and joystick
as well as the time-of-day clock. Keypresses are simple key-number
depress/key-number+128 release codes, but there are also a couple
dozen commands from the CPU that the keyboard understands, so we're
not talking about a simple terminal interface here.
It might be possible, if you're handy, to take a PC keyboard and a
microcontroller and concoct what you require for the Mega4 with
little more than a bunch of programming. But I'll leave that
exercise to you!
Hmmm... Sounds like cutting my floppy cable in two and trying to
interface it with a standard PC floppy drive might be the easier
approach. I was just trying to find a way that didn't involve
destroying my only floppy cable. I figure as soon as I do that I'll
find someone with a floppy drive and no cable and be sunk...
7 Feb
7 Feb
4:01 a.m.
On Fri, 2009-02-06 at 20:27 -0500, David Betz wrote:
Hmmm... Sounds like cutting my floppy cable in two and
trying to
interface it with a standard PC floppy drive might be the easier
approach. I was just trying to find a way that didn't involve
destroying my only floppy cable. I figure as soon as I do that I'll
find someone with a floppy drive and no cable and be sunk...
Why would you need to cut the cable to adapt it to a PC floppy?
Get some "IDE joiners" which are basically like IDE headers with the
pins twice as long, intended for joining ribbon cables back-to-back.
Snip off six pins, and extend the "proper" ST cable with a ordinary
ribbon cable that you can bodge to fit.
Gordon
8:58 a.m.
On 7 Feb 2009 at 12:01, Gordon JC Pearce MM3YEQ wrote:
Why would you need to cut the cable to adapt it to a
PC floppy?
Get some "IDE joiners" which are basically like IDE headers with the
pins twice as long, intended for joining ribbon cables back-to-back.
Snip off six pins, and extend the "proper" ST cable with a ordinary
ribbon cable that you can bodge to fit.
I don't follow you, Gordon. The Atari floppy cable is a male 14-pin
DIN on each end.
All Electronics does have a female 14-pin PCB-mount DIN in stock. It
should be pretty simple to use that for the distant end of the floppy
cable and thence to the appropriate 34-pin header.
Cheers,
Chuck
9:23 a.m.
On 7 Feb 2009 at 17:06, Gordon JC Pearce MM3YEQ wrote:
The only ones I'd ever seen were 14-pin DIN at one
end and 34-pin IDC at
the other.
The originals were with a DIN on each end. If the OP had the variety
you describe, I figure that he wouldn't have needed to ask his
original question! ISTR that the original 520 floppy drives didn't
even have a 34-conductor connection on the drive inside the box.
Very cost-reduced drives on a one-sided PCB.
Cheers,
Chuck
11:35 a.m.
However, I now have thought of another way around this
problem. In
addition to the 520ST that I have that needs a floppy drive, I also
have a Mega4 ST that is missing its keyboard and mouse. I see that the
keyboard connector is just a 6 pin RJ12 style connector that probably
just carries serial data. What would be required to make a cable to
connect a serial port on a PC to this connector in order to use
something like Hyperterminal to act as the keyboard for the Mega ST?
Is this simply a matter of making a cable and setting the baud rate
I would assume it is more than just a cable. I would be suprised if the
Atari keyboard port used RS232 levels, I would have guessed at TTL
levels. So you need a buffer chip.
I wonder if you you could make up a cale between the ST's keyboard PCB
(IIRC the keyboard scanning microcontroller is on the keyboard PCB) and
the MegaST keyboard port.
-tony
5797
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