10 ms·
Really Atari ST?
- Zenst 6y agoI vaguely recall that people used to get their atari floppies and format in a MSDOS machine as it would yield a slightly bigger capacity - something to do with default format on DOS using more tracks. That was until alternative floppy formatting tools came about on the Atari scene and there was one that was also great for copying discs - going to bug me to recall it's name, but was one of those utils that had a cult rep in its day in atari land. [EDIT ADD] Ok had a dig around and the tool most used was Fastcopypro - https://sites.google.com/site/stessential/disks-tools https://sites.google.com/site/stessential/disks-tools, was useful to do fancy formats for extra capacity if you had good quality discs as well as copying/backing up discs
- tomxor 6y agoThat screenshot of fastcopy just brought memories flooding back! I was one of the strange kids in the 90's who had an Atari while everything else in the world was windows, the FAT format was invaluable for me as I could easily transfer files between home, school and other kids computers... I didn't appreciate at the time that this kind of compatibility wasn't a given.
- bregma 6y agoBoth DOS and Atari used FAT format. The capacity was identical, but MS-DOS would have trouble reading Atari ST floppies because Atari had followed the published standard and wrote two copies of the allocation table to the disk, and MS-DOS would only write one and overwrite the second one with data and corrupt the disk. The 'extra space' was the space that was supposed to be taken by the redundant file allocation table. The rule was if you wanted to move files between systems, you had to format the floppy on MS-DOS, then you can use it everywhere. If you formatted on the Atari and used it on MS-DOS, you would end up using it nowhere.
- colejohnson66 6y agoI didn’t grow up with floppies, so pardon my ignorance, but two questions: (1) which FAT? I figure it can’t be FAT32, but that still leaves FAT12 and FAT16, both of which Microsoft helped develop. And (2) since Microsoft helped develop it, were they just not following their own spec? Because that doesn’t make sense (not that you’re wrong).
- code_duck 6y agoOf course MS didn't care about their 'standard'. They assumed they're the only ones using it and/or don't really care about breaking other systems.
- Zenst 6y agoFAT afaik is also known as FAT12 - nice explanation in the wiki over the differences and some history aspects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_the_FAT_file_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_the_FAT_file_system
- bregma 6y agoMS-DOS was also not the only DOS on the market. DR-DOS was very popular at the time of the Atari ST. As far as I know DR-DOS also followed the published specification and Digital Research (DR) was Microsoft's biggest competition. Atari also used Digital Reasearch's GEM as their "desktop" GUI. GEM was a direct competitor to Microsoft's new Macintosh-killer product called "Windows". CorelDraw and WordPerfect used GEM, MS Word and MS Excel used Windows. Draw your conclusions.
- colejohnson66 6y agoAs someone who didn’t grow up with many floppy disks, how was one able to format a floppy to have a different capacity? I know there’s different “formats” such as DOS, C64, etc, but I don’t understand why? I have heard about how formatting a floppy involved placing the tracks and how modern hard drives have “hard sectors”, but for some reason, it’s not “computing.”
- mytailorisrich 6y agoBasically your floppy disk is formatted on each side with a number of tracks, each containing a number of sectors of a given size. [1] The standard 720KB 3.5' floppy disk as used by the Atari ST used 80 tracks of 9 sectors. With these tools you could format with, say 11 sectors instead of 9 and boost capacity to 880KB (I think the Amiga was doing that as standard). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats
- foobarian 6y agoOn top of that some tools (I used fdformat) shifted the sectors to speed up sequential reads, i.e. have the first sector of the next track rotate in under the r/w head right as the head arrives. Edit: another unrelated practice was buying up cheap(er) single-density disks, which were distinguished by the lack of a marker hole opposite the r/o protection slider, and used only one side of the medium for data. By drilling it out, one could trick the drives into using both sides, which usually worked out just fine. Mentioned here [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-sided_disk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-sided_disk
- Zenst 6y agoAh yes, interleaving of the sectors. More prominant with early HD's and using tools like spinwrite to optimise the interleaving. Today it's all 1:1 as processing from the heads just been fast enough for decades to handle the speeds. Spinwrite still exists, though in the early days/versions it was the golden tool for tuning up a system and could make huge differences. Like double your drive speed and more in some instances, but talking late 80's early 90's here when interleaving was thing and mid 90's 1:1 became the norm and made it moot. https://www.grc.com/Spinrite.htm https://www.grc.com/Spinrite.htm
- fullstop 6y agoI remember seeing a tool that could be used to punch a hole in floppy disks in order to double the capacity. I didn't have such a tool, but I did have a cheap soldering iron. I ended up with a bunch of 3.5" floppy disks with holes melted through them. Thinking back on it now, I'm surprised that I didn't damage the disk with the heat of the iron. Then again, maybe I did and didn't notice because I was 12.
- IncRnd 6y agoFlip-it?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- fullstop 6y agohttps://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102711303 https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10271130... Might have been that brand. I remember seeing what it did and then figuring out how to get a hole in the 3.5" disk without cracking the plastic.
- bentcorner 6y agoI've seen it used - IIRC the problem is that the media isn't rated for the storage that you're now asking of it, so while it may survive being written/read a few times, it'd fail sooner.
- JohnBooty 6y agoCan confirm. I used to drill holes with a... well, a drill. Totally worked. Capacity increased. Until one day your files were corrupted. And that day often came soon!
- monocasa 6y agoIt might fail sooner, but you were banking on it essentially just being a binning distinction, that they didn't really do any testing either way and just stuck them in cases with or without the hole depending on what they thought they could sell at the time. Did I lose files on fake doublesided disks? Yes. Did I lose files on real doublesided disks? Also yes.
- rzzzt 6y agoI remember a tool called 2M on DOS, which allowed formatting 1.44M disks to non-standard capacities, up to ~1800k or so...? Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2M_(DOS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2M_(DOS)
- kebman 6y agoIs this a good time to post this video of the Union Demo Copy Program tool[1] for the Atari ST? When it came to serious copy jobs I used Fast Copy[2], though. But I'd heard rumours about formatting disks on DOS. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf19uSe2UIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf19uSe2UIA [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Libl3S9AaT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Libl3S9AaT8
- rbanffy 6y agoThe one thing I like the most about the ST (when compared to, say, the Amiga) is its simplicity. It's vastly less capable, of course, but, in the end, the simplicity pays back by allowing easier expansion. The Amiga was a hard machine to evolve, something that cost Commodore a lot.
- simonh 6y agoI got an Amiga and honestly while it was a great machine, a lot of games were written to support the ST as well so didn't use the Amiga's more advanced capabilities. If you were doing video production and graphics work it paid off but frankly I probably would have been just as happy with an ST. Also the ST gets dinged for being less powerful, but it was actually significantly faster than the Mac at the time and with an add-on could even run Mac applications.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoST and Amiga looked like competition to each other because of the wider market they were situated in but they really had different focus and points of success. The ST was a better DTP and general productivity machine and really was a "rock bottom price" competitor to the Macintosh; its gaming capabilities were nothing compared to the Amiga, but I am not sure that's where the Tramiels really wanted to focus anyways. I never even had a colour monitor for my ST. The paperwhite monochrome screen was to die for back then, and sure beat the interlace hi-rez experience on the Amiga. And the ST was a few hundred bucks cheaper. Price per mhz, it was a great machine.
- car 6y agoI had a Mac ROM cartridge for the ST, which basically turned it into a Macintosh. And Atari had a 640x400 monochrome monitor that looked just like a Mac - an awesome hack.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoYep long before there were official Mac clones (remember those?!) the ST was an unofficial one in the form of Magic Sac / Spectre GCR. Never had it myself, but what a glorious hack indeed.
- Sodaware 6y agoThere are so many things the ST does badly - weak sound chip, screen memory laid out like a Venetian blind (to quote Jeff Minter I think), and a mouse that was designed in a universe where ergonomics did not exist. But I still love it. Without the ST I wouldn't have discovered programming and all the highs (and lows) that it brings. Looking back now, I'm surprised people were able to get as much out of it as they did.
- thorianus 6y agoWell, I'd argue about the music. The chiptune music from SID and YM has aged very well, while Amiga sounds horrbile without FM synth and 8-bit 11kHz samples. Also memory was much better organized than Amiga - without the speed penalty. And the simplicity of Shifter (the "GPU") allowed for really awsome 'beyond the dream' hacks, which were unavaliable on Amiga due to much more capable - but limited in 'hacking' video chip. And then the first upgrade - Atari STE - amazes today with full control 8-channel 50kHz MODs... While mc68k CPU stayed at 8MHz!
- bbarnett 6y agoAt it again, thorianus! Spreading anti-amiga propaganda, lies, all pure, devilish, unvarnished lies! I will follow you down the ages, through age extension tech, uploading of consciousness, to the eventual universe spanning one mind! Always I will appear, always I will prevent your foolish, unjust and untrue claims from spreading unchecked. Amiga is better ; she is the best. Your Atari smells of milk!! Amigas rule! (what part of early computing culture did not have inane fan wars?)
- gallier2 6y agoAtari STE had 2 channels 8 bit DAC à 25kHz on DMA. It was the Falcon who had incredible sound capacity with its matrix channel mixer and DSP.
- Sodaware 6y agoI'd love to own a Falcon, but the prices on eBay make my eyes water.
- petercooper 6y agoI had a similar experience when going through the (MRI) Ruby source code which contained conditional directives for Atari ST compilation. Support was dropped only as recently as Ruby 2.4! https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/c5eb24349a4535948514fe765c3ddb0628d81004/doc/ChangeLog-2.4.0#L4155 https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/c5eb24349a4535948514fe765c...
- hinkley 6y agoEvery time we talk of hardware from this era I'm reminded that I was absolutely set on getting a Commodore 64 or even better, a ColecoVision Adam computer, and my dad 'made me' get a Tandy instead. Ugly tan box. Yuck. My dad and I don't have what you might call compatible decision making processes, so there were many times I was disappointed by his decisions growing up. But that machine taught me DOS, the next one got me onto Windows (answering the question, "How could I possible fill up a 43 Megabyte hard drive?") and those got me my foot in the door at one of the best jobs I ever had. I'm still a little jealous of all of the Atari and Commodore fans out there, that I didn't get to participate. But if I'd had my way I would probably be worse off and still not be able to participate because I don't think anyone but me has ever mentioned the Adam unless I fished for it. Kids are dumb.
- the_af 6y agoAccording to the 8 Bit Guy, the Tandy was actually a superb DOS computer, maybe the best :)
- chipotle_coyote 6y agoThe Tandy 1000 line was a great DOS machine of its moment for games, because the 1000 wasn't just a PC clone, it was a better version of the PCjr -- it had better sound and graphics out of the box compared to PCs, with better actual PC software compatibility and without the horrible chiclet keyboard. The 1000 was so successful for a while that games that supported the PCjr's enhancements were marketed as "Tandy-compatible".
- the_af 6y agoYes, the Tandy 1000. The 8 Bit Guy has an episode devoted to its superiority vs the PCjr.
- kjs3 6y agoWhich Tandy DOS computer; there were several? While not bad machines, the 80186 ones suffer from all sorts of more or less annoying incompatibilities because of the differences between the peripheral layout and BIOS compatibility. A number of friends of mine got burned by that.
- pwdisswordfish4 6y agoI love how every comment here is about the Atari ST instead of what the post is about, which is where the 069H byte check actually came from.
- tus88 6y agoBlame the title.
- pwdisswordfish4 6y agoFair point — commenting on an article based on its title instead of the contents is a long HN tradition.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoJust opens a portal for all of us geeks to uncork our love or hate for this classic machine :-) The actual substance of the article is neat, but I don't have much to say about it beyond that...
- ddingus 6y agoI do too. We have shared history during really interesting and, for most of us, fun times. Maybe it will always work this way. Ok fine.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago> (ST refers to Sixteen/Thirty-two, referring to the 68k CPU’s external and internal data width) I thought ST referred to Sam Tramiel - Jack Tramiel's son.
- icedchai 6y agoSixteen/Thirty-two seems to make more sense, especially if you look at the TT, which is Thirty-two/Thirty-two.
- kabdib 6y agoST was always "16/32" in conversation with Leonard Tramiel. I don't recall an instance where he admitted it might be anything else. I guess it's possible, but I think that Sam knew it would be unfair to the team. I wrote this code in the ST BIOS. It's been 35 years, and I don't remember all the details, but I'm pretty sure it was a "Hail Mary" and was not well tested. It appeared to work, and we moved on to more important things. Certainly our really small QA staff (or 5-6 people? certainly less than 10) was not testing it. And we definitely had more important things to make work. We put the ST together in about ten months; that was from absolutely zero software and no hardware to being available on shelves in stores. I still don't know how we did it. Most of us were working 80-100 hour weeks (and the software people like me were living away from our families, working with Digital Research in Monterey on finishing GEM and porting stuff over). Every few years I run into Derek Mihockha and he gives me grief about this, and then smiles.
- amacbride 6y agoI loved the 1040ST that I bought at the bookstore at Berkeley, which I used throughout college. I had a color screen for games and MIDI, and a monochrome screen that I used for writing papers, programming, and rlogging into the VAXen (4.3 BSD) and Suns. I definitely appreciated the DOS data-transfer trick!
- car 6y agoOh boy, reminds me of the time this Atari fanboy accosted poor Sam in the Palo Alto Pizza My Heart and sputtered my confession of love for the ST at him. He looked at me like I was crazy and told me to leave him the hell alone.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 08-15 6y agoSo the theory is that MSDOS tried to detect if a bootsector contained executable 68k code, because if it did, the BPB was valid and could be used to locate the FAT(s) and the master directory? That's triply dumb, because of the typo noted in the article, and also because executable Atari ST bootsectors had a checksum that should be computed instead of silly heuristics, but most importantly because most Atari ST disks had no executable bootsector, but the entries concerning disk layout were still valid. It sounds exactly like the fractal of incompetence Microsoft would implement, and it would explain why we Atarians had to use disks formatted on a PC for data transfer, even though the formats were nominally the same. Funny to read about that, because back in the day, I thought the ST somehow formatted disks "wrong".
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoThe reason they had to be formatted on a PC to be used by both was only due to endian-ness issues: TOS was tolerant of both big and little endian FAT While MSDOS tolerated only little-endian. However the GEM desktop's formatting utility formatted big-endian only. So to get a floppy readable on both you formatted under MSDOS. Or used a better formatting utility on your Atari that let you choose little endian mode.
- NieDzejkob 6y ago> Me supposes that, like with the ‘CALL 5’ mystery, we’ll learn the truth eventually. This "CALL 5 mystery" sounds interesting, but I couldn't find anything about it. Perhaps somebody who knows what it's about would have more luck?
- car 6y agoQuestion to the Atari brain trust: which ST emulator is the most accurate one? I have an old ST app I wrote, which prompts a weird message about ‘getting original roms’ or some such before it quits when run on Hatari. I found a printout of the source a couple of years ago in some forgotten basement, and there is a check for Xbios(2/3) or similar before this prompt. No clue what this was about, after 35 years of writing it. If anyone has some pointers, that would be great.
- chris_j 6y agoAre you using an original TOS image or are you using EmuTOS (which comes with Hatari)? I have run a few old games on Hatari and have found that many of them fail to run on top of EmuTOS but no idea which OS calls are the problematic ones.