Atari STF

[fatwizard]

I have bought my first Atari ST machine. It's still on it's way to me, but I have a question I hope someone here can answer. This unit is apparently running version 1 TOS roms. I have been eying an external ST314, double sided drive. Will version 1 TOS support double sided drives?

 

[lotonah]

According to this, you can!

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=25755

 

[Al Hartman]

Yes. My ST came with the original ROMS which loaded TOS off a floppy, and double sided drives worked fine. I got the 1.0 upgrade from Atari back in the day, and my drives still worked. I recently upgraded to the 1.04 ROM set.

 

[2icebitn]

The STs were DD 720k until which machine?

 

[Al Hartman]

The STs were DD 720k until which machine?

There were no STs of any kind that came from the factory with anything better than a 720k drive as far as I can tell. 1.44mb Drives were an after-market thing.

 

[g4ugm]

The STs were DD 720k until which machine?

"It depends" I think the TT and the MegaSTE might have had 1.44 drives, but all the classic STs were 720K.

 

[fatwizard]

My research would indicate that single sided, 360K drives were used on the earlier machines. That's what I though this STf I bought would have as the built in drive (it's not here yet, so I don't know). I notice that many of the disk images for ST software available online are single sided.

 

[1ST1]

All ST with any TOS version can support double sided 720 kB drives.

 

[tezza]

My research would indicate that single sided, 360K drives were used on the earlier machines. That's what I though this STf I bought would have as the built in drive (it's not here yet, so I don't know). I notice that many of the disk images for ST software available online are single sided.

Yes, you are right. I learnt this just yesterday when I was imaging some of my commercial Atari ST software. The imaging program told me the disks were single sided. I thought "WTF??" and wondered if my drive was playing up. I'd always assumed Atari ST software came on disks formatted as double sided, double density.

Then I did some research on the web. Many commercial games were sold in single-sided format for compatibility with the original 520s.

Tez

 

[g4ugm]

A common mod was a " boot from drive b" because it was cheap to add an external double sided drive which could then be used to play games on double sided disks...
.. some one also produced disks where half the content was on one side and accessible to all users, and for those with extras there was stuff on the other side..