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FloImg1, Steem and Single Sided Drives


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So I'm fairly new to the Atari ST. I have a plain jane 520ST and a PS3000 monitor with built in drive. This is a single sided only drive. I have a few 720k disks and am using floimg1 to make real disks however almost all the images I've tried have been double sided which means I can't use them in my drive.

 

I think I read on the facebook group for the ST that you can compile your own virtual disks with Steem and make disks that are consistently single sided? Does this sound doable and if so can anyone walk me through the process as I've never used Steem before, or point me to a good beginners guide to Steem that will show me?

 

Thanks :)

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I  have a few suggestions for you.  I don't think trying to squeeze the stuff you want onto single sided disks is going to be an ideal solution.  A lot of software won't work that way (inserting a pause while you put the second disk in).  Here's what I would suggest:

  • You can replace your single sided drive with a double sided drive.  The secret here is that old PC 3.5" floppy drives work in the ST.  The cabling is identical.  You may need to buy cable extenders.  And it can be difficult to find a drive that won't involve some cuts to the case.
  • Buy an Atari ST external drive. 
  • Buy a floppy emulator and replace your disk drive with this.  This is the solution I'm going to try very soon on my ST.  Look on ebay for "Atari floppy emulator".  All your software would go onto a USB memory stick.  I have this exact setup on a Commodore Amiga, and it works great.  Like I said, as soon as I get some spare time, I want to do this to my ST. 

Let us know how you proceed.  I'm very interested to know.  I'll do the same here when I do the surgery on my ST.

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I've looked at the floppy emulators. My only issue is my drive is in the monitor and seems to be a bit of a different beast than a normal internal or external drive. I'm not sure if those floppy emulators even fit. It's a rare monitor/drive combination that seems to deviate from the norm.

 

A normal external drive might work if I can find a decently priced one

Edited by Atarileaf
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