Really Atari ST?
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Really Atari ST?
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Re: Really Atari ST?
#2I 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, was useful to do fancy formats for extra capacity if you had good quality discs as well as copying/backing up discs
Re: Really Atari ST?
#3I 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…
That 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.
Re: Really Atari ST?
#4Is 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.
Re: Really Atari ST?
#5Is 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 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Libl3S9AaT8
Gotta capture the floppy drive sound too!
Re: Really Atari ST?
#6I 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…
Both 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.
Re: Really Atari ST?
#7The 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.
Re: Really Atari ST?
#8I 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…
As 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.”
Re: Really Atari ST?
#9I 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…
Both 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 tabl…
I 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).
Re: Really Atari ST?
#10The 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.
I 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.