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Really Atari ST?

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Re: Really Atari ST?

#11

Post by mytailorisrich »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #8
Zenst wrote: post #2

I 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.”

Basically 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

Re: Really Atari ST?

#12

Post by code_duck »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #9
bregma wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Of 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.

Re: Really Atari ST?

#13

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #8
Zenst wrote: post #2

I 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.”

The floppy drive has a stepper motor that controls the placement of the read/write head above the disk.

In the ST era, the control of that motor was directly under the control of the operating system. For an 80 track disk, the movement required to step between tracks was a certain known amount.

If you formatted the disk with the tracks spaced closer together, by altering the stepper movement during that process, you would 'magically' get more space.

Re: Really Atari ST?

#14

Post by Zenst »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #9
bregma wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

FAT 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

Re: Really Atari ST?

#15

Post by icedchai »

rbanffy wrote: post #7

The 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 think the Amiga was much more expandable than Atari. Just check out the variety of accelerator boards, RTG graphics cards, serial boards, HD controllers, etc. available. The Atari OS (TOS) was also very simple compared to Amiga OS.

Re: Really Atari ST?

#16

Post by arexxbifs »

rbanffy wrote: post #7

The 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'd love to hear more about your thoughts on this because I'm not sure if I understand what you mean.

My take is that both the Amiga and the Atari had a plethora of expansions and, without having any numbers to show, I think the Amiga won out in the expansion race, from 040 cards for the A500 (AFAIK no 040 was available for any Atari until much later) to the Video Toaster.

Both machines were hard to evolve because both their designs encouraged software that was tightly tied to the hardware. VIDEL and AGA were both desperate and, ultimately, fruitless attempts at having the cake and eating it: sticking to custom chips was needed to keep backwards compatibility, but they made the machines both too expensive and too underpowered to be competitive.

Re: Really Atari ST?

#17

Post by Sodaware »

There 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.

Re: Really Atari ST?

#18

Post by Zenst »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #8
Zenst wrote: post #2

I 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.”

Most discs were rated to format to 80 tracks but some you could format with 81 or 82 and IIRC even 84 on some.

Then there was sectors, which was common to have 8, though again you could with better quality discs (quality did get better ahead of the standards) you could go with 9 sectors and higher - https://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~heha/basteln/PC/usbfloppy/f....

Of course, you could think of it as over-clocking - was no guarantee you get that extra capacity, and the early days - it was really luck, but like most things, quality improves and such avenues of formatting became more accessible.

Re: Really Atari ST?

#20

Post by thorianus »

Sodaware wrote: post #17

There 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…

Well, 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!

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