29 replies to this topic

[Official Ninja]

ParanoidLittleMan, on Tue Feb 7, 2012 3:54 AM, said:

I repeat: disk change (disk swap) detection works only with specific drives, because Atari used non standard way. You need whether:
1. To find compatible drive and use it - the hardest way, I guess .

Frustrating part is having the system apart, floppy drive sitting out in the open and everything is working. Booting, swapping, HD, DD, formatting.....
Use the system for about an hour, playing games, copying files to the HDD....
Put it all together, tighten the screws and for some reason disk swapping stops working all together....

It is not the worst thing. The original DD drive works fine. HD would be nice for both MSTE computers I have... I hope the SMD-300 drive I'm getting from an ebay seller works and is "compatible"...

[ParanoidLittleMan]

I think that SMD-300 will be OK, by vague memory. But instead bothering with floppies, why not go on HxC ?

[Official Ninja]

I always loved using floppy disks. It's silly these days but it makes using these old systems feel very retro.
That's why I keep drives and disks for all my trs-80, TI, and Atari systems.
I do like using sio2pc on the Atari 8bit more than an actual drive. The way that system is designed it works just great.

[Official Ninja]

Got an Epson SMD-300 today... cant use it as the head alignment is out. The drive is so cheaply made it looks to be impossible to fix as the motor is glued in place with no screws at all.... I was able to have it format ans read/write its own disks. The drive is compatible with the MSTE. Swapping disks works just fine.

Hunting around in my workshop I found an old TEAC FD-235HF. I forgot to write what revision it is. Its an older one that has a few jumper settings. I cleaned it up and set the jumpers. It works great with the MSTE, disk swaps are detected and it reliably worked all night, formatting, copying, playing games, swapping disks....

I had previously tried newer TEAC FD-235HF drives. These had no jumpers at all and they did not work well with the ST as far as disk swapping. I also found they were picky about using 720K disks.

Great solution to no auto boot games is to leave switch 7 off and then use the ENABLEHD.PRG DarkLord has attached in this thread.

[tjlazer]

The SMD-300 should work perfectly. It also should fit the case with no mods.


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Edited by tjlazer, Thu Feb 9, 2012 9:56 PM.