Zogging Hell!!!

Despite it being seen as a bit antiquated these days, the floppy disk is probably the most important way of sharing data using your Atari computer, at least at first anyway. An Atari can access all sorts of data storage devices, but the humble floppy is the one you'll be using the most at the start. A lot of ST software comes on floppy disks (yes that's right most ST software still fits on these!), ranging from games to databases. Only very recently has some ST software become large enough to warrant a CD Rom. Most importantly the only drive you'll have when you get a bog standard ST is the internal floppy disk drive. So this seems like the best place to start....

The Basics

The floppy disk drive is located on the right hand side of the computer (with the keyboard facing you). To insert a disk simply push a floppy disk into the thin hole with the flip back shutter with the label side up (not the side with the metal circle) and with the metal sliding tab facing towards the disk drive. You shouldn't need to apply any heavy force to this, if you do, you have the floppy disk the wrong way round (doh!) or there is mechanical damage. The button located either on the right of the disk drive, or along the bottom is the eject button. Use this to get your disk back!. Mechanical damage problems will be dealt with below. When the floppy drive is reading or saving data to the disk a yellow light located above the drive will light up. Under no circumstances eject a disk while this light is on, unless you are sure that it is safe to do so. You may damage your disk or disk drive if you ignore this (Note some badly programmed games leave the floppy light on when asking for a disk swap. If a game asks you for a disk swap and the light doesn't go out and the drive is still whurring away after a reasonable period of time it will probably be safe to change the disk). If you really need to get a disk out (for some reason), reset the computer, turn it off and then eject it. At least that way you will, if anything, only loose info on the disk.

The Double Density Vs. High Density issue...

The drive included as standard with the ST can read double sided, double density disks (referred to in this text as DD). This probably the first problem you encounter with the ST as PCs use double sided, high density disks (refrerred to in this text as HD), which can make data transfer between the two a bit awkward. So what's the difference? A DD disk can hold under normal circumstances about 720kb of data, while a HD disk can hold double that at around 1.4mb (1400kb). What this means in layman's terms is that you can fit more on the high density disk than you can on the double density disk. Now for the annoying bit. When the ST came out all disks were DD but this technology was superseded by HD. To fit more data on the disk the HD disks are constructed in a different way to the DD disks and therefore your ST can't read them. However a PC with a HD floppy disk drive can read, write and format DD disks. Therefore if your going to transfer data between you PC and your ST you really need to use double sided, double density disks. Fortunately you can still buy these disks new from certain stockists, so it isn't a great problem. Just be aware that the disks you use with your PC won't work with your ST.

But sometimes they do have HD!

While this may be a problem for the majority of owners, there are ways to get round this issue. Newer ST compatibles, such as the Falcon, TT and non Atari machines such as the Milan and Hades all utilise standard HD floppy drives. If you got one of these machines then you should no problems with data transfer, especialy as the PC and ST share a common disk format (meaning one can read the other).

If however you have a standard ST you can upgrade it to be able to except HD floppies. The operation can be quite expensive however and the companies that will still do this for you are dwindling fast. The basic elements of the upgrade are: A internal HD floppy drive, an upgrade for the ST's floppy controller chip to see the new drive and disks and a upgrade to the computers operating system 'TOS' bringing it to 2.06. This operation is fairly simple for the electronics expert, but involves altering the internals of your ST. Installing TOS 2.06 isn't a case of loading a new operating system like on most other computer platforms, but involves you changing chips inside your computer. The complexity of this operation can depend entirely on which computer you own. Owners of the STe have a much easier job of it, as you can pretty simply pull the chips out and pop new ones in (see a future tutorial on TOS). Older ST require heavier modification though and more technical skill to install. Mega STe owners have the easiest time as they already have TOS 2.06. All this however is beyond the scope of this article and will be dealt with in a later article on TOS and GEM.

And sometimes it's worse!

The very early STs, including the plain ST, the STm, the STf and some STFM models came with a single sided double density disk drive (SS DD). If you have one of these you'll find a lot of games and applications are inaccessible to you. You can usually check by trying to format a double sided disk from the Format menu on the desktop (see a previous article) and then copying files onto it to fill it up. If it completes this task and will run a post 1989 game (when the single sided drive was finally buried) then your in luck. It's not the end of the world if you have though as its usually a fairly simple job to replace them. Quick instructions for changing disk drive inside an ST (Note for an external disk drive the process is pretty much the same, though there will be slight differences in connection etc). As usual the usual disclaimer applies- Zogging Hell will take responsiblity for any damage you do to yourself, your computer or anything else for that matter if you follow these instructions. Do this entirely at your own risk. Instructions: Buy a double sided drive off e-bay or a retailer, one out of an original ST is preferable, but a normal double sided drive is ok, but will involve cutting the ST's case (see below), and you will need to make sure that there is the facility on the drive to change its ID number, preferably with jumpers (if you don't know how to do that then you probably shouldn't be doing this operation). Open up the ST's case. Locate disk drive on right hand side. The disk drive is held in by three long screws on the underside of the ST. Unplug the cables going into the back of the drive (make note of the way they go in) and remove the old drive. Insert new one taking care to insert all of the cables correctly. This is where it may get difficult. Most of the computers that came with single sided disk drives have different shaped holes for the eject button. Usually this is a longer button than on later models. To get your new drive to fit, you may have to cut some additional holes out of your ST using a hacksaw or similar. Mark where the new button will need to come out of the case and then cut a suitably sized hole. It can be a fiddly operation and will need sanding down after completion. Check the drive to see it works before sealing the case, the drive ID number may need to be altered if it is not an original Atari drive. Once the disk drive is back on its mountings, test it, being careful not to fry yourself in the process, i.e. connect it up, switch it on and then insert a disk without fixing the case back together. If it loads up, and beware here as a drive with the wrong id number will have the disk access light on as well, then all is well! If not then check your connections and alter the jumpers on the drive to get a different ID number. Atari STs look for an ID number of 0 whereas PCs look for an ID of 1.

Adding a second disk drive

The standard ST supports two disk drives* and if you haven't got a hard drive then a second disk drive is highly recommended. The ST becomes a lot nicer to use with two disk drives. Copying files from one disk to another is now a breeze, no more endless disk swaps to get you down. Some programs such as games or applications support two disk drives as well making them much more pleasurable to use.

* Note unless you have a very early ST then the the first of these disk drives is the internal one, you can only install one external drive.

The best bit about adding a second disk drive is how easy it is to make it work! The hardest bit is trying to find one. The best place to look is probably E-bay where they crop up now and again or maybe an Atari supplier. Various people made external disk drives for the ST, including Atari themselves, but as usual the better models were made by third parties like Cumana. To add the drive to your computer simply plug the power supply for the drive into a socket and then connect the drive to the floppy disk port on the back of the ST (On a standard ST this is located on the rear of the computer in the centre, next to the hard disk port).

Installing and using the disk drive is simplicity itself... all the drivers are built into the ST!

You need to excercise a bit of care with Atari branded drives. The Atari SF314 is a single sided disk drive supplied with the first ST computers (back when they had no internal drives), while the likelyhood is that it might have been upgraded to a double sided drive there is a chance that is might still be chugging along with a old drive. The Atari SF354 is similar though there seems to be some confusion over whether this has a double sided drive in or not. Certainly the example I've used did not. The good thing about Atari external drives is you do not need to tell them whether they are the first or second drive. Normally with most STs this isn't a problem as the internal drive is automatically taken as the main drive (Floppy Disk A) and a second external disk drive is taken to be floppy disk B, if you have an old ST with no internal drive, there can be a few problems. Many third party drives were designed to be the second drive only and won't work if they are the primary drive (well they will but you have to dismantle them and play about with the ID numbers again). Commonly this manifests itself as a the drive not being accessible (sometimes the light on the second disk drive will stay on). This can be further complicated by the need of a thru port on the first disk drive. This means it will have two floppy connectors at the rear of the disk drive, one to connect to the computer and one to connect to the second floppy. As far as I am aware only Atari's own disk drives had these built in.

Using the Disk Drive now it's installed

The disk drive must be switched on before the ST, or at least if it isn't a reset must be peformed in order for the ST to see the disk drive.

Upon loading the GEM desktop, you will now find a subtle difference in the operation of the Floppydisk A and Floppydisk B icons. Whereas before double clicking on the Floppydisk B icon asked you to 'insert disk B into drive A' it now causes the ST to access the second disk drive. What this means in practise is that it is now a simple matter of copying files between the drives and not having to continually swap the disks in the drive. Applications can also use the second drive. For example, you might have a program disk for a word processor in drive A and a disk in drive B with all your documents on. Try the second drive with games with two disks as well, sometimes the game will check the the second drive for its other disk (though this feature was woefully un-supported by a lot of games. And that's it really.. you might now be thinking big deal, but really the change is actually staggering in operation.