help installing external 3.5 inch floppy low capacity floppy disk drive

Kurt Lang wrote:

The chances that MS-DOS, Windows, or the Mac OS could even read those disks is slim to none.

I take that back. Atari_TOS is supposed to be MS-DOS compatible. Still could be a problem though trying to read back a disk with one unformatted side.

No, no. you have the horse before the cart: on a single-sided disk, you have to tell the driver, explicitly, to ignore the second side. (This is because the second side of the disk has spurious information that came from the factory; it is only there to annoy.) If only the manufacturer had the good sense not to "pre-format" its floppy disks. 😟

Kurt Lang wrote:

...on a single-sided disk, you have to tell the driver, explicitly, to ignore the second side.

That's what I meant. The Atari OS knew to ignore the second side of the disk. A typical MS-DOS PC will try to read it.

Uh, no. Not exactly. For the Atari ST, it has been my experience that TOS 1.0 behaves differently depending on the kind of disk drive that is hooked up to it, and depending on what kind of diskette is popped into the drive. If there is spurious information on the second side of the diskette, and the first side was formatted on a single-sided disk drive, there will be problems reading it with a double-sided disk drive. This is because there is spurious information on the second side of the disk drive. This is because certain diskette manufacturers had the gall to format both sides of the diskette before they left the factory.

To copy the diskette, you should know in advance that the second side of the diskette ought to be avoided. Unfortunately, TOS 1.0 has no way of knowing what kind of disk drive is hooked up to the Atari ST.

I'd guess that the same problem rears its ugly head with PC compatibles. (So how do you tell the driver not to read Side 2, and be happy with confining its efforts to Side 1?)

I don't want to buy a PC compatible just to read a bunch of Single-SIded 3.5" diskettes, if it goes and makes the same mistake that the Atari ST does. (Although it would be useful for reading a bunch of Double-Sided 3.5" diskettes formatted at 720K...)

Kurt Lang wrote:
I have to say I'm more assuming a PC will try to read both sides since any typical PC floppy drive will have two read/write heads.

If the drive is formatted on the second side, then no problem. There's just nothing there to copy. If it's not formatted, then I would think the chances of DOS choking on the drive are pretty high. It would most likely tell you there is an error reading the disk.

It would indeed be a waste of money to buy an older PC only to find you can't read the disks correctly. If at all possible, find a friend, relative or coworker who can try out a few of the disks for you. Actually, any PC running Windows 95 through XP that has a 3½" drive should do. Or take a few disks to a store that sells used PCs and see if they'll let you try to read them on something there.

My brother has a PC compatible that has Windows 98 installed on it. (Yes, there is a 3.5" disk drive on it, and the diskette fits in it just fine.) But Windows 98 t has problems reading 3.5" diskettes that were "home-formatted" on the first side, but the second side still has that awful "straight from the factory" format lingering on the second side.

It balks at the diskette, and claims there is an error. 😟 If only there were SOME way of telling the PC compatible NOT to try reading the second side of the diskette. Even better, is if there were a program I could run on my Mac mini, and just read the first side of the disk, and be done with it.

Kurt Lang wrote:

But Windows 98 has problems reading 3.5" diskettes that were "home-formatted" on the first side, but the second side still has that awful "straight from the factory" format lingering on the second side.

Dang! It's probably choking on the slight format differences. On one side, you've got the Atari_TOS format, but a standard DOS format on the opposite side. While the Atari disks are supposed to be MS-DOS compatible, Win 98 is probably seeing the formats as two different things at the same time.

Are there any Unix commands that will let me read data, a track and a sector at a time? I'm willing to go to the 'Darwin' version of Unix, if that is what it takes.

I've never heard of a way to tell the system to read only one side of the disk. Might take some digging to find a solution, if there is one.

Allan Eckert wrote:
Hi beta_zero

Seriously, exactly how valuable is this data?

There are time-date stamps on every file, so it represents what I was doing at the time when I wrote it. So, in that respect, it is just as valuable as a diary is. It also represents program code that actually works on an Atari ST, something that can't be said for your run of the mill 'PC' compatible programs. It is rare, and there is no copy of it anywhere.

Kurt Lang wrote:

But Windows 98 has problems reading 3.5" diskettes that were "home-formatted" on the first side, but the second side still has that awful "straight from the factory" format lingering on the second side.

Dang! It's probably choking on the slight format differences. On one side, you've got the Atari_TOS format, but a standard DOS format on the opposite side. While the Atari disks are supposed to be MS-DOS compatible, Win 98 is probably seeing the formats as two different things at the same time.

I've never heard of a way to tell the system to read only one side of the disk. Might take some digging to find a solution, if there is one.

I might be willing to buy an old Mac from years ago. How many years back do I have to go, to get something capable of reading 3.5 inch disks? This here Mac mini is the first Mac I have ever gotten my hands on.

Kurt Lang wrote:
You can all the way back to a 128K Mac to find one with a 3½" floppy drive. The nifty part is that it's a one sided drive! The bad part may be trying to get it to read Atari/DOS formatted disks. Not sure if it could do that.

Thanks, I'll take a look.

I have a neighbor about a half mile away that has an old Mac from the mid 1980s... Haven't talked to him for a few years... Strange, but some people just hold onto their old computers instead of throwing them away, or selling them. It might be a collector's item.

Well, shoot, I guess I will have to give up on the idea of getting that old Mac, and go back to Plan B, then.

Is there a software program out there, anywhere, that supports Xmodem transfers?

If there is, I could transfer my diskettes directly from my Atari ST to my Mac mini, but that's assuming there was a term program that supported Xmodem transfers...

Surely there exists a term program out there, somewhere, that supports Xmodem file transfers?