| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 1379.1 | Why not do it in software? | COMET::CARPENTER | | Sun Oct 03 1993 13:46 | 9 |
| I kind of remember some old articles on how to upgrade an internal SS-
drive to a double-sided drive but your best bet is to find some soft-
ware that will allow you to swap them without any hardware changes.
I'm going to have to check to get some names of programs but I'm almost
sure that there are PD or shareware pgrms out there that will do that.
I'll look around but in the meantime check with CodeHead and some other
big shareware folks to see if they have a utility for swapping logical
devices like floppy drives.
|
| 1379.2 | no all is possible in software | UNSINN::RUGGI::RUGGIERO | Markus from Switzerland | Mon Oct 04 1993 04:08 | 13 |
| Nope, you can't swap A/B by software only as the Atari ALWAYS boots from
drive A. At that stage there is only the software in the ROMs executing.
Of course after the boot there can be a software solution. If you want to
boot from a different drive you could patch the ROMs. But hey then just
mingling with the drive selector lines seems to be a lot easyer (you have
to go to hardware anyway when patching the ROMs.
I don't know ablout the 520 but in the 1040 and in the Mega series the
wiring for swapping A and B is already there. The Mega even has jumpers
(solderen in) that can be changed.
---markus---
|
| 1379.3 | exit stage left | TROOA::RATTMANN | Ach! | Mon Oct 04 1993 16:42 | 15 |
|
Incorrect!!! You can boot from Drive B external with software...
I can't remember the program, but for about 1.5 years I had an STFM
with single sided A, and a double sided B. I had lots of software
bought on DS. As least 75% would work. Depends how they programmed
it. If they programmed Look at A it might die. I think there was a
problem from 2 disk games, as they hard-coded A:. If it was one
diskette it would work..
I believe it's called Disector (the program)
Keith
(Who upgraded the internal drive for $100cdn)
|
| 1379.4 | B boot and 'stereo' STfm- all-in-1 | AYOV25::PBROWN | | Tue Nov 30 1993 06:27 | 21 |
| I have a similar machine and I initially used a public domain .prg
called b_boot.prg. With this in A:/auto on a single sided disc you
can boot from B:(external). This worked for cuddly, nice programms
such as first word+ but not for too many games with dodgy formats
to protect them. I finally cut the two sound chips legs, bent them
upwards, soldered wire to them, via a double pole double throw (DPDT)
switch drilled throught the case rear and back to 2 the pcb holes which
the pins originally occupied. Which 2 pins I can't remember offhand but it
is in the ST internals guide (book) and ST Format (magazine). This has
worked perfectly with all software for the last few years untill I
tried magicland dizzy which detected both drives on and would not boot.
The solution was another DPDT in-line on the internal drive power lines
so it could be switched off and only one drive would be 'seen' on the
system, the double sided external drive. A similar switch inline with
the sound connection to the monitor 13-pin din redirects the audio to a
phono socket on the case back. A splitter lead from this drives a power
amplifier left and right channels to have a pseude stereo ste clone.
Regards,
Paul.
|