2.3 KiB
Disk: Atari ST
Atari ST disks are standard MFM encoded IBM scheme disks without an IAM header. Disks are typically formatted 512 bytes per sector with between 9-10 (sometimes 11!) sectors per track and 80-82 tracks per side.
For some reason, occasionally formatting software will put an extra IDAM record with a sector number of 66 on a disk, which can horribly confuse things. The Atari profiles below are configured to ignore these.
Be aware that many PC drives (including mine) won't do the 82 track formats.
Reading disks
Just do:
fluxengine read <format>
...and you'll end up with an atarist.st file. The size of the disk image will
vary depending on the format. This is an alias for fluxengine read ibm with
preconfigured parameters.
Note that the profile by default assumes a double-sided disk; if you're reading
a single-sided disk, add --heads 0 to prevent FluxEngine from looking at the
other side and getting confused by any data it sees there.
Writing disks
FluxEngine can also write Atari ST scheme disks.
The syntax is:
fluxengine write <format> -i input.st
Available formats
<format> can be one of these:
atarist360: a 360kB 3.5" disk, with 80 cylinders, 1 side, and 9 sectors per track.atarist370: a 370kB 3.5" disk, with 82 cylinders, 1 side, and 9 sectors per track.atarist400: a 400kB 3.5" disk, with 80 cylinders, 1 side, and 10 sectors per track.atarist410: a 410kB 3.5" disk, with 82 cylinders, 1 side, and 10 sectors per track.atarist720: a 720kB 3.5" disk, with 80 cylinders, 2 sides, and 9 sectors per track.atarist740: a 740kB 3.5" disk, with 82 cylinders, 2 sides, and 9 sectors per track.atarist800: a 800kB 3.5" disk, with 80 cylinders, 2 sides, and 10 sectors per track.atarist820: a 820kB 3.5" disk, with 82 cylinders, 2 sides, and 10 sectors per track.
See the IBM format documentation for more information. Note that only some PC 3.5" floppy disk drives are capable of seeking to the 82nd track.
Useful references
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Atari ST Floppy Drive Hardware Information by Jean Louis-Guerin
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Atari ST Floppy Drive Software Information by Jean Louis-Guerin