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Atari ST cable question

VERAULT

VERAULT

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 30, 2012
Messages
9,291
Location
Connecticut, USA
I thought its been long enough; time to give my two Atari ST computers some love. I have never been able to use my 520 ST because I never had an external Floppy drive. Well one just arrived in the mail today. An SF 354 drive to be precise. Came with the Power supply and a spare ST mouse as well! Here is the problem. Where do I find 14 pin Din cables?! Can I buy the ends and make them myself? Anyone have the pinout? Surely someone must have solved this by now. Would love to know. Thanks!
Micks-l1600 (1).jpg
 
If you're desperate, I still have one kicking around from my ST days. It's not long--maybe 18 inches or so and terminated in a DC37F connector, so standard PC external floppies can be used with it. I got sick of using the original 520ST single-sided cheap drive. The cable will allow for two double-sided drives.

Let me know.
 
Supposedly the 354 is dual sided, thats why I bought it (according to the tech tangent videos I watched recently). What would I have to modify on the cable to make it work with this drive again?
 
Dunno, my recollection of the innards of the drive is that it was cheap and didn't use a standard (Shugart-type) connection. Beyond that, you're asking me to go back more than 30 years. The information must be online somewhere.
 
Yeah, single-sided, low quality. I had to do some real work on the ST, so I replaced it with a external box with two NEC 720K drives. Then built my own hard disk adapter and doubled the RAM in the 520 by piggy-backing chips. For a time, I was registered in the ST developer's program--I donated a couple of large boxes of documentation to a Chicago area Atari group. They said they'd post it on the web, but I suspect that it just collected fungus in someone's basement.

By the late 80s, PCs clearly had Atari systems outclassed and I lost interest. Never could stand the keyboard in the ST, even with "booster" springs installed.
 
Could be right.. Probably are. Sounds like you have had experience in the matter. Im definitely interested in the cable. Send me a pm so we can figure out the details. Thanks

Mick
 
VERAULT said:
Supposedly the 354 is dual sided, thats why I bought it (according to the tech tangent videos I watched recently). What would I have to modify on the cable to make it work with this drive again?
Click to expand...

No, that is not. SF-354 is single sided and you will nit have a lot of fun with it as most available software is on double sided disks. SF-314 is the double sided one.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Dunno, my recollection of the innards of the drive is that it was cheap and didn't use a standard (Shugart-type) connection. Beyond that, you're asking me to go back more than 30 years. The information must be online somewhere.
Click to expand...

No, that is wrong. The DIN cable and the inside connector in the SF-354 box is shugart. Some SF-314 have an additional single chip microprocessor surveilling the shugart bis signals and potecting the drive from some bad action. but until now nobody found out what exactly. That chip takes some drive signals from the computer, combines them for some logics analyzing and takes over the control for these signals towards the drive. Maybe some protection that the drive does not access tracks over 80, or whatever...

The good thing is that you can swap the drive with a double sided one or with a Gotek with Flashfloppy firmware, and then using the game disk images found everywhere om the internet.

By the way, here in vcfed, you are quite alone with Atari ST computer topics, it's a good forum however, for PC, CP/M and others, but the Atari scene meets in atari-forum.com, and it's very active there.
 
VERAULT said:
Its been a bit empty here in general.
Click to expand...

I think the miserable forum software has a lot to do with the dearth of participation. The forum becomes non-responsive for minutes at a time throughout the day and I cannot remember the last time a PM actually made it in either direction.
 
1ST1 said:
No, that is wrong. The DIN cable and the inside connector in the SF-354 box is shugart. Some SF-314 have an additional single chip microprocessor surveilling the shugart bis signals and potecting the drive from some bad action. but until now nobody found out what exactly. That chip takes some drive signals from the computer, combines them for some logics analyzing and takes over the control for these signals towards the drive. Maybe some protection that the drive does not access tracks over 80, or whatever....
Click to expand...

That was not the case for my 520ST. The floppy drive was a sheet-metal body with no edge- or header-connector. It was so terrible that I threw it out. I cobbled up a box with two NEC 720K drives with the external connector being a 34-conductor blue ribbon using a Racal Vadic modem power supply. Worked fine right up until the time I sold the system a few years ago.

The message that I got from the 520ST (and I did the piggyback mod to bring it up to 512K) was "Muntz!" The keyboard feel was horrible, even with third-party booster springs. And I was an official Atari developer, complete with the big box of three-ring documentation that Atari never bothered to provide binders for. I still have my wire-wrap SCSI-to-ACSI prototype card.
 
The drives used inside the external cases are the same used in later STs that had the floppy built-in. They are all standard shugart and even interchangeable.

That doesn't mean very early drives may have been hard-wired, but I doubt many will run across such drives.
 
My 520ST was purchased from a dealer who was sent an evaluation unit early on by Atari. So probably a very early version.

The attractiveness of it was that it used a 68K CPU and could run Magic Sac. The rest of the unit screamed "cheap".
 
1ST1 said:
By the way, here in vcfed, you are quite alone with Atari ST computer topics, it's a good forum however, for PC, CP/M and others, but the Atari scene meets in atari-forum.com, and it's very active there.
Click to expand...

Interested to see this discussion; glad to see you're all here.... As Verault has observed, not much activity. I am registered on atari-forum.com but that's for 16+ bit. May I ask the illuminati where to find a forum for 8-bit Ataris?

I just acquired an 800XL and have some technical questions about modifications: How to replace BASIC B ROM with BASIC C, if needed; how to output separate chroma signal; how to move files from Internet sites onto a 1050 disk.

-CH-
 
1ST1 said:
In which country you are?
Click to expand...

USA. (Apparently I need at least 5 characters in order to create a legitimate message, so this extra verbiage, while insignificant, is nonetheless necessary. No bits were harmed in the creation of this message but I suspect that the persons who authored the web-site's code may have done so. Inadvertently, of course.)

edit: I read the Atari FAQ on the Wayback Machine and see that PAL version of the XL800 had chroma separate while NTSC did not, but that it is a common procedure to break out the signal which is available inside the case.

But I don't mean to hijack this thread: Just point me in the right direction, thanks.

-CH-
 
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VERAULT said:
So I have begun making my own Din 14 cable as Chuck Speculated. My question is the pinout however. This site here is a bit problematic as far as explaining anything: https://info-coach.fr/atari/hardware/interfaces.php#Floppy_Disc_Connector

Is it simply a straight through cable pin for pin? I need someone to verify this before I can make the other side of hte cable and test it.

Mick
Click to expand...

So anyone know the correct pinout for this 14 pin din cable? is it just a 1 to 1 straight through cable?
 
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