Astra floppy/hard drive for ST info needed

[AlsoYes]

Hi Everyone!

I recently picked up this interesting Atari ST combo drive. It's made by Astra, which I think also made floppy drives for the 400/800. I don't have it in my possession yet, but I'm trying to find out more about it.

The seller said that the floppy drive works but the hard drive isn't recognized by a 1040. He doesn't know if the drive has an issue or if it needs a special device driver.

Is anybody here familiar with this unit? What I would especially like to know is if the floppy drive is single or double density, since I have a 520ST with only an external single density drive.

Thank you in advance!

 

[g4ugm]

Well firstly there is no such thing as single or double density disks on an ST. What you are thinking of is single or double sided. Pretty much all ST add-on drives were double sided. Not really sure why they used a single sided drive in the original ST it must have only saved coppers. As for the hard disk, i am not familar, but generally, apart from the Supra the drivers are interchangeable. Be interesting to see whats inside, is it an MFM drive on say a Xebec adaptor, or a SCSI drive with ASCI to SCSI interface.

 

[Chuck(G)]

I ran mine (ST506 RLL) on an OMTI ST-506 to Mac-SCSI via my own homebrew SCSI-to-ACSI adapter. Worked well enough. At the time, SCSI hard drives were relatively expensive in comparison to ST506-interface ones.

 

[AlsoYes]

Well firstly there is no such thing as single or double density disks on an ST.

Ah, yes. I got drive formats crossed between the ST and the 8-bit machines.

What you are thinking of is single or double sided. Pretty much all ST add-on drives were double sided. Not really sure why they used a single sided drive in the original ST it must have only saved coppers. As for the hard disk, i am not familar, but generally, apart from the Supra the drivers are interchangeable.

I take it the Supra for the ST is SCSI-based? The Supra sidecar on my A500 uses a 3.5" 50-pin SCSI drive

Be interesting to see whats inside, is it an MFM drive on say a Xebec adaptor, or a SCSI drive with ASCI to SCSI interface.

As soon as I have it in my possession I will share more. I bought this and an SC1224 monitor from the same seller and elected local pickup. I haven't had great luck when I buy old monitors which are then shipped.

 

[g4ugm]

I take it the Supra for the ST is SCSI-based? The Supra sidecar on my A500 uses a 3.5" 50-pin SCSI drive

The majority of ST hard drives involve SCSI at some point, as the ST ASCI interface is close to SCSI. When I first started I had an ASCI to SCSI board and then a Xebec SCSI <=> MFM board and a huge MFM drive from an NCR server. Later I replaced the MFM stuff with a Seagate 80mb SCSI drive connected to the converter. There are exceptions, later machines can have IDE drives and so my STE has an IDE adaptor with a CF card as the hard disk. Some of the Atari drives just go ASCI to MFM. Vortex, a German company produced a SCSI to IDE unit... I did have one. Some very poor pics here https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ag4BJfE5B3onh_UiEvPywrayb1mv_A?e=r3c0rz