Any chance for ATX (Atari 8-bit) support?

[Pheonix]

Just wondering if it was in the to do list, and if there was a time frame around it?

Thank you

[tzok]

As far as I know Atari XL/XE did not have support for Shugart-like floppy. It could use floppy only through the SIO interface, but the floppy drive had to have in-build microcomputer to manage it.

[Pheonix]

I was thinking more of mech replacement in drives such as the XF551. It takes a standard floppy drive. Can even be modified to use a standard 720k 3.5" drive as well. That, and the software for image conversion. Right now, it can only read ATR files & XFD files (as a manually configured RAW load.)

[Jeff]

I was thinking more of mech replacement in drives such as the XF551. It takes a standard floppy drive. Can even be modified to use a standard 720k 3.5" drive as well. That, and the software for image conversion. Right now, it can only read ATR files & XFD files (as a manually configured RAW load.)

Any specification/documentation somewhere about this ?

[Pheonix]

My knowledge came from watching Youtube videos about repair & upgrade of the drive, as well as forum discussions on it. A google search did turn up a page on AtariMax that included some drive specs as well as schematics of the drive with the connector pin-outs. Was also able to find the Owner's Manual and upgrade instructions.

I can continue the search if you need anything else.

[tzok]

I recon two popular disk drives for XL/XE - LDW Super 2000 and CA-2001 (both clones of a Indus GD). They were both a standalone... microcomputers (Z80 based) running their own operating program, and communicating with the main unit over a serial line (SIO). Much more convenient method of emulating a floppy device is SIO device level emulation, there are devices like SIO2SD will work just fine loading ATR disk images.

You may find some info there:
http://www.retrobits.net/atari/indus.shtml

[Pheonix]

It uses standard FM encoding, so I don't have any problem with ATR disks. Its the ATX (with copy protection intact,) that I can't access. Right now, I can convert an ATR disk to several formats that work for me. It's just the ATX that I can't get working. Just getting the software to read them accurately would be enough. I could then convert them to a workable format. I did search for other software, but the closest I could get was a8rawconv which tries to convert to SCP, but its failed with everything I've tried so far

[tzok]

Ok, now I'm getting what you mean - you just want to implement ATX floppy image support in HxC. This shouldn't be a problem. The format is called VAPI, and here's the documentation for it:
http://whizzosoftware.com/sio2arduino/vapi.html
http://vapi.fxatari.com/

[Pheonix]

Sorry... That's "mainly" what I'm interested in. Though, I do have a non-working 551 around somewhere that I've been toying with trying to get working one way or another. Though, I'd also want to find a fix for the flippy issue as well at the same time. That would be a moot point if I just went with HxC, though Also, predicated on actually finding the drive again.... Too much placed in storage and eventually lost after multiple moves