exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Hi all, hope you're well

I'm currently running an STFM that is basically stock except for an exxos 4mb ram upgrade fitted a few years back and a gotek replacing the floppy drive.

I've recently thought about getting a hard drive (ultrasatan), but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it's worth it for my purposes (running games and demos mainly). For instance, are multi disk games/applications accommodated or will I still be somehow swapping images like I do on the gotek?

Any thoughts from people with a hard drive setup and the pros and cons of ownership would be greatly appreciated - maybe I'd be better off using the money elsewhere on my setup?

Thanks!
Pete

Personally I would say yes, but to make the most of it you need either PPeras driver http://8bitchip.info/atari/pphdr.php or HDDriver https://www.hddriver.net/en/, which will allow you to swap your SD cards between PC and ST and see the data on both, allowing easy copying of files.

HDDRIVER is quite expensive, but if like me you have several different HDD solutions such as CosmosEX & UltraSatan and IDE, then it is worth having.

Since you have 4MB RAM, then the space consumed by either driver is not a problem.

There are many HD adapted games here: http://8bitchip.info/atari/fromhd3.php

Also, many demos allow you to install them on hard disk => much faster loading times. (applications in 99% cases support hard disk natively so yes, multi-disk apps will certainly gain a lot with hard disk).

For all the reasons above, I vote "yes" as well... :)

Definitely yes !

Mmm. Far be it for me to be anti-hardware expansions, but if you genuinely only run games and demos, I’d say no.

You can get cheaper hard disc emulators and, frankly, for games and demos, you don’t need them either.

IMO.

BW

I’d get an ide interface of some description instead of an ultrasatan.

My Ultrasatan is internally mounted and works very well in my STE.

Sure, if you can have an easy IDE solution such as the Lightning ST in your STFM, then go for it.

Alanh's IDE for STE new batch seems to be delayed (or I missed something ?), and finding another reliable IDE adapter is another story...

There are some newer lower performance options available such as ACSI2STM

Yes, but external (which might not be drawback to everyone though) and as you specified, lower performance.