exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

How do you get this diagnostics/info screen up? Just booted my newly arrived STE get to GEM desktop ok. I don’t have any s/w yet.

SYSINFO

viewtopic.php?p=112#p112

Right I better find a way to get it onto a floppy disc. Also I better find a floppy disc, i've literally got nothing!!...and a way to write to floppy discs.....My SidecarTridge doesn't arrive till end of month.

Marcopolomint1 wrote: 16 Jul 2026 18:31 How do you get this diagnostics/info screen up?

It's not an integrated TOS function. You'll need to wait for your SideCartridge Multidevice.

Or get a cheap USB floppy drive from Amazon to write standard ST disks? (If you go down that route, I would get one that can later be converted to a Drawbridge so you can read/write exotic formats you can't normally do with USB floppy drives.)

The best source of 720KB SDFDs is eBay. Yes they will be 30 years old and yes you will need to check for mould before using them but they are cheap and if you sort by address (Nearest) maybe you can find a local pickup.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/358757534291

I use one of these drives and works fine with 720K formats and 1.44.

https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/#0266

The ones generally found around the internet do not support 720K.

exxos wrote: 17 Jul 2026 10:24 I use one of these drives and works fine with 720K formats and 1.44.

https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/#0266

The ones generally found around the internet do not support 720K.

I've got a couple of these as well, seem OK on Win 10 & Win 7 PCs for standard disc formats (720k & 1440k) - I've not tried anything too exotic with them though, just to transfer files between PC and various STs/my Falcon...

So I can just buy that drive, write my Atari s/w or .ST images to the disc on my PC and it will work on the ST drive?

Is there any special software on the PC I need to do that? Or any settings I should be aware of?

Marcopolomint1 wrote: 16 Jul 2026 19:54 Right I better find a way to get it onto a floppy disc. Also I better find a floppy disc, i've literally got nothing!!...and a way to write to floppy discs.....My SidecarTridge doesn't arrive till end of month.

I think you'll have a much easier and enjoyable time if you wait for your Sidecart :) Some people are floppy-centric but I'm the other camp :) Besides the side-cart, you can get a Gotek to replace your old floppy drive. Gotek is a USB flash-floppy. But it's not as straight-forward as you may think, you can't just use the USB stick like in a PC (ie; drag drop files) You put .ST image files on the USB which represent disks, you then choose the .ST file for the Gotek to present to the Atari as a loaded disk. To add files to an .ST image file I usually use Hatari, but there may be easier ways.

Marcopolomint1 wrote: 17 Jul 2026 10:29 So I can just buy that drive, write my Atari s/w or .ST images to the disc on my PC and it will work on the ST drive?

Is there any special software on the PC I need to do that? Or any settings I should be aware of?

There are programs which write .ST images back to floppy yes, but I never found them reliable.

For my use cases, I just copy files to my 720K on the USB drive on my PC, and they work fine on ST then.

Extracting files from ST images etc was what I was talking about the other day that having a online extractor would make tasks like this much easier.
viewtopic.php?p=143281#p143281

Though I tend to just load them in Steem emulator and copy them to a RAM drive on my PC to extract that way, bit of a faff, hence me talking about having a online extractor.

JezC wrote: 17 Jul 2026 10:28 I've got a couple of these as well, seem OK on Win 10 & Win 7 PCs for standard disc formats (720k & 1440k) - I've not tried anything too exotic with them though, just to transfer files between PC and various STs/my Falcon...

I've not tried any extended formats yet either. I just tend to jump to 1.44MB disks when I run out of space on a 720K.