Best to use an actual ST machine. I well remember that the ST was capable of some disk formats that a PC never could see (such as twist, that scattered sectors about in a more optimized way for the heads to step around and read faster). Some disk image software for PC can try its best to do a 1:1 sector copy of a disk, but if the floppy controller in the PC can’t get it just right…still a no go.
There might be someone in your area with an ST to help out.
If you do Face Book, I’ve seen a number of ST walls on that. If not, there are still some forums out there devoted to the ST. You might find someone in your area that’d help you out, or loan you a machine, etc.
The floppy cables are the same, but you might have to change the floppy disk type in the BIOS. Remember, in that case you would need a 720K for PC (not Atari!) for use with the ST emulator.
Agree, where that is an option. They can still be had at a price, and there’s an active retro-gaming community out there, however most will have replaced their original disk drives with USB-based disk emulators by now.
To convert .SNG, you need Cubase for Atari, which can then save them as .ALL, which SX3 in turn can then load and save in the current .CPR format.
Pro24 can export MIDI files too, if you still have it.
This is so helpful, thanks! I don’t have any of the Atari disks anymore, but I did find “Cubase Lite” for Atari online (http://atari-music.fddvoron.name/cubase.htm) as a legal, free download. Does anybody know whether this lite version of Cubase for Atari can save .SNG files as .ALL files to set that chained conversion process in motion?
I just want to thank you for being so considerate and diligent about the way you responded to my remark about losing 50% of my work. Because you decided to mention the possibility that a different kind of floppy drive might be able to read the disks that were showing as dead, I decided to go shopping for such a disk on eBay right away last night.
I found a seller offering a genuine Atari one for £22, but I inquired as to whether or not this disk drive could be used in a Windows based PC. I then went on to tell him the issue I had trying to rescue my work using STRecover, but also that the majority of the floppies were showing in red as unreadable, and therefore dead.
He mentioned in passing that it could be due to the fact that some of the disks might be high density, having two holes in the bottom section where some others have only one. I had not even considered the significance of this fact, and so I decided to check all the disks that wouldn’t read, and they all had ‘HD’ in the top right corner, as well as two holes in the bottom section. All the disks that had read successfully had no HD marking, and only had one hole on the bottom left section.
So, on a whim, I decided just for fun to use masking tape and cover one of the holes on a HD disk to make it the same as the other usable disks, whilst at the same time downloading an extended floppy driver for the STRecover program, (not sure if I needed to do this step)
When I tried the prepared disk, it read instantly and the ST image file was created. I loaded the file into the ST emulator running Cubase 3, and all the song data was present. It was surreal!!! I have now managed to recover some of my most important work, and it seams like all the disks I thought dead had in fact retained 100% of the information on them even after 25 years plus.
MrSoundman, your simple decision last night to go the extra mile with me, saved all of my life’s work, which I could never ever have reproduced by ear, since I have not composed in years, and a lot of my skill has gone (for now I hope).
I cannot thank you enough, thank you seems silly considering how much pain the loss had caused, and how suddenly you managed to turn the whole situation around overnight when I had given up all hope and begun to move on.
Amazing!! Just Amazing!!
Hi TSKissel,
I am sorry for posting over your latest query, trust me, I know how pressing it can be to get answers with this stuff. So I am posting this as a means of continuing your question after my most recent post, (without the URL here which I am not allowed to include for some reason). I wish you success.
Oh, no worries at all, and thanks for being so considerate! I am in no rush, and I’m glad this is such a wide-ranging discussion, as I’m sure there are others who have similar questions (and hopefully will find them exhaustively answered in this thread)!
Gah, that’s unfortunate. I guess I now have to find a (legal) version of either Cubase for Atari (not the Lite version), or Pro 24/III, to run in an Atari emulator. If anybody knows where to get either (as a download to run in an emulator, going through trying to read Atari 2.5" disks is a bit too much for this project for me), I’d appreciate a pointer!
I have been a Atari Pro24 v3 since '88 and it wasn’t until I had access to several laptops of different eras running different versions of Windows and different era Cubases that I sussed this issue.
So here is the formula:
Load Pro24 *.SNG - into ST Cubase v 1/ 2 - save as Cubase *.ARR
Load ST Cubase * .ARR into Windows Cubase 5.0VST via IMPORT CUBASE Arrangement - save as *.CPR
