SDrive
Review Page
SDrive
Review Page
SDrive
Review written by Stephen J. Carden
7/19/2013
The
SDive is another floppy drive emulator. It uses a sd memory card. Onboard
software is ok but not great. It does have a nice case. It emulates 4 drives.
I have nothing but trouble out of this device. But I have friends who built
there own and like it a lot. It is an easy project to build. Beware of who you
purchase the SDrive device from. Like I said it has not been a stable device
for me.
Nice
looking case
You
can see there is not very many parts and a single sided hand drawn pc board.
Here
you can single sided hand drawn pc board. This pc board was put together in a
very sloppy manor. I guess the person who built this is was more interested in
making profit and not a quality product and hides his sloppy work inside a
nice case.
Here
you can see why I am having problems with this device. If you look at the
picture closely you can see sloppy soldering and a bridging connection. I have
purchased two devices from this person and both of them. These devices have
required me to go inside them and clean up cold solders, bridges, and just
poor workmanship. My advice
to you if you are purchasing products check around and make sure you are
getting your moneys worth. At the time I purchased this device I did not have
the time to build them myself.
I
give the SDrive a grade of 2. It does have a nice case.
SDrive by C.P.U. (2008-2009) ,
Robert Petružela (Bob!k) & Radek Štěrba (Raster)
SDrive (rev.12.10.2008) (control program v01 20090403)
Robert Petružela a Radek Štěrba , Bob!k & Raster , C.P.U. ,
2008-2009
The SDrive is a device that connects to Atari XL/XE's serial (SIO) port and
simulates an Atari floppy disk drive with full read/write access to programs
and data stored on a SecureDigital flash card (SD).
Main features:
Special features:
How it works:
After inserting the SD card the device looks for the SDRIVE.ATR file in the
root directory and loads it in the special boot drive which is then made
available as D1:. Your Atari then boots the control program from the D1:
drive. The software offers, among other functions, mounting ATR and XFD floppy
images or COM, XEX, BIN.. executables in the D1: ... D4: drives. Then Atari
boots from the first drive. SDrive's buttons can be used to swap the contents
of the D1: drive with that of the others, which allows the user to comfortably
operate even multidisk games (up to 4 disks) by assigning the floppy images to
the drives and swapping them with the D1: (called “system drive” from now
on) when needed.
System drive number is derived from SDrive ID number, so for SDrive #1 - #4
there is system drive D1: - D4:.
Note: While booting the SDRIVE.ATR you can choose between loading the
SDRIVE.COM control program (default), SDRIVEN.COM („NoAutoload“ version),
SDRIVENH.COM („NoAutoload“ + built-in help), DOS II+ or S/XEGS RAMcart
feeder of control program (SDRIVENH.COM) by holding Atari Shift and pressing
keys 1 to 5.
Disk image file with Atari control program (place it to root directory
of SD card):
Detailed descriptions:
Changes and complete documentation package:
Demo videos (AVI, DivX):