Tuesday, December 28, 2004

How to convert Atari-floppies so they can be read on a PC

If anybody reads this and can help me out I would really really appreciate it.

In the slightly damp eighties I used to record miditracks using an Atari 1040Stf with Pro-24(what is now known as Cubase). Ultimately the result was a stack of 15 floppy disks loaded to the brim with demos, songs and ideas.
I now use Cubase on a Pentium4 and I want to use the Atari-files as the basis of new tracks.

Here is the problem : I can't read the Atari-floppies on my PC-drive. This may be because the format is different but it could also be because the old Atari-drive started to deviate over the years. In short: I saved the files using a somewhat out-of-sync floppydrive and I try to load them using a perfectly normal PC-drive.

Can anyone tell me what to do?

UPDATE: It did find this but I'm not sure if it will work.

UPDATE: I can't find the original author but let me say "Thank you sir for that beautiful utility you wrote called ST2DOS.EXE". Basically there are two problems : getting your PC to read the Atari-floppy and converting/importing the files into your sequencerprogram(in my case Cubase). The first problem can be solved with the ST2DOS.EXE program. This program will alter the index-record of the floppy so a PC-drive can read it. And it works...

The second problem is trickier: You need to convert the .SNG files to .MID files so Cubase can read them. I found references to a Voyetra Sequencer Plus for DOS(!!!) that you can download and install but after much mucking about it still refuses to play on Windows2000. Not so surprising because the software was written in the early nineties and was meant as a DOS-based sequencer(!).

The search goes on...

2 comments:

hans said...

if you still own your Atari:
There is a program called MIDI music maker (MMM) for the Atari ST that will convert several song formats to .MID.
It supports Music Studio type .SNGs. You can find it in the umich archive http://www.umich.edu/~archive/atari/Music/
if not I'll see if i can find something else....

Towel master said...

I wish it were that simple... :-)

I still have the Atari but it doesn't work anymore and I am also missing some of the 'parts'(like a mouse).

Nope, this will have to be done on a PC I'm afraid...

TM.