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Anyone who has ever worked with a MegaFile for the ATARI will not want to do without the hard disk drive again. However, there are several hurdles to overcome:

- these hard disks are 40 years old
- are usually sold used as “defective”
- working hard disks are sometimes very expensive
- originally packaged parts are priceless (up to 1,000 euros)
- many are louder than your vacuum cleaner
- MegaFiles are monster devices

Several suppliers have addressed this problem and built HDD emulators for the ATARI that really work perfectly. Provided there is no “bad DMA chip” in your ATARI 1040 STE. I have just such a STE in my possession. That's why I'm writing this report with my ATARI 1040 STFM. This article is about the HDD emulator SD4ST+ and how to set it up.

Ebay-Shop ID Trade

By the way, I bought my ATARI STE on eBay and had a really great experience with the store of these two enthusiasts. It's (unfortunately) rare these days to find dealers on eBay who are as accommodating as these two. Be sure to check them out!

SD-Karte für den SD4ST+ formatieren

I use a 32 GB card for the SD4ST, but smaller cards will also work. You should bear in mind that a MegaFile 30 back then had a capacity of just 30 MB! You can create a total of 16 partitions with TOS, but the size depends on the TOS version:

• TOS 1.00 and TOS 1.02: max. 256 MB
• TOS 1.04 to TOS 3.06: max. 512 MB
• TOS 4.0x: max. 1 GB

So I could create portions of 256 MB on my STF, but of course 16 of them. That would be 4 GB. If you can fill that up with software for your ATARI, then you have an extensive collection! However, we don't have to do this work ourselves, because the manufacturer of the SD4ST+ already provides IMG files that are completely sufficient. We therefore download one of these files from a download directory. We take the file that should be compatible with all ATARIs. Please click on the picture!

Write the IMG to the SD card

To do this, you need the Win32DiskImager program, which you can download here. After installation, start the program, click on the small blue folder next to “Image file”, then select your SD card under Data carrier and finally click on Write. Don't ignore the warning, but make sure you have the right SD card!

When the program has finished its work, you can insert the SD card into the SD4ST+, start your ATARI and so:

Populate the SD card with software

This is where the real work begins, because apart from drive C:\, where the driver files are located, the partitions are of course empty! Normally, you would now insert your ATARI disks into the drive and then gradually move everything “by hand” to the hard disk. You are welcome to do it this way, I prefer to use the ATARI emulator HATARI! However, I'm not going to show you how to work with this system here, I'll be happy to do that in another article. I will only show you here how to fill the IMG with life. To do this, start your HATARI and set the following hard disks:

ASCII HD ==> Search for the downloaded IMG via BROWSE
GEMDOS ==> Here you set the directory of your ATARI folder on your PC!

Then reboot your computer. Leave your ATARI folder on the PC empty for now, you can always copy your ATARI software into it later. I have set up my HATARI like this:

SYSTEM ==> STE / BLITTER in ST mode
ROM ==> TOS 2.06 German
MEMORY ==> 4 MB
ATARI-SCREEN ==> Mono / VDI-Screen / 1024x768

In my AUTO folder there is (of course) an NVDI (system font Monaco), also SELECTRIC (I can't do without it). And after a little hard work, my monitor looks like this:

If you are not yet familiar with this excellent software: This is the file selector Selectric! Once found, always used, never again without it!

So much for the preliminary skirmish! One more note: The ASCII hard disk mounted under Hard Disk starts from drive D! The directory under GEMDOS is mounted by HATARI as drive C!

Copying files to the IMG

First save the files that you want to copy to the IMG in the ATARI directory that you have linked and which you have mounted as GEMDOS. Now simply copy these files from drive C (i.e. your PC) to one of the drives of the IMG (I simply use D):

That's all you need to do! This way you can move everything you want to have on your ATARI to the IMG on your PC. If that isn't practical!

Write the IMG to the SD card

When you have finished copying, quit HATARI, start the Win32Diskmanager again and write the IMG back to the card! That's all there is to it. If you have done it correctly, insert the SD card into the SD4ST+ and start your ATARI:

Attention: This website has been translated with DeepL