This is pure nostalgia. My first computer was an Atari ST 520, indeed the number referred to the number of bytes of internal memory. Back in 1986 or 1987 it must have been. Years and years our family swore by the power of the ST and if I look at it now, it still has something. We had one 520, two 1024′s and a MEGA ST. Mind you, the ST was no gaming console like the famous Atari 2600, no sir, it was a full blown desktop with an OS that rocked. So simple and good, it basically remained unchanged since the 80-ies.
My mother was the last one to keep using the Atari, up in her “writing hole” on the attic. And this is precisely the reason why I’m writing this article today. SHE STILL HAD A DISK WITH A TEXT SHE WANTED TO KEEP. (Yes, the only copy was on floppy!). I had no high hopes…
Geek as I am, I decided to try the old Atari first, the last one, a Mega ST. After having to hit the HDD a little it still booted. Quite surprising, as it is on the attic where temp fluctuates between 10°C in winter and 40+°C in summer times. All well, the disk even proved readable, but I had one problem. The ST has no USB, no Ethernet, no means of getting a file off it but a floppy (readable on both Atari and PC). But we had no other machine in the house with a working floppy drive! Bugger.
This meant using some kind of emulator. I had used Steem before and was quite surprised by the power of it. A complete Atari inside a window! Cool. But, again the geek in me told me to try it the hard way. So I installed Steem on my Ubuntu Linux (see below). Works like a charm, Now I’m really back in 1987!
But still one problem remained: read the floppy. Luckily my Ubuntu still has a floppy drive, so after some Googling I came up with a simple command to create an image of the floppy, usable in the emulator.
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=image.st
My grandfather, an all-time and true believer of the Atari, would have been very proud of me, seeing how I revived his first computer. Atari ST for ever!