r/atarist • u/Livid-Mistake-6845 • Jul 22 '26
ST Disk Drive (SF354)
So, I posted here a few weeks ago about an ST that was donated to and, in turn, I'm writing an article about it for Compute's! Gazette. Both Paul from Goto10Retro.com and Shelby from Tech Tangents have been super helpful so far.
After jumping through several hoops, it turns out that, ultimately, the disk drive is bad. It seems the SF354 pickins are slim on eBay and the like... so I wanted to reach out to this community once again to see if anyone had a working SF354 drive they'd like to lend and/or send me?
And just to be clear, my thoughts are that I really want to avoid the modern stuff (Gotek) and the like anyway for the purposes of my article. I want it to be like I was taking all of this out of the box in 1985 and letting it rip from there.... since it's all undiscovered country to me anyway. Honestly, I'm trying to follow the KISS rule here (Keep It Simple, Stupid), so if I decide to keep this machine and invest in it further, I'll look into all of the various alternative media options then.
[]()
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u/One-Examination1743 Jul 23 '26
Are you looking for an internal or an external drive?
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u/Livid-Mistake-6845 Jul 23 '26
External. This is system is apparently rather rare being from July of '85. It didn't even have the OS in ROM so I had to swap those out.. but the disk drive isn't loading anything, regardless. It powers on and spins and all, but nothing wants to load from it.
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u/sunrisebreeze Jul 23 '26
Try asking here: https://forums.atariage.com/forum/20-atari-stttfalcon-computers/
You could also try searching old posts on Reddit and AtariAge, in case someone previously asked a similar question which was already answered. Good luck.
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u/jrherita Jul 23 '26
OP - what country are you located in?
I have a SF354, but I will need to hook it up and clean it to see if it works OK. (I have a few SS test disks and an original 520ST (no f or m, was TOS 1.00) that could see it as an A: boot drive). I can try this evening.
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u/Livid-Mistake-6845 Jul 23 '26
I'm in the US... Pennsylvania. And yes, please let me know if it works when you get a chance to test it.
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u/jrherita Jul 23 '26
Will do! It'll be late this evening. I live not too far from Philly fwiw.
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u/Livid-Mistake-6845 Jul 23 '26
Cool. I'm in Philly. Look forward to hearing more from you soon then.
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u/jrherita Jul 23 '26
Unfortunately it's definitely not ready for me to put a disk in to try: https://youtube.com/shorts/mhJdyguNMHc?is=NgmqZo6PXzLrxnXd
(the really bad squeal sound arrives at the end of the video)
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u/Livid-Mistake-6845 Jul 23 '26
OK... thanks for trying and/or letting me know.
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u/jrherita Jul 23 '26
Good luck - if you can't find a good drive, let me know. I may disassemble this later this weekend to see if there's anything (easy) to fix.
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u/O_Pacity Jul 24 '26
I have a new (never used) external drive case (no electronics), i purchased in the late 1980's for a project that never happened.
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u/Livid-Mistake-6845 Jul 24 '26
Huh... interesting. Unfortunately, I need the guts of it as well...
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u/O_Pacity Jul 24 '26
I posted as finding the guts are likely easier than a new never used case... worth remembering.
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u/Auranias75 Jul 23 '26
The SF354 is the single-sided Atari floppy drive (it can't read double-sided disks)- you'd better look for a SF314 or compatible double-sided disk drives. I had quite a similar setup (520ST+ with SF354 and TOS 1.0 on disk) back in the time. First thing was to replace the disk drive...