What is UltraSatan?
UltraSatan is a hard disk replacement for Atari ST and other Atari’s with ACSI port. It uses SD and / or MMC cards as a storage, which are hot-pluggable. For more information about the UltraSatan device, please check out the page of UltraSatan’s author here. You can find there some info, photos, videos, etc.
Why the name?
- The project name is derived from the name of ancestor project – SatanDisk. UltraSatan is superior to SatanDisk and therefore the ultra prefix
- It has nothing to do with satanism or occultism
Why UltraSatan?
- For the same reasons as ‘Why SatanDisk?’ (MMC and SD cards are cheap and noise-less, etc.)
- It has 2 slots for SD/MMC cards, so replaces 2 SatanDisks attached to 1 computer
- The SD/MMC cards are hot-pluggable, i.e. you don’t need to power off and on the UltraSatan when you change the card
- Has a battery backed up RTC chip
- Up to 4 different firmwares can be uploaded from ST without a need for any additional HW (no flash programmer needed for update)
- It has 1 base (non overwritable) firmware, so even if you screw up the FW update, the device won’t become unusable
- It’s faster than SatanDisk
Specifications
- Connects to ACSI port of Atari ST
- Supports MMC, SD and SDHC cards – tested with cards from 16 MB to 8 GB and works OK on ST
- Drivers: ICD PRO (free) and HDDRIVER (commercial) compatible
- Open-source – free schematics, firmware, sources, so anyone can build it on his own
- You can change the INQUIRY name of device (the string that shows when hard disk driver shows the currently connected ACSI devices)
You can read more about the UltraSatan here.