The UltraSatan is a hard disk replacement for the Atari ST that stores everything on SD cards. It connects to the ST’s ACSI port and, once set up, behaves like a set of hard drive partitions — but with no moving parts, no noise, and cards you can pull out and read on a modern PC.
What it is
The unit takes one or two SD cards and needs only a micro-USB power supply (a phone charger will do). On the ST side you install hard disk drivers and a partitioner — I used Peter Putnik’s “PP” drivers, which bundle both, along with a ready-made SD card image to get you booting without a floppy.
As storage
This is the main reason to fit one. An 8 GB SD card is effectively the perfect size: the ST supports up to 14 partitions, and at ~510 MB per partition (255 MB on TOS 1.02 and earlier) that fills the card almost exactly. That is more than enough room for a complete game and application library, always available at the desktop.
As a transfer method
Because the partitions are formatted as GEMDOS drives, the same SD card mounts on a PC. Pull the card, drag files onto it in Windows, put it back in the UltraSatan, reboot the ST and the files are there. It is the fastest transfer method available — you are only limited by how quickly the PC writes to the card — and it needs no working floppy drive at either end.
Pros
- silent, solid-state bulk storage for the whole library
- doubles as the fastest PC-to-ST file transfer route
- no floppy drive required
Cons
- more expensive than the cable-based transfer options
- initial setup (imaging, partitioning, installing drivers, re-adding drive letters in GEM) takes some patience