Frequently Asked Questions
Q: I saw a battery on the pictures on UltraSatan’s PCB, what is it for?
A: UltraSatan has a battery backed up RTC, so your ST will get a current time and date on every restart and not a year 1987.
Q: Does UltraSatan require that I already have a ACSI to SCSI interface such as a Link II etc?
A: No, you don’t need any ACSI-to-SCSI interface. The UltraSatan is connected directly to ACSI (the same was for SatanDisk).
Q: About the cable – is it compatible with the cable for SatanDisk?
A: Yes, the cables for UltraSatan and SatanDisk are the same, I used the same pinout. The pinout I use is what I believe it would be if they (Atari inc.) would use flat cable instead of DB-19. The wires are sorted in the same way as in the DB-19.
Q: What voltage does UltraSatan need?
A: It should be at least 7V, because there is some voltage drop down in the device (due to rectifier). But it shouldn’t be much higher than 7V, because higher voltage will result in higher heating of the device. So from 7V to 9V should be OK. You can use some sort of universal DC adapter. For input voltage to regulator temperature relation look at the table bellow.
Running from 12V (or more) not recommended. Do not try to create 7V by connecting UltraSatan between 12V and 5V line!
| Input voltage [V] |
Voltage regulator temp. [° C] |
| 7 | 47 |
| 9 | 59 |
| 12 | 84 |
Q: What kind of power supply socket is in the device? (i.e. what connector my adapter needs to have)
A: It’s a 2.1 mm connector for DC power supplies. You should get adapter with switchable connectors and try which does fit in the UltraSatan
Q: What polarity the DC power supply connector has to be? Where the + and – is?
A: It doesn’t matter – the device has rectifier, so both combinations are valid.
Q: Will a 2 GB card work with it?
A: I have tested UltraSatan with cards from 16MB to 8GB and they all work, so yes, the 2 GB card should work. Btw. according to my calculations 8GB should be almost maximum that you can access using the biggest possible partitions under TOS 2.0x, and for TOS 1.xx the maximum should be 4 GB.
Q: Will a microSD and miniSD card work in UltraSatan?
A: The MicroSD and MiniSD cards work with UltraSatan, and even the SD card which can be directly pluged in the USB.
Q: I like the dual drives! Is one hot swappable?
A: Both are hot swappable.
Q: The hot swap is functionality within Ultrasatan’s logic or is it based on some kind of special software on the ST?
A: UltraSatan detects card changes and if the card change occures, it signalizes the UNIT ATTENTION condition (SCSI sense code). Basicly any hard disk driver for ST, which can handle that situation, can use the hot swappable drive (the driver has to re-read FAT, etc., when the media change occures). HDDRIVER from Uwe Seimet has this support for removable media, I don’t know if any other driver does (I don’t use them).
Q: What is the transfer speed of UltraSatan?
A: The current FW version does something around 1MB/s, but it depends on the speed of the SD/MMC card and on the TOS version of you ST. See the benchmarks for more information.
Q: Do you have a preference for running UltraSatan with either (a) an Atari STE with (Tos 1.62/2.06) or (b) an STFM (Tos 1.4)?
A: I would recommend using a machine with the newest TOS, so my choice would be STE with TOS 2.06, or at least 1.62. Older TOS versions have trouble (or are unable) to access SD/MMC cards formated with TOS&DOS compatibility (for easy data transfer between PC and Atari), they are slower in hard-drive access and some have fatal bugs which cause the partition losses on hard-drives or data corruption.
Q: Can I use a standard DMA cable (or AdSCSI cable) with your UltraSatan instead of your non-standard cable?
A: No you can’t, because UltraSatan does not have the DB-19 connector, but it has a 20-pin flat cable connector.
Q: Will the UltraSatan work with a Atari Falcon? Does it need a different cable?
A: UltraSatan can’t work with Falcon, because Falcon does not have ACSI interface. The difference between SCSI and ACSI interface is much greater than just a different cable or connector, so it is not possible.
Q: I got an internal SCSI hard drive and ICD ADSCI Micro Host adapter still fitted in my Atari Mega 4 (SCSI Unit ID: 0). Do I need to remove these first or will the UltraSatan handle being parallel connected albeit via the external hard drive port?
A: it would be best to configure the UltraSatan first to use some other IDs as 0 (i.e. set it to 1 to 7). It shouldn’t break when connected to ST with other devices with the same IDs, but you couldn’t configure it to new IDs either, because they would ‘talk’ one through the other (both will respond to the same requests) and the result will be that the ST won’t ‘understand’ none of the devices. So the best would be to configure it on other computer (i.e. on other ST) and then connect it to the Mega ST 4.
Q: I don’t like the name UltraSatan, because I it contains the word ‘satan’, and I don’t like to have it displayed when my ST boots up. Can I change it somehow?
A: Yes, you can change the INQUIRY name. Boot your ST, have your UltraSatan connected to your ST and powered, start the ‘us_config.prg’ utility and in the main menu press ‘i’ and follow the instructions.