At present, there does not appear to be any one good way of transferring data from another platform to the Atari without special software running on the Atari. One method of transferring the needed software might be using a serial cable and a terminal emulator, but that means having a terminal emulator running on the Atari already. For those who either own an Atari with no disk drive, or who own a disk drive but who do not have any disks, these options are of little help. Anyone in this situation who also has access to an IBM compatible computer may want to consider using APE, the Atari Periphial Emulator. APE requires either buying or building an adaptor with low cost, commonly available parts that allow the user to connect the Atari's SIO periphal connector to the PC's serial port. APE can then emulate almost all Atari periphals including floppy drives, hard drives, serial interfaces, parallel interfaces, and cassette drives. For users who do own an Atari disk drive and just need software, APE comes with a DOS disk image allowing the user to boot off the emulated drive, and format a disk in the physical drive.