Apps & Utils You'd Like To See For: Atari DOS

[sanny]

pwd for present working directory,

 

I had thought 'pwd' means 'print working directory', but your expansion is equally good :-)

 

 

cwd for change working directory. cwd was from the old IBM DOS and Unix/AIX systems before that (perl still uses that routine cwd() ).

 

I've never heard of 'cwd' as a command. There is an Unix syscall with name getcwd() which returns the "working directory pathname" (according to FreeBSD man page.

[+David_P]

Utility I'd like to see: SHARE. Command line version: SHARE [src] [Dest] /[Write enable]. For non-Sparta DOSes,there would have to be a front end to identify the desired drive identities.

 

When connected to another Atari 8-bit, with Rx and Tx swapped, and Command / Interrupt swapped (ideally both ways), the system running SHARE acts as a disk drive for the second computer. It should be possible (though likely confusing) to have both computers running SHARE at the same time.

 

So, SHARE D3: D1: would mean that D3: on the computer running SHARE would be seen as D1: on the second computer.

 

I'd prefer write enable as an option in order to prevent accidental damage - since Ataris generally assume they control the disk completely, having two computers share a single drive could cause problems.

 

Ideally, the software would run in the background and be interrupt driven, so the computer running SHARE could still be used for other purposes when not serving data to the other computer.

[+MrFish]

I think I prefer this (or some variation on this) for a colorized version. It doesn't have the classic orange button and text (the other version's text, that I posted, really wasn't properly colored like the original anyway), but it stills provides enough of a color hint and doesn't take away from the design.

 

Edited July 18, 2017 by MrFish

[576XE]

Hello, Mr/Fish!

 

Very impressive!

Your design is always the BEST!

[+MrFish]

Thanks...

 

It doesn't really fit this topic, but I was working on a chess game design today.

 

 

Edited July 22, 2017 by MrFish

[Umberto]

Thanks...

 

It doesn't really fit this topic, but I was working on a chess game design today.

 

chess.png

 

Awesome,

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hmmm,

 

would like to see a similar topic for MyDOS, then I could add a dozen or more suggestions/ideas...

(file and or dir undelete tool, file and/or dir move tool, dir-remark creator, dir/file-sorter, external formatter, etc.)

 

---

 

How about a simple tool for Atari DOS that loads/saves/changes Gr. 15 pics and the colours ?

Yes, there are dozens of drawing and painting programs available, but how about a simple + short ML tool that:

 

a) loads an uncompressed Gr. 15 picture with 7680 bytes (without any colour bytes) and then lets you add colours manually ?

b) loads an uncompressed Gr. 15 picture with 7684 bytes (with colour bytes, e.g. greyscales or colours you do not like) and then lets you change colours manually ?

c) loads a maximum of 7684 bytes and ignores the rest (e.g. Waseo Publisher, Bobterm and other modem programs always add some bytes when transfering files which can be problematic for gfx files)

d) saves the new/changed Gr. 15 picture uncompressed with 7684 bytes / 62 sectors onto diskette

e) lets you change colours and lum./shades with keys 1-4 and Shift 1-4...

 

Maybe such a program already exists and I simply do not know it / do not have it in my collection...?!?

[+MrFish]

would like to see a similar topic for MyDOS, then I could add a dozen or more suggestions/ideas...

(file and or dir undelete tool, file and/or dir move tool, dir-remark creator, dir/file-sorter, external formatter, etc.)

 

This topic is not for Atari DOS (produced by Atari) specifically, it is for any application or utility that would run under any DOS that runs on Atari computers. The reason I said "Atari DOS" is because I wanted to differentiate it from the other thread which is for "Atari GUI" applications and from the thread about PC based apps and utilities.

 

So go ahead and put anything you want here related to MyDOS or any other. I'm really just trying to find out what kind of application and utility software people would be interested in using.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Thanks...

 

It doesn't really fit this topic, but I was working on a chess game design today.

 

chess.png

 

 

Hmmm,

 

maybe you can change the look of John Krause's "Chess" (a type-in listing from Compute! magazine) into your design and errm, turn the Basic program (with lots of data statements) into a pure ML file...?!?

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-chess_1021.html

 

Okay, the program is very simple and does not check for illegal moves (therefore you can create any setups you like), but its AI is better than that of Atari Chess.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Another tool I could use under DOS is a *multi* ASCII <=> ATASCII converter. For the Proc Atari Magazine (PAM) I often have to convert several ASCII texts into ATASCII. I do have ASCII-ATASCII converters for the A8, but they only convert one single file at a time, meaning you input the source filename, then the destination filename and this one file gets converted. It would be nice to have a multi converter, where you

 

a) simply input source extender (e.g. *.TXT),

b) input target extender (e.g. *.DOC),

c) input source + target drive (e.g. 1,1 or 1,2) and

d) input conversion mode (ASCII-ATASCII or ATASCII-ASCII).

 

Then the program loads any file e.g. with *.TXT extender, converts e.g. from ASCII into ATASCII and saves them e.g. with *.DOC extender (which means it loads one file, converts and saves it with new extender, then loads the next file and converts + saves it, etc.). The program could have a counter that informs how many files shall be converted (total, this counter does not change during conversion), how many files have already been converted (this counter gets higher) and how many files still have to be converted (this counter gets lower until it reaches zero and the program says "all done!")...

Edited July 22, 2017 by CharlieChaplin

[+MrFish]

maybe you can change the look of John Krause's "Chess" (a type-in listing from Compute! magazine) into your design and errm, turn the Basic program (with lots of data statements) into a pure ML file...?!?

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-chess_1021.html

 

Okay, the program is very simple and does not check for illegal moves (therefore you can create any setups you like), but its AI is better than that of Atari Chess.

 

I'll take a look at it; pretty short listing...

[+CharlieChaplin]

Tools and Utilities for MyDOS:

 

- they should work with all MyDOS formats/densities up to 16MB!

- they should work with MyDOS subdirs! (even multiple subdirs = sub-subdirs)

 

- a tool to undelete files and/or directories (which have not been overwritten in the meantime)

 

- a tool to move files and/or directories (first copy the files or directories+files to the new location, then delete the files or directories in the old location; I know this is not fast under MyDOS, but faster than doing it manually; maybe it should be limited to formats like MyDOS 130k, MyDOS 360k and up to 16MB, since these formats do not use sector/filelinks)

 

- a tool to create directory remarks (simple 8.3 text entries with 000 or 0000 or 00000 sectors in length, all available A8 chars. should be allowed e.g. inverse-chars., control-chars., etc.)

 

- a tool to sort files and/or directories (alphabetically a-z, alphabet. z-a, per size lower-higher, per size higher-lower; etc.)

 

- an external formatter for diskettes/disk-images: asks for 1) format: 90k, 130k, 180k, 360k, 720k and 1440k (presented in a menu) - no non-standard 35-track or 77-track formats and 2) drive number 1-8; then formats the diskette or disk-image;

 

- an external formatter for harddisk/HD-images: asks 1) density 128b, 256b (and for future MyDOS versions maybe 512b and 1024b), 2) format or sectors (e.g. 1MB, 2MB, 4MB, 8MB, 16MB or sectors from 720-65535) and 3) drive number 1-8 then formats the harddisk or HD-image

 

- a ML-menu for MyDOS (not a gamedos!) that can execute Atari Basic and ML files and also load multi-stage files and save highscores

[+MrFish]

Reconfigured the info windows, brought in the hoizontal dimension slightly, beefed up the king's cross, and made a stylized rook.

 

 

[+MrFish]

Here's a version with a border and coordinates. The board is a little more crowded, but I prefer that to having less well-defined, smaller pieces.

 

Conversely, the info windows become more spacious in this configuration.

 

Edited July 30, 2017 by MrFish

[+Stephen]

Damn - I can't tell by that shot - is it 160*200 or 320*200?

[+MrFish]

160...

 

I'd wanted to work in 320 to start with, but it really lacks that one more color to make things work out as they should.

 

Another thought is to use midline changes for getting the text into 320. The AI would be slowed down in more advanced modes, but it'd look great.

[+MrFish]

Fixed the main crowding problems and added my own twist on visual notation.

 

I guess I've successfully derailed my own thread at this point. Haha...

 

 

 

Edited July 30, 2017 by MrFish

[+MrFish]

Wanted to change some things in the post above and ran out of edits.

 

 

Edited July 30, 2017 by MrFish

[+Stephen]

Incredible work! It never ceases to amaze me what can be done with such a limited canvas.

[+MrFish]

Last edit for today (?).

 

I wasn't sure it was possible. It's definitely easier for the novice to deal with than textual notation.

 

 

Edited July 30, 2017 by MrFish

[+MrFish]

Perfectionism strikes one more time...

 

 

[+Nezgar]

One idea... If one doesn't already exist, I think it would be cool to have a utility to scan a disk for bad sectors, and map them out.

 

Working through archiving my disk collection lately, I've inevitably run across some disks that have bad sectors. At least Happy 1050 and USDoubler will format the disk track 0-39 before doing the verify. So... when the verify fails, can use SDX formatter to 'build directory'. I've been able to manually mark the bad sectors as 'allocated' using EDDY, and SpartaDOS will happily avoid them, without even creating dummy files that 'live' on those sectors. In theory this could be useful for DOS2 format disks as well, just by setting the allocated bits in the VTOC. The program could do unbuffered reads for each sector, and flag either on an error, or even on a longer then usual response time to the sector read.

 

Might be nice to extend the life of some floppies that are otherwise good save for a few specific 'bad spots' on them.