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Atari/C64 flippy disks


lbaeza

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Hi

 

Some game titles were released on disk back in the day, with one side featuring the Atari version of the game, and on the other side, the C64 version of the same game. I think these were called "flippy" disks.

 

Datasoft's version of Pole Position has this feature, see the pictures of the disk.

 

Do you know any other titles like this?

Do we have a list of these games?

Kind regards,

 

Louis BQ

 

254952-pole-position-atari-8-bit-media.j

 

254953-pole-position-atari-8-bit-media.j

 

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Once I heard about disks with dual formats on the same side, but I don't know if that really works. I know the 1541 will seek for the directory + BAM at track 18, and then move the head in either direction depending on what the directory says files are located. I don't know how the Atari disk format(s) are designed, but I imagine one might be able to format only some tracks and as long as files and directory entries are kept inside that range, any two formats - possibly even a MFM and GCR side by side - could coexist.

 

Edit: The VTOC and directory on a 810 are stored in soft sectors 360-368 out of 720, which suggests to me it is in the middle of the physical disk area so possibly it would conflict with the 1541?

Edited by carlsson
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For a multi format disk to work on Atari, you only need the track with the boot sector. All the others are optional.

Directory/Vtoc doesn't matter in most cases as the majority of games just use raw data without a file system structure.

I think 1050 actually by default will seek track 0 when you insert a new floppy or first turn the drive on. At that stage it does a density check which can be enquired by the Status command.

 

Not sure with C= disks though if it requires a Track zero to exist. Pretty sure their drives don't even seek when a new disk is inserted. No multiple densities to worry about so no reason for complex initialisation.

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Lucasfilm disk games did the same. Koronis Rift, The Eidolon, Ballblazer, Rescue on Fractalus. Activision too.

 

Guys, thanks for your replies so far.

Paul, what Activision titles were released as flippy disk?

 

Kind regards,

 

Louis BQ

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Nearly all Mastertronic disc games.

 

Some of the Mastertronic disc-games were even multi-format and had both formats (e.g. C64 and A8) on one diskside !! Luckily all multi-format disks I had did not contain any copy-protection... and I always erased the evil C64 data on them... ;-)

 

Afaik, many Datasoft programs that fitted on one diskside (e.g. Bruce Lee, Pole Position, etc.) were flippies...

(Besides, all german "Europa" tapes were flippy tapes, C64 on one side, A8 on the other.)

Edited by CharlieChaplin
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@Andreas... How did the mastertronic disc format looked like? Aren't c64 format too different?

 

Well,

 

afair, a) the bootsectors and sectors thereafter did contain A8 data, b) followed by some empty sectors and then c) followed sectors that gave lots of read errors (contained lots of garbage, the C64 data, I guess)...

 

So I used a sector-copy program that would read a disk and continue on errors. When the disk was read completely, I wrote the copy onto the original disk (and the copy program wrote only the readable A8 data and it wrote empty sectors for all error sectors). Therefore I ended up with an original disk with just A8 data and without any copy-protection at all (and all my flippy-disks are already A8-only disks, since I copied the A8 data onto the other side as well).

 

At comp.sys.atari.8bit (which is completely dead nowadays!) at one point someone appeared and said that a) he knows how to get up to five different computer formats onto one diskette and b) he has the rights (or patent?) for these multi-computer-format disks...

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