ac.tomo Posted June 19, 2018 Share Posted June 19, 2018 I was wondering (as I have an idea), can the Atari OS be used in my own made 'small-device's', what I mean is what's the protocol with the copyright, would I be able to use the Atari classic's OS for my own ends, is there someone that copyrights need to be paid? I won't say what my idea is just yet, other than the use for what I've said. any info....... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted June 19, 2018 Share Posted June 19, 2018 Emulators don't have the Atari O.S. included if you download them to avoid copyright issues. I think the only exception to that was the original XFormer emulator by Darek Mihocka for MS-Dos systems. Based on that knowledge I'd think it's not o.k. to use it. As an alternative you may want to consider Altirra O.S. but you should ask Phaeron about the status. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted June 20, 2018 Share Posted June 20, 2018 I license AltirraOS under a permissive license, you can use it in other emulators or hardware devices and redistribution is allowed. Current versions of Altirra have an option in the Tools menu to export the ROM set, which will dump them out to a folder of your choosing along with a README that contains the license. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ac.tomo Posted June 20, 2018 Author Share Posted June 20, 2018 I license AltirraOS under a permissive license, you can use it in other emulators or hardware devices and redistribution is allowed. Current versions of Altirra have an option in the Tools menu to export the ROM set, which will dump them out to a folder of your choosing along with a README that contains the license. what's the difference between an Atari OS and the Altirra OS, basically what I want to do is to create a piece of hardware (like a calculator) with the OS to perform the task of a piece of software already built in on an eprom (or whatever/however you do it these days). Therefor, I will need the hardware made, software made and then sell the gadget publicly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted June 20, 2018 Share Posted June 20, 2018 AltirraOS is completely reverse-engineered and rewritten from scratch to reproduce Atari's own OS functionality without infringing on Atari's copyright. It's very complete and remarkably compatible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted June 21, 2018 Share Posted June 21, 2018 It's mostly "forward engineered", actually -- written off of the public spec in the OS Manual and then tweaked based on programs that failed on it. If you have a program that comforms to public routine and variable usage in the OS Manual, then it should work on AltirraOS. Also, you won't look at the binary image and think "gee, that looks an awful lot like reassembled machine code from the Atari OS." There are some use cases that it is better suited to than others. The primary use case is as a fallback that can run 90% of the software out there and make the platform usable. If you need very high compatibility with existing Atari software, it's not suitable because there is some software that it isn't and can't ever be compatible with. Some programs jump directly into OS routines, and a few even use the OS itself as an encryption key, which means it's literally impossible to get it working with anything other than the actual Atari OS. But it's different if you only need compatibility with specific software, in which case you can pre-test to determine whether it'll work. For instance, if you have some old software you wrote long ago and want to show it off again in a turnkey solution for others that may not be familiar with how to set up an Atari, you can use AltirraOS to boot your software instead of the Atari OS. If you're trying to make something that's not really an Atari compatible, then there isn't much point in using AltirraOS because the general requirements of an Atari-compatible OS aren't likely to be a good fit for anything else. It makes a crappy RTOS if you don't need to run an SIO disk drive and an ANTIC display. Simple display, text input, and interrupts can be done quicker and with far less code. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted June 21, 2018 Share Posted June 21, 2018 ...and a few even use the OS itself as an encryption key, which means it's literally impossible to get it working with anything other than the actual Atari OS. That's interesting. Can you point out some examples? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted June 21, 2018 Share Posted June 21, 2018 That's interesting. Can you point out some examples? http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=654 Uses random bytes from the OS as an XOR key to decrypt data. Also makes the program incompatible with the XEGS, which is a rare feat. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thorfdbg Posted June 21, 2018 Share Posted June 21, 2018 That's interesting. Can you point out some examples? A couple of EA titles did exactly that. The purpose of this was likely to avoid reverse engineering the copy protection with some monitor that replaced the Os-ROM. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+David_P Posted June 21, 2018 Share Posted June 21, 2018 Early EA releases checked for ROM at $C000 to stop loading if Omnimon was present. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted June 21, 2018 Share Posted June 21, 2018 http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=654 Uses random bytes from the OS as an XOR key to decrypt data. Also makes the program incompatible with the XEGS, which is a rare feat. Interesting a demo would do something like that. A couple of EA titles did exactly that. The purpose of this was likely to avoid reverse engineering the copy protection with some monitor that replaced the Os-ROM. Early EA releases checked for ROM at $C000 to stop loading if Omnimon was present. Makes sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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