luckybuck Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 There are those who said it never existed, well, today the Atari IMF-team can deliver the evidence for, so we are sorry, they have to think again. This is, by far, the greatest international Atari project ever made in the background. It was possible and became real, when passionate Atari users from different continents and countries came together, to give their very best. Each skill was needed to accomplish this mission impossible. It shows a clear: 'yes, we can, if we want to', but this time for real!Before we start, our big, big thank you (to be honest, a Zotta-thank you; Zotta comes after Zetta, comes after Exa, comes after Peta, comes after Tera, comes after Giga…, you got the point, I am sure goes to Curt Vendel and his Atari museum for lending of the box, so we could do the restauration and afterwards the investigation.As a spin-off, we now are able, to read and write to the Atari 815 double disk drive! :-)A Mega-thank you goes to Kevin Savetz for scanning all the hundreds of pages in best 600 dpi color quality (in sum 32 GB of raw data!). What a bunch of work, thank you so much Kevin!A Giga-thank you goes parallel to (in order of help):- a good soul from Utah (prefers to stay in the dark and is still under the Atari witness protection program)- Bob Woolley- Allan Bushman- Bill Lange- Floppydoc- Sascha Kriegel, especially for his fight at the hot spot, locally and in person- Ryan Goolevitch and Joachim Baßmann for their genius on how to get the f… data from the very special disks of the 815 double drive (please see the full report on the Wiki); a milestone!A Tera-thank you goes to DjayBee from AtariAge for making the disks runnable with 'normal' drives. :-) With this and others major performances (e. g. SynCalc+ from 1985 ), it is fair to appoint him as king in this important field. To my mind, there should be no doubt about it.A Mega-thank you in advance goes to Wade Ripkowski for his deep, deep investigation (down the rabbit hole, all way long). At least, I hope Wade will keep an eye on it… Of course, Mega will turn into Giga, when he finds something similar like in Silent Butler:'Printing: I could not get any print routines to work either in emulation or with real hardware.'This makes Silent Butler useless, of course. I have checked this by my own, it is the truth and nothing but the truth. As sadly as it is. Maybe it was fixed in Silent Butler 80, but this version hasn’t surfaced yet. :-(But with The Atari Accountant, it is different, because we are able to fix bugs! :-)Well, then there is a guy called Roland, he got on people’s nerves with all his e-mails, so we skip the thank you at this point.But there are so many passionate Atari users, who all gave an input to the project. Please see the credit list on the Wiki, too.At last, but not least, a Mega-thank you to AtariAge, without their work and platform, we could never have connected us to make this all possible. Thank you really so much!So, finally, what the heck is The Atari Accountant?Well, The Atari Accountant is most expansive Atari program of all times! It enables the user to run a small and medium enterprise as of 1981! The Atari Accountant consists of three boxes CX401 General Accounting, CX402 Accounts Receivable and CX403 Inventory Control, each is for $499 as of 1981. One more thing, you need 'some' additional hardware, but only ’some'. This is from 1981:- Color TV or monitor, of course: take it as given - Atari 800: $759- 48 KiB-RAM: 2 x $149 = $298 ; SI-unit has changed from KB to KiB !- Atari 815 Dual Disk Drive: $1199- Atari 825 80-Column Printer: $779- Atari 850 Interface Module: $179- Atari BASIC Cartridge: $46- Atari CX401 General Accounting: $499- Atari CX402 Accounts Receivable: $499- Atari CX403 Inventory Control: $499- Atari CX89 Color Monitor Cable, else Atari CX82 B&W Monitor Cable: $50- Atari CX86 Printer Cable: $42- a lot of Atari double density diskettes (CX8202) for storage: $21- a credit card, which can take all of the above :-)In sum: $4,870 as value from 1981. Assuming an inflation rate of 4 % over the decades (just multiply with 1.04), we come to:$4820 * 1.04 ^ (2019 - 1981) = $21,617.02of today’s money, which is in Euro: €19,140.27 (exchange rate from: 02/19/2019)Did we got your interest? Do you really want to be one time the Fox Mulder of the Atari-X-Files? Do you really want the truth out? Can you even handle the truth? Then continue on our 1st draft:The Atari Accountant SeriesAll the best from all the mentioned passionate Atari users above.P. S. You want to become an Atari IMF-team member? No problem, any hint or trace or even the missing program from our wanted: dead or alive list brings you aboard! The time is now or never!P. P. S. Any help in finding the remaining CX402 and CX403 boxes is very welcome at any time. :-) P. P. P. S. My name is Roland and I am an Atarian 37 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brentarian Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 Kudos to everyone involved in the rescue! Those scans are gorgeous! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckybuck Posted February 24, 2019 Author Share Posted February 24, 2019 Sure, they are from Kevin, did you expect otherwise? 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Payne Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 Wow! My mom used this to run her business for a bit. She wanted me to learn how to use it but I was probably 16 at the time and had no interest in accounting. I didn't realize it was THAT special and that people said it didn't exist. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckybuck Posted February 24, 2019 Author Share Posted February 24, 2019 (edited) That is why, the ATARI-IMF team took over... More miracle to come, stay tuned! :-) Edited February 24, 2019 by luckybuck 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bunsen Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 W-O-W Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 Thank you very much! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckybuck Posted February 24, 2019 Author Share Posted February 24, 2019 We have to thank you! It is the users, who made Atari that big! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormtrooper of Death Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 Wow, this is a superb achievement for the Atari 8bit world. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted February 25, 2019 Share Posted February 25, 2019 (edited) he he he witness protection program.... non disclosure agreements make some folks members of the witless protection program I have lost my wits! Seriously though, I love that write up! as for silent butler... did we try an xmm801? or and epson printer, or perhaps a panasonic.. I used silent butler bitd....I don't remember any issues... well other than y2k issues later on... Edited February 25, 2019 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckybuck Posted February 25, 2019 Author Share Posted February 25, 2019 :-) Besides the fun with Atari, a little fun while reading is welcome, too, isn't it? I did try on an emulator many printers. All failed... xmm801: no not tried. There is a 80 column version of SB out there in the galaxy, maybe, they have fixed it in this version? Alread on the rarity 10 list... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted February 25, 2019 Share Posted February 25, 2019 Love the write up. Proud to have been able to help, in a small way--compared to the mammoth effort of others. Big hats off. I'm impressed Atari implemented copy protection on these disks as early as 1981, even with their 'brand new' double density. Same year of the other 'earliest' Atari title I've found with protection, with some quick looking in the perservation collection which was "Macro Assembler and Program-Text Editor v1.0A" (so far). Also, I'm excited we now have a known pristine "DOS 2.0D" - this has been floating around for a long time, but most copies were modified in some small way, so now we will have something to compare the rest against. Ryan 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted February 25, 2019 Share Posted February 25, 2019 Wow! My mom used this to run her business for a bit. She wanted me to learn how to use it but I was probably 16 at the time and had no interest in accounting. I didn't realize it was THAT special and that people said it didn't exist. So this I was surprised to read. Especially after reading Bill Lange's thougts that he 'suspected' a small number were sold before it was cancelled. This would confirm his suspicion if what you saw was truly this application. (Do you remember 815 disk drives with the computer??) Probably similar to how only enough 815's were hand built to satisfy pre-orders... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckybuck Posted February 25, 2019 Author Share Posted February 25, 2019 Don't put your light under the table! You were of great help! The problem with the destroyed sector in DD took us a year to come by! All the programs available support the 'normal' drive, not the 'beast'... This alone decelerated the project very much. Especially without having access to the 75 drives worldwide available... Yes, this is my special part, the time from 1979 up to 1982... The beginning so far... many still shrouded in mystery. :-( Text Editor v1.0A went to 1.0C, you know? -> Wiki Big sorry, I just added the DOS 2.0D from my archive. This is not delivered with the CX401 as a standalone disk. We still search for a Kryo image of this and(!) the CX8202, because these disks boot faster than normal! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckybuck Posted February 25, 2019 Author Share Posted February 25, 2019 'Do you remember 815 disk drives with the computer??' No, I have never seen one for real. I highly doubt the CX401 boxes were sold. The CX406 yes. But some boxes have a sticker: 'Not for public!' ... Some were introduced at the CES(?) in Las Vegas to very little customers... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted February 25, 2019 Share Posted February 25, 2019 :-) Besides the fun with Atari, a little fun while reading is welcome, too, isn't it? I did try on an emulator many printers. All failed... xmm801: no not tried. There is a 80 column version of SB out there in the galaxy, maybe, they have fixed it in this version? Alread on the rarity 10 list... I will provide you copies of 80 col Silent Butler and I think I also have the source code disks to it as well. Give me a couple of days 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted February 25, 2019 Share Posted February 25, 2019 Big sorry, I just added the DOS 2.0D from my archive. This is not delivered with the CX401 as a standalone disk. We still search for a Kryo image of this and(!) the CX8202, because these disks boot faster than normal! Ah, ok. So... Was the CX8201 DOS 2.0D image from a genuine disk though? (Maybe this is not new after all) That is interesting you say these disks boot 'faster than normal'. This sounds very similar to the difference between I was interested in between the Rev B and Rev C 810 ROM's, which formatted disks with a 'slow' and 'fast' sector skew. Before we have a flux image of these disks, If you or Kevin have access to a Speedy 1050 (or tf_hh's mini speedy 1050) we can very quickly see the sector order on these 815 DD disks using the 'Disk Mapper' utility, and see the type of bad sector used for protection. This would provide a hint as to which 815 firmware may have originally formatted the disks, or maybe given there's intentional bad sectors for copy protection, they were also likely formatted on another platform like TRS-80. For example, Russ Wetmore confirmed my observations of the Preppie disk, that Adventure International used a TRS-80 to write the disks which had a very different sector skew that no known Atari drive would write (3:1, instead of 9:1 or 13:1) Cheers, Ryan 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckybuck Posted February 25, 2019 Author Share Posted February 25, 2019 (edited) @Curt: '...Give me a couple of days...' all the time in the world... :-) WOW, that would be megacool! :-))) Btw, the greatest remaining mystery is still: Atari Dow Jones Investment Evaluator CX412 There is no single bit of trace/evidence etc. it ever existed... Any, just information, about it, would be extremely cool. :-) @Nezgar: Well this is from an internet archive, have to look at the meta data for the source. But these ones: were cool to Kryo, because of their faster booting. We want to find out why. Just the 2 from 815 are missing... :-( Edited February 25, 2019 by luckybuck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted February 25, 2019 Share Posted February 25, 2019 CX8100 and CX8202 are both *really* BLANK when new. Atari expected you to format it in your own drive first time used. CX8100 was 'certified' for single density/FM, and CX8202 was 'certified' for double density/MFM. A NIB disk should show nothing even with a flux image. CX8111 "Formatted" diskette was created as a workaround for those stuck with the old 810 'Rev B' ROM (formats with slower 13:1 skew), to be able to use a disk with faster sector skew (9:1) the same as a disk formatted with the Revision C 810 ROM. Knowing this, you can remove need to search for CX8202 An original CX8201 should be found and dumped though... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckybuck Posted February 25, 2019 Author Share Posted February 25, 2019 Well, 5:50 am maybe too late for me, you are right, we can clear the blank ones. So, the CX8202 is remaining. Thank you! :-) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted February 25, 2019 Share Posted February 25, 2019 Well, 5:50 am maybe too late for me, you are right, we can clear the blank ones. So, the CX8202 is remaining. Thank you! :-) Haha, indeed 5:50am is too late, as I'm sure you meant to type CX8201 is remaining. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted February 25, 2019 Share Posted February 25, 2019 Thanks to all especially Curt...We await the next jewel in the crown... Thanks guys... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfollowell Posted February 25, 2019 Share Posted February 25, 2019 So, what confuses and surprises me, is the fact that Atari released these on SSDD diskettes, when they didn't even have their own DD drive available! I know Rana and Indus, and maybe a couple of others did, but I don't think many of them had them out by 1981. Atari didn't have true DD drive until the XF551 in what, 1988 or 1989? That's really surprising. How did anyone use this software?! What am I missing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted February 25, 2019 Share Posted February 25, 2019 What am I missing? You missed that this software only worked with the "almost-vapourware" Atari 815 Dual-Drive Double-Density ONLY disk drive. (It could not even read single density disks from the 810). There are very few in existence, but they exist. They also recorded their data binary inverted compared to every other DD drive created by 3rd parties afterwards including Atari's later XF551. None of them could read disks from the 815 properly, which was part of the challenge which was successfully solved without having to find a working 815. More details about the solution to this specific challenge are on a sub-page linked from the main Atari Accountant page: https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Read%2C%20write%20or%20convert%20from%20an%20Atari%20815%20Double%20Disk%20Drive 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Thag Posted February 25, 2019 Share Posted February 25, 2019 Fascinating read. It's always great when some obscure corner of 8-bit history is not only documented, but dumped and shared. Cool stuff! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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