Atari_Ace

In November of 1982, my family bought an 800 (around $650 IIRC) and later we bought a spare 800 when they were being closed out (closer to $100 I think). For the last 25 years they've been stored in our family home's basement, and just yesterday I was reunited with them after shipping them cross country. I hope to get them working again, as I know one of them was broken when I stored them, and the storage conditions were less than ideal so both need attention. This I think is the original 800, it has an embossed stamp of "ATARI 242" This one I think is the spare. No embossed stamp I can see.

Thanks for archiving these. "JACG Vol-029.atr" has a clearly damaged sector 485, which I restored using data from ACE Columbus disk 14b. The file SPLINE still doesn't look quite right, but at least it's a valid BASIC file now.JACG Vol-029.atr

https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/newsletters/abe_ace/abe_ace.html has a few 1985 issues I haven't seen elsewhere, plus many of the ones you just posted to archive.org.

Here's the listings that I validated against the checksums except for a handful of lines with inverse characters. Hopefully of some use. ls.txt

1985 side B sector 25 (in DOS.SYS) is mangled. I've patched in that sector from side A so that the disk now boots successfully. A_I_Antic_Index_1985_B_fix.atr

A few notes on the Misc Clippings that don't have issue identifiers: Ernie's Magic Shapes review - from PSAN May 1989, page 35 I, Ludicrous review - from PSAN May 1989, page 11 Phantasie II review - according to the January 1989 index, this was from PSAN May 1988, page 28 Understanding the Technology cartoon - from PSAN June 1989, page 17 - by Nick Berry

Gives the pinout as: 1. +36V 2. +36V 3. Ground 4. Reserved 5. Reserved 6. Audio 7. Ground 8. Audio 9. +36V 10. Ground 11. Ground 12. Reserved 13. Reserved 14. Ground 15. Ground

BTW, the 1989 and 1990 PSAN issues can be found at https://commodore.bombjack.org/atari-st/st-newsletters/puget-sound-atari-news/puget-sound-atari-news.htm. I count at least 26 articles over those issues by Penny Ormston.

Speaking of Z*Net (the newsletter insert), I'm wondering if more will turn up. On archive.org, you can find many of them inside various issues of the JACG (Jersey Atari Computer Group) newsletter. A couple of individual issues were also posted, including the first issue (1989-03), as well as 1990-03 (which I suspect just got separated from a JACG newsletter). You can fill in the gaps by going to Bombjack's Commodore archive and downloading the Puget Sound Atari News issues for 1989-1990, which include all the Z*Net's from 1989-06 to 1990-12. You can also find a few issues inside the Saint Paul ACE newsletter at http://space.atari.org/ (the June, July and September 1989 issues). The last issue I can find is Vol. III No. 5 May 1991, in the 1991-05 issue of JACG. The 1991-04 issue of JACG has the Vol. III No. 3 March 1991 Z*Net, so I'm not sure if Vol. III No. 4 was ever produced. Were there later Z*Net issues? There are no others in the available JACG issues from later 1991 (July, September, October, November), so it seems unlikely there could have been more than one or two more. So what we have is all of Volume 1 and 2, and issues 1, 2, 3 and 5 of Volume 3. Z*Net as a newsletter supplement was more focused on the ST, but there was a fair amount of 8-bit content.

Here are disks 1 and 7 with the links fixed up so the filesystem is at least consistent. Every file is damaged however, so don't consider these fixed in any significant way yet. As with disk 9, it's going to take a lot of work to restore these disks. NACC_1_fix1.atr NACC_7_fix1.atr

Yes, every track has multiple damaged sectors, making this one quite a puzzle to put back together. The directory appears damaged, hiding two files on the disk (BOWLING and AMODEM42), so I've readded those entries. I've also stitched the broken links back together so that the files can be extracted, but I believe every one of them is broken to some degree due to missing/damaged sectors. It will probably take quite some time to put it back together, but I'll take a crack at it eventually. NACC_9_fix1.atr

I fixed up the disk as best I could. DEFENSE and CONNECT4 have some lines I couldn't restore, so I REM'd them out for now. Hopefully the disk is at least a closer representation of what it was originally. NACC_2_fix2.atr

I haven't found a good match for CONNECT4 so I'm not sure of its origin, but the others I've found in other collections (or at least similar enough to be related). I've repaired about half of the broken programs and continue to work on fixing the remainder. Given SoftSide was published out of New Hampshire, I wonder if any of the Atari authors from that publication were associated with this user group? Prolific contributors to SoftSide of Atari content included David Bohlke, Alan J. Zett, and David Plotkin.

FYI, NACC_2.atr has lots of problems. Sector 472 was probably bad (it's empty in the image), and in sectors 30, 184, 380, 409, 419, 460, 499 and 509 the metadata appears to be incorrect. I've edited the metadata to make the files complete, but the files GOLDRUSH, SABOTAG, CONNECT4, DEFENSE, CHICKEN are damaged as a result. PINGPONG is also damaged. Only BLOCKADE, CONCEN, MULTIPLY, and OPART appear to have escaped damage and are valid BASIC programs. I suspect the files are common BASIC programs we can find in other collections and thus repair the damage, but I've only made minimal changes to the disk for the moment. I'll try to fix the disk more thoroughly later this week. NACC_2_fix1.atr

I've updated the "Applying the Atari" collection of columns at https://ksquiggle.neocities.org/columns/ata.htm to include the last three issues posted. Sometime I'll do the same for the "Note and Point" column.