Andreas Magenheimer

Well, allthough this subject seems to be solved and closed, I like to add the following: what if a) the author (Sheddy) one day loses interest in this project ?? or b) the author loses (by some stange circumstances) all his work including the sources and the latest update ?? You probably heard of Murphy`s law - or that bad things can really hapen sometimes ?!? Thus, in my eyes it would be a good and wise decision to release demo versions from time to time and not only pictures... lets say a demo version every 3 or every 6 levels (since the game should have 18 levels - at least the original game has). that way we would have some backups or at least a demo version that is newer than the level 1 demo version... -Andreas.

Well, - Kangaroo disk version was avaiable from APX (works on 800/XL/XE series) - Kangaroo cart version (5200 pirate dump) avaiable as so-called prototype; works on 400/800 only (Translator needed on XL/XE) - Vanguard: no official 800/XL/XE version, only the 5200 pirate version (Glenn the 5200 man) - Gremlins: pirate version from Glenn the 5200 man - others games listed are all avaiable as pirated versions from Glenn the 5200 man... The question is: How did Glenn convert these games from VCS 5200 to 800/XL/XE ?!? would like to convert some more 5200 games to 800/XL/XE machines...

Well, somewhere around 1999 or 2000 Les Ellingham announced to publish the last 6 issues of Page 6 / NAU (in comp.sys.atari). He reminded everyone to subscribe to get these last issues. And I did, I did, idiot... Er, well, I subscribed for 35 pounds (105 german marks at that time, little more than 50 US dollars). But nothing happened. No more magazines were ever published. Maybe Les did only take the money - I do not know...

Well, it does not work with a compyshop RD - and I do not have a Rambo XL or Toms or Newell RD. By the way, what is the setup of the Rambo XL (banks, control bits, etc.) ?!?

Well, if you want to know every single bit of how a program is saved onto tape, then visit the homepage of bo and ernest Schreurs (damn, I do not know the URL right now). They have created the WAV2CAS program and did a very detailed description of how it is generally done (and how to convert tapes to WAV)... Believe me, they described everything, not only the 128 bytes length but every single bit inside this data block and overhead bits, etc. etc. But I did not understand a thing, since I am no programmer, no computer professionel, no electrician...

Well, a msc ide interface (made in germany, already sold out) could have up to 240 partitions with 16 megabytes each... When using a HD, one should use MyDOS or SpartaDOS, since they are the only DOS versions which provide subdirs and 16MB partitions (other DOS versions are limited in densities and/or do not have subdirs). For instance DOS XE has subdirs, but a maximum of 360kbytes; DOS 4 has 720k support, but no subdirs, etc. etc.; A selfmade IDe-interface can be found at sijmen Schoutens homepage, I do not remember the URL, sorry. But it is very cheap and schematics as well as software can be found for the 800 and the XL/XE computers...

Well, Atari floppies normally run with 19,200 baud (approx. 2.4kbytes per second), the XF551 drive also supports 38,400 baud and third party upgrades support either 57,600 or 76,800 Baud. The fastest SIO port floppy drive is the super speedy 1040, it has 256k RAM on board, thus it reads, formats and writes Single (90k), enhanced (130k) and double (180k) density in approx. 12-13 seconds. This was a developer drive by Compyshop, only 5-10 were made, ABBUC has some of them. The Atari SIO port is limited to approx. 100,000 baud, so you are somehow limited in speed - but still faster than a Commie drive (even Atari turbo tapes are faster than commie drives)... Next there is the parallel bus or the cart port + ECI on XL/XE computers. Nowadays they are used for hadrdrives, CD-ROMS, ZIP-Drives, etc. but you can also use them for floppy drives. Think this parallel bus (or cart. port+ECI on XE computers) can do 300,000 Baud and more. Have heard that some harddrives can read about 50kbytes per second. This is very fast, isn`t it ?!? Ok, it is still not fast enough for displaying REALTIME videos (they need some 200kbytes per second), but with a few tricks, one can still show some good video animations (not realtime, but who cares)...

Hello, since I am not at all a programmer, I never did some software for the atari. All I ever did (and I am still doing) is writing texts, texts, texts (manuals, docs, infos, descriptions, comments, explanations, entertainment, etc.). Hey Jet Boot Jack, come on - release your games. How about giving them to ABBUC or selling the rights to them ?!? I would love to see them being published... Heya Mindfield, I remember Fortress very well, since I still play it quite often. But I removed the intro picture, since it crashed from time to time (when the moving clouds appeared and you pressed Start then to continue, the game crashed). You did the sounds ?!? Well, looks like you converted the Basic sounds from kemal ezcan into assembler or ML, I know these K.E. sounds like oxygene, amorade and digi-loo, digi-ley quite well. I even have the Basic sources laying around here - kemal won some prices for these sounds... by the way, I am missing a two player option in fortress, but otherwise its a great tetris game. you can even create a new highscore, if you lost the original one - just choose the option to erase the highscore and when there is no highscore and nothing to erase, a new highscore will be generated (and not erased then)... enough said. it would be nice if all former atari programmers would publish their atari games online - especially those that have never been released...

Well, the sound demos were done by a friend of mine (T.Schall). We got these atari singles from the heir of armin stuermer. The Pacman single is in german, but there is ofcourse also an english version called "Pacman fever" by Buckner/Garcia (if I got the names right). The Space invaders single says somewhere on the cover (or the single itself) produced in australia, hehehe. I have recorded these singles onto an audio-Cd with my hifi-cd-recorder. unfortunately I cannot record it on my PC or convert it to MP3, since my quite old PC does not have any software for this purpose. However, Sijmen Schouten (who is visiting the ABBUC JHV almost every year) has made an Audio CD which contains Pacman Fever, Space Invaders and many more atari singles as well as copies of their original song-booklets. Since I was not there last year, I do not have this CD, but I do hope to get it soon. try to find Sijmen schoutens homepage (I do not remember the URL) and ask him if he is still selling this audio-CD...

Well, you can use an XF551 drive, which has 360kbytes capacity; you can also attach a 3,5" drive to it and have 720kbytes then... There once was a german add-on called "HDI" (High-Density interface) this one allowed the use of standard PC floppy drives of up to 1440kbytes. unfortunately it is sold out. Plans and schematics are avaiable at ABBUC, but there are a few spare parts which are out of production, so most probably you won`t be able to re-build it... There were and still are several Hard-disk interfaces and CD-ROM or Zip-drive connections. One is called the Black Box from CSS, very expensive but still avaiable. another one is called My-IDE by Sijmen Schouten a very cheap IDE interface but you have to do it yourself (schematics can be found on Sijmen`s homepage, do not remember the URL right now).