retrobits

No, I did in fact have the documentation for Diskey (back when I was 14) and now I realize that the idea of changing the speed to make a bad sector came from the Diskey manual! I just re-read my manual tonight and found the "bad sector" section on page 20. It begins with "Now for the controversial part...". I'll have to scan this in for everyone -- its about 61 pages total.

I think the Atari disk image format most commonly used on the 8 bit side was DCM. Disk Communicator by Bob Puff.

I had a copy of AI's Diskey circa 1984. Used it to copy Ultima III. Like others here I had way more time in those days (and almost zero knowledge of machine instructions). I ended up finding all the unreadable sectors on the original with Diskey (stumbled across the custom toc & map and character data along the way!). I believe there were only 3 or 4 bad sectors on the disk. Then I tried the scotch tape on the disk jacket technique to produce my own bad sector. This was unsuccessful. Next I took the cover off of my 810 drive and carefully changed the potentiometer near the rear of the drive, which changed the head read/write speed IIRC. Can't remember exactly where I read about this, somehow I doubt it was in the Diskey docs. Using this technique I was able to write to a specific sector with the drive speed altered and produce an unreadable sector. IIRC, depending on how altered the speed was, the sector would not land in exactly the correct spot -- so it took a number of tries. In the end I had a bootable Ultima III master disk.

This copy of Shadow World works on XL/XE. I seem to remember that Slime and Nautilus are the only Synapse games that don't have XL versions yet. Could be mistaken tho. Shadow World.zip

Tried it, got this error.

Yes, that would be great. I actually considered that at one point for Atari810 too. Actually I use an Apple II emulator on the Mac called Virtual II that implemented just such a feature for disk loading... sounds perfect to me. By the way, I just want to congratulate you on an excellent program. Your implementation of SIO protocol using the Win32 serial port API is much cleaner than mine and runs more stable and faster. At 3X SIO it seems to transfer data almost twice as fast as Atari810. Great job!!

Years ago I took apart my WT cart, dumped it with my Thompson Proburner in my 800, and hacked around and eventually got the dump to work. Here is the archive I put together about 9 years ago. It contains the two WT disks (extension & dictionary -- the extension disk must be used to boot). It also contains the original output file from my Proburner as well as some scripts to produce a rom that will work in Atari800Win+ (OSS M034 format). The file to use with the emulator is called "writersToolEmulator.rom". Its 16k because I had to append it to itself and flip the banks around to simulate the behavior of the OSS hardware. -retrobits for some reason the attachment didn't seem to work. Here is a link: Writer's Tool Dump Project Just tested it again today and my 16k hack still does work in Atari800Win+ -- you need to boot with the extension disk in D1. It would be better if the emu was updated to support the raw dump from the eprom burner.

I just ordered 4 and mailed the check... sounds like a great product! I'm sure I can hack in a black cable myself if I get one of the white ones.

I updated the page that Beetle referenced at the beginning of the article to include these corrections.

Looks like The Pawn by Magnetic Scrolls.

I've been watching the vids from Ross today as well and enjoying them quite a bit. I've got them going in the background while working on a somewhat difficult electronics project (various upgrades to an old toshiba libretto). I'm finding these to be very interesting (and almost calming or soothing) as Ross describes how he acquired this or that bit. Particularly the clips describing the games on tape: some don't work for various reasons, but were acquired for a such a small price, and of course are absolute classic games anyhow... the way he lingers on Journey to the Planets, almost sadly fingering the minor box wear after 25 years of use... Bottom line is that its clear how much Ross appreciates his items and his happiness just sort of flows out of the video. Thanks for sharing Ross!

I'm using a GBA flash cart, the M3 MiniSD. And U3 is running here using the "Goomba Color" GBC emulator for GBA. It runs 100% full speed with sound & music and supports the in-game save as well as sleep mode.

My best friend bought one when they came out and used it to write a novel. He could basically pack it with him everywhere and get writing done wherever he was at. The Portfolio came with a suite of office-like applications.

Sorry for the off topic post, and the fact that is actually old news now (by 7 years or so!), but I missed this when it came out and just discovered it this weekend. I remember staying up all night in Jr. High playing U3 on my 800 quite a few times. It was the first time I ever encountered an RPG game and I was hooked. I still enjoy playing the first 5 Ultimas occasionally but U3 is my favorite. Now I can play this on a device that fits in the palm of my hand, thanks to the awesome gbc port by Sven Carlberg. gbc U3 port on a gbm with a m3 perfect mini sd card using the goomba color emulator The port is really an outstanding achievement. Sven managed to adapt the game to the gameboy controls and not lose playability. The music is intact as well and was converted from original C64 sid files. He has a really interesting account of the development of the port where he disassembled the IBM-PC binary to port some key algorithms and exchanged emails with Richard Garriott himself. Here is the official website for the port.

you really need to verify correct voltage from the power adapter. Its a very common problem and its the first thing I check every time... humming doesn't matter, in fact can indicate a failing supply.

nice pictures. you've got the color adjusted just right to have the land green and water blue... I always have a hard time getting that just right.

I would purchase (or prepay) for one 512kB board. Thanks a ton for your work on this -- it truly is incredible.

Larry, you seem to be making a distinction between the output of your program (TXA?) and ATASCII (ATA). What would be the difference between ATA and TXA?

looking to buy a flat panel monitor (lcd or plasma?) or use dscaler through a video card with svid/composite input. If I go with dscaler route, I'd want the PC to be very quiet -- I hate destop PC noise in the background. Maybe a micro atx shuttle box with all the low noise features? Anyone have any helpful experience in these areas?

Hey Larry, thats an interesting configuration... out of curiosity what are you running on the host side? XP or Vista or ??, 32 or 64 bit? Got an email the other day from someone having trouble with 810 and 64bit.... -Dan

OK, I checked out groups.google.com and (at least with this newsreader) I see that Ben is posting about 4 messages in the group every week. I agree that this is a bit excessive. These could easily be all combined in a single message and probably biweekly or monthly would be more than enough. I can send him some advice to lighten up on the ads a bit. Coming from someone he knows, I think he'll change his behavior to be more usenet friendly. Shooting would also work of course, but then we'd be minus one good Atari vendor.

Ben's business postings are OK by me. He is one of the last remaining Atari vendors we have. He is actually quite a good vendor if you ever purchase anything from him. He thoroughly tests his hardware, accurately describes items, and ships the stuff quickly. I actually visted him once when I was in Portland on business and we played a some Atari on his system (Jaguar). Its true that he has no other hardware in his house than Atari and uses his Mega ST for all internet access and business processing.

thanks for trying atari810. Yes, I wrote it 4 or 5 years ago when there really wasn't much support for win nt/2k and sio2pc. It works reliably at 1X SIO speed, but begins to have problems at higher speeds. Rather than write a device driver (as Steven Tucker eventually did with APE), I just wrote the code to run in user mode with the basic Win32 serial API. There has been more interest lately in the program it seems (I've gotten several emails regarding the program in the last few weeks). I really stopped working on it mainly because my wife and I began having children and the Atari stuff got shelved for a while. Now my boys are about 8 years old and getting very curious about all the stuff in "Dad's office" . What quirks in particular did you notice in the program?

S-Video is here (I have not tried it yet though... keep meaning to mod my 48k 400) http://www.atarimagazines.com/v3n1/littlebrother.html

I've got a perfect copy of the IBM-PC version, but you probably want the Atari. I took a look at the manual (large) and its IBM specific.