baktra

https://cc65.github.io/doc/atari.html#ss5.1 There it is. At least the function's existence is admitted by the docs.

The Turbo 6000 (and clones, such as Turbo Star) users have one small gift on its way. Ability to prepend the original Chaos Loader as a standard tape boot file. The loader is only 7 blocks long.

Sigh. The dual track creation works also with older FFMPEG 5.1.2, which is a relief. At the moment, there is no specific plan for the next version. When something transpires (for example a promised but forgotten enhancement 🙂, bug report, tape loading system worth supporting) the adventure will continue as needed.

The 130XE offered a reiteration of the 1979's tech with double memory, very sleek, but still impractical case, and a mediocre keyboard. Could sell well for sure, but no reason to be a "leading 8-bit computer". Where are 8 sprites and 80-column native text mode? In the 16-bit line!

As far as I know, with C64, one could write to the RAM under ROM without switching the ROM off, because writes made it "through". For reading, the ROM had to be switched Off by commanding the MMU to do so.

Some tidbits about the transition from SOX to FFMPEG. Some of them can be direct results of my ignorance and lack of knowledge. FFMPEG is more of an encoder/decoder/multiplexer, while SOX is a tool more specialized for editing audio. Some editing is a bit harder to accomplish with FFMPEG. For example, the fade in and fade out effects. There is no convenient way of telling FFMPEG to fade out the last three seconds of the audio track. FFMPEG has no general setting for the quality of encoding to lossy formats, such as MP3 or OGG. Because of that, TURGEN simply detects if the output file is .OGG or .MP3 and sets options specific to the Vorbis or LAME encoders to achieve maximum bitrate. If you stick to the mainstream formats, everything is fine. If your output is .AVI (which is actually possible), then you are left with the defaults that might not be favorable. To work correctly, TURGEN requires FFMPEG version 6 (and there is no indication of the fact in the product documentation, a direct result of my ignorance). For sure, doesn't work with 4.x (figured that out when testing with Ubuntu). Unknown if it works with 5.x. It is possible that I have started a rat race between TURGEN and FFMPEG. I am hopeful the syntax of FFMPEG will be stable enough. After transition to FFMPEG, the DualTrackCreation.java needs a bit of reorganization. Every step will deserve its own method in the future. The improved UI and messages feel good in general. The ability to locate the FFMPEG binary is most helpful to the Windows users, of course. On the dual track in general The Create dual track tool is good when you want to create a dual track quickly and automatically, without too much thinking and fiddling. For a high quality dual track editions of Atari software with precise timing and refined signal strength, I would still recommend using a general digitized sound editor, such as Audacity, GoldWAVE, Adobe Audition etc.

All right, creating of bootable tapes from Saberman's YouTube videos is postponed for the next release. In the meantime, we have 9.2.7 with the Create Dual Track tool improvements. In a nutshell, you will need to install FFMPEG instead of SOX to get your dual track tapes. FFMPEG is more mainstream and supports the MP3 decoding and encoding out-of-the-box. Moreover, you will be able to use a file chooser to tell TURGEN where the ffmpeg.exe is. Or you can still depend on the PATH environment variable, as before.

The work is going surprisingly well. Except the last two steps (padding and up-mixing back to stereo), everything has been changed to ffmpeg. The last two steps are trivial, so these will be finished soon. What is left? Adding controls that will allow locating the ffmpeg and ffmprobe binaries. I will change the look and feel of the report. Instead of just shooting cryptic ffmpeg commands, a high-level description of what is happening will be displayed (e.g "Downmixing the audio track to mono..." etc). Of course, when something goes wrong, full command lines and outputs will be displayed in the dialog for diagnostics. As a side effect of using ffmpeg, the input file can also be a video file. The audio track will be extracted.

Next on the roadmap is another piece of infrastructure work. The tool for creating dual track tapes. In its current state, it works. There are two major downsides, however. It requires the SOX tool to work. The SOX tool is not getting maintenance for several years. The SOX tool doesn't support MP3 files (there are still too many around) out of the box, and adding support is beyond the capabilities of an ordinary user. Therefore, I am going to make a change and switch to FFMPEG instead of SOX. The FFMPEG is maintained and it is a mainstream tool. MP3 files are supported out of the box, even for Windows installation. This change is not without its price, though. FFMPEG is massive. FFMPEG cannot apply fade in and fade out effects and then repeat the output stream. One more processing step will be needed. In terms of UI, there will be a possibility to use a file chooser to navigate to locate the ffmpeg and ASAP binaries. Still imperfect, but better than asking an average Windows user to set the PATH variable. But... Is a dual track tape creation a task for an average Windows user? Who knows.

The Create Tape Sides tool in action

Behold the 9.2.6. Still some dust settling after the refactoring in 9.2.4. KSO Turbo 2000. You can choose between two types of the Speedy2700 loader - "Streamlined" and "With title screen". The "With title screen" option emulates the behavior of the original Speedy2700 loader. Silence can be optionally generated after the Speedy2700 loader. The Create Tape Sides tool was enhanced to generate tape images. GENCAS CLI: Using the -a option to append to an existing tape image didn't work. No chunks were added to the existing tape image. If you are wondering what the Create Tape Sides tool is, then imagine you have a TURGEN project with hundreds of items, and you want to generate one .WAV file for each 45-minute tape side. This powerful tool is exactly where you go.

As the list of innovations for 9.2.6 is rather short, there will be one more goodie. The "Create tape sides" tool will be enhanced to give you a choice between WAVE files and, newly, tape images.

With all these editors, one can see that the 8-bit line was barely sufficient for a "productive work". At least 256 KB of directly addressable RAM and 80 colums would make things significantly better, but very expensive for a household or a student at the time. In any case, if it was either this or a typewriter, the choice would be obvious.

Version 9.2.5 has been released. As anticipated, this version fixes bugs of the 9.2.4, caused by the refactoring of the generator instructions. The 9.2.5 just makes things right, including the granularity of the progress indication in the Worklist. What is next? There is still the testing with the "Bum Box" device to be done. I've also got a rather peculiar request from Poland. The Speedy2700 binary loader provided by the "KSO Turbo 2000" plugin is a de-obfuscated and streamlined (i.e.: no title screen) version of the original. The request is to provide a version with the original title screen. I will probably honor that request and allow the users to select either "Streamlined" or "Title Screen" version of the loader. As I do not like obfuscated loaders very much (one could say I rather hate them), I will take the existing source code of the de-obfuscated loader and add a conditionally compiled title screen that will 100 % match the original one. I will print the text using the E: device and control characters, and see how it works. Let's not call it cracking, let us call it refurbishment instead.

DOS II+ or XDOS from S. Dorndorf are one of the smaller ones.

Wav2Cas is outdated indeed. A modern, maintained replacement project is A8CAS. There is one catch, though. The process of converting .WAV files to .CAS has certain learning curve that cannot be fully avoided. One has to know the following: Operating some Digitized sound editor Operating A8CAS Knowing how atari cassettes work If you publish your .WAV files, you can get some help with the conversion. There is a small pool of Atarians around who know the above.

There is one known nasty bug in 9.2.4. After resuming a paused signal output, the signal generator terminates instead of continuing. This will be fixed in 9.2.5. In the meantime, you can download .jar file from the ver_9.2.5 branch. Another peculiarity are the progress bars in the Work List. The progress indication is rather coarse. This is also addressed in the upcoming 9.2.5.

Release 9.2.4 is out. The signal generator now uses object-oriented instructions instead of just plain integers. That is an infrastructure change. The User-facing enhancements are minuscule this time. As specified in the release announcement, the 9.2.4 is for adventurous souls. If you prefer stability to adventures, keep using 9.2.3. As I've appropriated the 'Bum Box' device, I will put it to work and get another round of tests with the 'real' hardware done.

I have started a long overdue refactoring of the SignalGenerator and related classes. This will take some time and inevitably bring some bugs, but it is necessary to keep some sanity of the code. Some old plugins will get an overhaul too. Same function, less code.

Just to clarify, a compiled TBXL program can be made standalone, if it is combined with the TBXL runtime, using the TBXL linker. The result of the linking is a standalone, segmented binary load file (even convertible to tape, if needed). For a brand new BASIC-project, I would go for FastBasic in its cross-platform flavor.

Creating music using RMT has certain learning curve, that is something to be accepted. To use the RMT proficiently, you would need to study how the POKEY chip works. Perhaps others can provide recommendations for a good tutorial. To answer your specific question, the instruments can distort each other when they are using the same POKEY chip "resources", or when the total output volume exceeds certain level.

Cooperative mutual anihilation, perhaps.

It was a BASIC tenliner, if I recall correctly. If you place the music track to the right channel, and poll the SKSTAT, you will get some "patterns" from the FSK demodulator driven by the music. Too rough, of course, for any sophisicated light patterns, in my opinion.

Some I know of

A 'budget' package of the TRAIN game, 4 pieces that were ready for shipping at the time (2019).