[What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2022 (Season 15)]

Atari 800 (with my son)

Crossfire--15 minutes

Jawbreaker--35 minutes

Jumpman Junior--45 minutes

Maniac Miner--20 minutes

Preppie II--60 minutes

Star League Baseball--50 minutes

Tail of Beta Lyrae--30 minutes

 

 

[Kickman for 2600 found and RELEASED!!]

Any chance this game can make it into the Atari Age store?

[HSC19 R5: THE TAIL OF BETA LYRAE]

Slight improvements:

littleman jr. -------- 3,739

littleman jack ------ 4204

 

lowest score ----35

 

therealbountybob, when you say "white-out mode", are you referring to when the screen goes grey/white and the ship becomes a flashing line? Is there any rhyme or reason to when or how this happens? It seems random, but it's hard to tell.

[HSC19 R5: THE TAIL OF BETA LYRAE]

Whew! This one is tough, but fun.

Once you get the hang of shooting gravity balls and not getting too close to the explosion then you can really get some points.

 

littleman jr. 2143

littleman jack 3025

 

 

[HSC19 R5: THE TAIL OF BETA LYRAE]

I figured out why my disk copy was acting so strange. It was not able to function properly with my 1050 happy drive. Once I turned happy mode to unhappy mode then the game started behaving properly.

And wow. It is a really challenging game. We'll have to spend some time practicing this one this weekend.

littleman jr.------1908

littleman jack--------- a paltry 1456

[Help Loading a Disk]

53 minutes ago, BillC said:

It can be done with the Happy software, in the Warp Speed Software v7.0 it is done with the following selections:

 

1) OTHER OPTIONS
1
1)SELECT UNHAPPY MODE

 

I spoke a little too soon. All my disks work now, except David's Midnight Magic. That one gets stuck in a loop between the title screen and a loading message. But now Star League Baseball works and Manic Miner works. Awesome! Thank you again for the advice.

[Help Loading a Disk]

47 minutes ago, BillC said:

It can be done with the Happy software, in the Warp Speed Software v7.0 it is done with the following selections:

 

1) OTHER OPTIONS
1
1)SELECT UNHAPPY MODE

 

That did it! All my disks work now. Thank you so much!

[Help Loading a Disk]

33 minutes ago, BillC said:

It can be done with the Happy software, in the Warp Speed Software v7.0 it is done with the following selections:

 

1) OTHER OPTIONS
1
1)SELECT UNHAPPY MODE

 

Bill C, thank you so much. I'll give it a try.

[HSC19 R5: THE TAIL OF BETA LYRAE]

littleman jr. scored 1011 on our strange, erratic copy.

We'll try it on an emulator tomorrow night.

[Help Loading a Disk]

5 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Yes you must set the drive to UN - Happy mode

How do I do that? That might be the reason why several of my disks are not working.

[Help Loading a Disk]

18 hours ago, DjayBee said:

You seem not to have any means to copy disk images from a PC to the Atari. 

Correct? 

 

Do you have a disk editor on the Atari which would allow to change particular bytes in disk sectors and a sector copy program? 

I have the Happy disk software for the 1050 drive, but nothing other than that. Would I need two disk drives?

[Help Loading a Disk]

21 hours ago, kheller2 said:

Do you have any mods to the 800 or floppy?

My 800 is stock, but the 1050 has the Happy mod. Could that be the problem? I upgraded to it from an 810, which is now gone.

[HSC19 R5: THE TAIL OF BETA LYRAE]

I bought a copy of this disk and received it today, but when I start it, it will not respond to the joystick. The ship moves forward, but I cannot go up, or down, or shoot. Am I missing something?

 

I may need to just play it on my Linux box using an emulator. But I love using the original hardware. I'll have to read up on how to use an SIO2PC as well.

[Help Loading a Disk]

So, I got another copy of the game (Star League Baseball) on disk today in the mail, used. And it did the very same thing. It loaded up to the title screen, played the music, but never progressed to the options or began the game. Could it be my Atari 800?

 

I had this game on disk when I was a kid and it loaded fine. I do wonder if the heat is killing the games in the mail. Although, I recently received 3 working disks and 3 non-working ones this very week. I don't know. It could be the heat. It could be the age of the disks.

[HSC19 (2022) R4: POOYAN + E.T. Bonus]

littleman jr. raised his score to 50,000 for five pieces on Level 9.

I, littleman jack, also tried Level 9 and could only muster 50,000 as well (2,461 less than my previous score).

Level 9 is definitely harder with there being more pieces and more, or faster, bad guys. And I think it's harder for me due to my colorblindness as well. I think the lower levels don't have as many colors, so I didn't have to worry about having the right color as much.

 

[Help Loading a Disk]

The disk looks okay from what I can tell. And the drive has just been serviced, but if other disks won't work then I'll try the Isopropyl alcohol. So I think your third suggestion is the next step. Thank you for the advice! I'll keep moving forward and get a working copy.

[Paul Westphal]

I bought a 1050 Drive with the Happy upgrade from Paul. He packaged it very well, described everything accurately, and was great in communication. I recommend doing business with Paul. He's knows a lot about 8-bits as well and is happy to share and provide info. He's a seller, tech, and teacher. Highly recommended.

[Help Loading a Disk]

16 hours ago, DjayBee said:

This is its behaviour if the copy protection did not work.

Did this exact disk work before or did you make a copy from a disk which worked?

It's an official, original store bought disk that used to work about 10 days ago.

[Help Loading a Disk]

1 hour ago, invisible kid said:

Yep, Star League Baseball was a favorite in my circles. Solid AAA game.

 

Some info may be out of date but basically:

You'll need a server to run on linux, such as AtariSIO or RespeQt. AtariSIO is command line, RespeQt is Qt gui. I use AtariSIO, so here are links to that:

 

https://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/#atarisio

https://github.com/HiassofT/AtariSIO

 

There may be installation packages for your package management system for RespeQt, I don't use that. It has it's own sub-board on atariage, probably good info there.

 

I or others can help you through the steps, but it's relatively painless to create a new disk from an image on the net.

Thank you for the info and link as well! I'm happy using a Qt or a gtk based gui. I'll check them all out and see which one makes the most sense to me currently.

[Help Loading a Disk]

1 hour ago, _The Doctor__ said:

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-star-league-baseball_4985.html

 

it's all right there for you...

 

I would make sure it's not a hardware issue and that the disk drive heads are clean, as well as running at the correct speed...

countless disks are treated as bad when it's actually another issue

 

Thanks for the info and link!

[Help Loading a Disk]

I'm going to try some other disks, once I get some in the near future. The problem is most likely the disk, and the disk was probably good a few days ago, but my wife left it with the mail in her car. So I think she may have accidentally killed the disk by leaving it in a hot car. So, long story short, I think the problem is that my wife left the disk in her car and it died. I'll need to ask her to leave all incoming mail in the air-conditioned house. She didn't know that there was a floppy in the mail, and that floppies are very heat sensitive.

But I am up for trying to create a new disk. That might work.

[Help Loading a Disk]

13 minutes ago, dzzy1982 said:

Do you have an sio2pc or similar? You could always re-write the disk from an ATR image and get it working again.

Thanks for the info!

Yes, I do have an sio2pc, but I have no idea how to work it, unfortunately and embarrassingly. I use Linux on my PC and can run an emulator and play Atari 8-bit games/files on it, but I do not understand how to run files from my PC through the SIO into the actual 800, nor do I know where to learn. Can you suggest websites or reading?

[Help Loading a Disk]

Just now, Allan said:

It plays on both 800 and XL/XEs and with or without Basic loaded, so the holding the option key or not at startup doesn't matter. It should work on all Atari 8-bits except an un-expanded 600XL or un-expanded 400. My guess is that your disk is bad. If your drive loads other programs without a problem that is probably it.

Thank you for the info. That's what I feared. The disks do have a limited shelf life.

[Help Loading a Disk]

Hello all,

I need suggestions to help load a disk.

I just acquired a new (to me) copy of Star League Baseball, one of my favorites from childhood.

However, when I start it up, it gets stuck at the start screen and loads no further. It normally would display the scoreboard, play a tune, and show the date. Then it would move on to show options that you could chose using the option, select, and start keys. But as it is, it will not go to the options screen. It should load more. It just keeps playing the tune and showing the title and date.

Any ideas on what to do? OR what might be the problem (drive, ram, disk, SIO cable)?

This is the first time I've run a disk in over 6 years.

Thanks for any help and suggestions.

[HSC19 (2022) R4: POOYAN + E.T. Bonus]

littleman jack (me): 4 pieces, score 52,641

 

littleman jr. (my son): 3 pieces, score 30,000