wesmond

And the artwork... 1. Cover. The original print I think must be this (https://www.video-games-museum.com/en/game/Harrier-Attack/97/3/32065/boxarts), with what's left of a a pretty thin sticker in the corner to repackage for Atari. 2. Just for "curiosity", I scanned the inside of the cover - blank except for the handwritten number 3! Who knows... 3. The tape face itself gives us a copyright of 1983 - and the white marks at the bottom are tipex! I guess they cover up some loading instructions for ORIC.

For those interested on the code side... had to refresh myself with Mapping the Atari for the IOCB call. I used Turbo Basic for BGET/BPUT - and on looking at it, could have done some DPOKE/DPEEK... but anyway. So I did this on an ATR image on an SD Card. To get from tape to the binary disk image: 1 POKE 106,96:GRAPHICS 0:FOR I=1536 TO 1541:READ A:POKE I,A:NEXT I:DATA 104,162,16,76,86,228 2 DIM F$(8):F$="D:HX.BIN":FOR I=1 TO 2:F$(4,4)=STR$(I) 3 OPEN #1,4,128,"C:":POKE 850,7:POKE 852,0:POKE 853,96:POKE 856,0:POKE 857,100:POKE 858,4:POKE 859,128 4 X=USR(1536):CLOSE #1:? "BYTES READ = ";:B=PEEK(856)+256*PEEK(857):? B 5 OPEN #1,8,0,F$:BPUT #1,24576,B:CLOSE #1:NEXT I Which gets us H1.BIN and H2.BIN for the two stages. We make note that the sizes of the stages are 2432 and 11439 bytes, for lines 3,4 and 6,7 below. Over to Altirra, create a tape, push record on the controls, and... 1 POKE 106,96:GRAPHICS 0 2 FOR I=1536 TO 1541:READ A:POKE I,A:NEXT I:DATA 104,162,16,76,86,228 3 OPEN #1,4,0,"D:H1.BIN":BGET #1,24576,2432:CLOSE #1:OPEN #1,8,128,"C:" 4 POKE 850,11:POKE 852,0:POKE 853,96:POKE 856,128:POKE 857,9:POKE 858,8:POKE 859,128 5 X=USR(1536):CLOSE #1 6 OPEN #1,4,0,"D:H2.BIN":BGET #1,24576,11439:CLOSE #1:OPEN #1,8,128,"C:" 7 POKE 850,11:POKE 852,0:POKE 853,96:POKE 856,175:POKE 857,44:POKE 858,8:POKE 859,128 8 X=USR(1536):CLOSE #1

And... here's a CAS file. Good as new. Make sure you boot without basic... Then a bit of typing, and use console keys to (attempt to) play Harrier_Attack.cas

Easier to write my own for something simple like this. I've got the bin files done - just some faffing around with SD cards and I should have something later today... Ths issue is that we don't want cassette to disk, we want cassette to... nicer cassette, preserving the multistage experience...

I'm not suggesting doing a ram freeze of the running code. I'm suggesting loading the raw cassette bytes into RAM with a little IOCB block read code, writing those bytes into a binary disk file just so I can take that to a PC running Altirra, then more code to block-write those bytes back to virtual cassette. We should end up with a "perfect" version of what the 1010 is able to read. I am impressed with the 1010 - I tried recording from the phono, and the quality was cleaner than the walkman for sure... it reproduced with even greater accuracy all the horrible stuff on the tape! Somehow the 1010 is able to load it...

Thanks to all who are trying out the WAV file! I'll try phono out from the 800xl first, as I think I can do that fairly easily if I dig out a couple of cables... The other method I thought of this evening, was to write some code on the Atari to read the raw data for each of the two stages into RAM, and dump the bytes into a couple of disk files on SIO2SD. Then fire up Altirra, read those disk files back in and dump them out to the (virtual) cassette in authentic real-time mode... and that should produce a perfect WAV of the original. I don't think there is anything sophisticated going on in the loader/code, so hopefully just a case of remembering/learning how to do block-reads... (If anyone has some code/pointers to some right at their fingertips to do this, that'd be great - but otherwise I think I can do it)

Certainly seems they didn't advertise it very much! The other games in the ebay box are pretty common (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/254947472476). Would be fun to know more of the story behind it. For now, just glad to have a chance to preserve it. ?

@djmat56 - thanks - I'll try the suggestions above, and will come back to you if I'm defeated! The right-channel is a good idea... Don't worry, I won't freeze/bake/tumble dry... My walkman is a Sony TCM-313 - it has no clever buttons basically! Unfortunately that's the only tape deck I have besides the 1010.

Here's a link to my best WAV so far... https://we.tl/t-5H1pCJaFB0 I'm capturing stereo 44100, both channels seem to be the data.

Thanks for the hints - will give it a try. The walkman certainly doesn't get much use these days, although to be fair, neither does by 1010...! If you POKE 54018,52 and then record audio straight out of the Atari, does that work? More news... IT'S ACTUALLY PLAYABLE!!! You start by typing 1 (return), then your name (return), and a level 1-5 (return...) and after that, it's console keys. You push Option to sort of go up, Select to sort of not-go-up, and Start to shoot some kind of projectile that shoots things in the air for a while, and then drops to the ground and blows things up there as well... the graphics remind me of Airwolf - sort of blobby green hill shapes. Photos attached - sorry about the quality. Photoing the TV with one hand while flying...! I'll scan properly and post in the AtariMania forum when I'm done, if that's best way? (A pleasure @Sugarland - I was excited to see it, and glad it's turned out to be something interesting. I feared it might all come to nothing...)

Hi all, Regarding this game - Harrier Attack by Durell Software: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-harrier-attack_37885.html I can confirm that "something Atari" exists for it, and I got that "something" from ebay. The inlay looks like it was originally an Oric inlay, with an Atari sticker put on top, which has mostly worn off. There are no instructions whatsoever - blank on the inside. Quality of the tape is poor. Evidence of some other machine type before/after the Atari recording. To my surprise though, it loaded on a real 800xl/1010 - start+option, first stage has a couple of reasonably crafted pictures of harriers, and it loads in about 5 minutes. The game itself plays a beep, lets you type your name into some kind of table, and then starts to horizontally scroll a blocky aircraft carrier before (possibly) crashing. (Or perhaps I just don't know what to do with no instructions - keys/joystick did nothing...). I'll get some scans/photos up in due course, but wondered if anyone's got any hints for getting really terrible tapes converted. I have tried half a dozen Audacity recordings from a walkman - method usually works on half-decent types. I can get a reasonably good looking level without clipping, but the quality coming through is awful with swirly frequency sweeps going on. Wav2Cas says... "initial sync header is too noisy, found unexpected bit transition..." - I'm not surprised, it's a tall order. But I guess there's hope if the 1010 can do it. Alternatively, if I can load it on real hardware, is there software to get that into a CAS format from the Atari? I used to use Transdisk IV in ages past, although I think that produced a non-standard OBJ file needing the Transdisk loader. So something more accessible than that would be good...

What about using an Atari Touch Tablet for this sort of thing? I guess it would make it slightly more Star Trek TNG...! And I guess require some sort of software overlay to convert areas on the tablet to button pushes...

Re post 2 again, Games Computing listings are all typed up and submitted here: http://forum.atarimania.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18847 Enjoy...! Wes

Re: post 2 in this thread - I typed up and submitted all the Home Computer Weekly listings back in 2016, in the MIA forum on Atari Mania. See http://forum.atarimania.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18619 Hope that's useful, W.

I got there with 208 scanlines in a display list with the three LMSes; forget about being contiguous, as the OS can't draw beyond 192 anyway... so a custom PLOT routine to poke the point directly to the screen (and also return whether there was already a pixel there, which was useful for part two of the puzzle). (github.com/weshinsley/advent-of-code-2016/tree/master/AtariBasic/d01). Thanks for the pointers again! My first proper display list and VBI in a couple of decades.

Thanks everyone - that all makes total sense... (In case anyone is curious, I've been solving adventofcode 2016 in Atari Basic with some ASM routines where needed - nearly all done, so I'm revisiting a few that offer some prettier representation. Nearly all the 2016 puzzles are doable on an Atari - my current exceptions are that a few days need MD5, which I might eventually try and implement in assembler... and one part needs load of memory - although I suspect there is an analytical solution that I can't find. The GR8 tall display is for day 1, where it's really easy to calculate and print the answer, but an animated version would be fun... Going back to the figures - I only need PLOT actually, not DRAWTO, which helps a bit - and my answer fits in 205x205, so narrow playfield might do it. I hadn't thought of that. Otherwise, I guess a custom PLOT function to POKE rather than PLOT would be fine...

Ok, having fixed that horrible typo, I think I now have a correct display list I can poke to, which is fine...! But continuing out of curiosity - at first, I couldn't PLOT or DRAWTO anything on the screen; they did nothing visible. After more Mapping the Atari reading, I added... 105 POKE 88,0:POKE 89,112:POKE 87,8 and now, when I do the corner-to-corner DRAWTO, I think it's looking good on the top part (first lms) correctly, but then something happens to it at the second LMS which must shift the display co-ordinates horizontally. I guess on a normal GRAPHICS 8 screen, BASIC gets round this somehow, as there's still a second lms in the middle... Anyway, sorry for my first post being a red herring - if anyone knows about how to get PLOT and DRAWTO working on such a display list, I'd still be interested in that... Thanks! Wes gr8big.lst

Hi everyone, For various fun reasons, I am trying on an 800xl (in Altirra first) to create a GRAPHICS 8+16 kind of display list with a few extra rows - 208 total would be perfect. I'm not worried about either screen position, or VBI running out of time. Ideally, I would like to be able to then PLOT 319,207, (but poking into screen memory would be ok too) - but I've got something wrong before I get to that stage... My dodgy BASIC effort is attached - I'm moving RAMTOP to 112 first, calling GRAPHICS, and putting this DL into the top of page 6: 112,112,79,0,112 [two 8*blank lines instead of 3, then LMS to 112*256, with a graphics 8 (+15) line] 15 [* 99] - [99 graphics 8 lines. Hence, my total, 100 * 40 bytes, is less than 4k. 79, 0, 128 [Another graphics 8 with LMS, for the next chunk] 15 [* 99] - [another 99 graphics 8 lines - again, less than 4k.] 79, 0, 144 [And another graphics 8 LMS...] 15 [* 7] - 7 more graphics 8 lines makes 208 in total,. 65, 0, 6 [JUMP back to the start] I'm not quite sure what I'm getting in the end - probably about half a screen worth of GRAPHICS 8 that seems much higher than it should be, so I think I must be missing something fairly simple. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Learning display lists properly is probably about 30 years overdue... Thanks, Wes EDIT: Oh, there's a hideous and embarrassing typo - I've poked 561 twice, instead of 560 and 561... (groan) Let me fix that and see where things are! gr8big.lst

Thanks Mathy, slx... it's not urgent in a sense - I'd just looked at his site over the years, and then after reading through this thread, I thought I'd try and support the guy with an order for some nostalgic bits for the collection.

Yes, it sounds like perhaps he's having trouble shipping things at all. I asked whether shipping to someone in the US who could forward it might work - he suggested "How about someone come to me?" - in Portland Oregon... (If anyone does live in Portland, Oregon and would consider helping me with this, do PM me - I'd like to support Ben by making an order if that is somehow made possible...!)

Hi all, I had a reply from Ben today about an order, which is good news. The less good news is that apparently, since "customs stopped using the short form and dropped the small packet rate, I have not and will not ship internationally." So ordering from UK might be a problem... W.

Try here: http://atarisales.sdf.org/

Sorry I didn't get to the thread sooner to save you some work @Philsan - and also it's a wee bit frustrating that the files have mostly sat in the Atarimania MIA forum for most of 7 years now, and are still marked "MISSING" in the main database, or you might have found them more easily. AtariMania is my favourite website for browsing through such things, but how to be most helpful in filling in the gaps remains a mystery to me (as you'll see from all my forum messages...!) Some of the other zips I'd posted there were about the 600xl games book by @Rybags that you're talking about in the other thread - I remember including original versions, but also updating a couple to use PEEK(106)-x instead of constant memory addresses, to stop the code getting corrupted when you run it. (That worked for my 800xl, but I later wondered if that might have broken it on a 600xl, ironically, given the title of the book!) My method of testing the files was to type it up in a test editor, and then paste the text straight into Altirra (right click), having started it in Basic with no disk drive, but CharlieChaplin's methods sound much better.

See also here (http://forum.atarimania.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17763) in the atarimania MIA forums - I submitted all of the programs missing from AtariMania some years ago, including some little rewrites to make them run on hardware with disk-drives. This includes the original Ski Run basic program - which only works without DOS present, otherwise the BASIC code sits in the memory which the Ski Run code gets poked into - I couldn't fix that one. Also: http://forum.atarimania.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17762 and various other single posts around that time.

This looks really exciting...! Just an idea looking at it - I wondered what it would look like if you plotted the dots on alternate lines and plot odd/even line numbers in subsequent frames - or perhaps plot 1 in 3 and cycle. I'm not quite sure whether it would turn out how I imagine it - but I'm thinking of times like about 9 seconds into the latest movie, where the road is straight, and the colour bands are moving, but the dots are static - I wonder if just some sort of jiggle on the dots would improve the illusion slightly (in a non-costly way) Looking forward to how it turns out! Wes