wesmond

Bit of a long shot - but in the early-mid 90s, there was the "Programmer's Development Kit" series by Tiger Developments which I think had tools for creating character sets, combining characters into objects, then putting objects on multi-screen, or scrolling maps. Might have been used to make "Lizard" - I'm not sure. (Bob The Bug may know?). I can't find it online - I'll try and have a look through the boxes...

This awakened a memory - around 1990/91, I visited my local computer shop in Tonbridge, who stocked a handful of Atari budget tapes, and they had some sort of catalogue of upcoming (expected) releases, which I'm sure contained Double Dragon on the Hit Squad label for Atari XL/XE. I think there was one other that I didn't recognise at the time, and didn't remember. Obviously they didn't happen, and the shop didn't last much longer either.

Just in case anyone is interested... (it's not mine - just spotted it today, and had never heard of one before!) https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rare-Vintage-Atari-PC3-8088-Computer/232950083535?hash=item363ce82fcf:g:tm4AAOSwGiRbmYFL

Henry's House?

(My Crazy Cobra is identical to AtariMania's scan here http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-crazy-cobra_1382.html) The Christmas pop-up shop was quite bizarre - basically all sorts of random clutter in it, including some tatty dusty little cardboard boxes with these sort of games for different platforms, although mostly Atari, surprisingly. They didn't have any of the usual Mastertronic/Firebird/Americana sort games I'd seen in the other shops at the time - so given the packaging similarities I think it's quite likely these, and the Dixon branded ones were somehow connected at their source. Perhaps mine were rejects because they forgot to print "LOADING:CLOAD" on some of them! Or leftovers that Dixon didn't sell...

In case it's helpful... I've got a few tapes which are really similar to the ones in your images - but subtly different. Afraid I don't have any "Dixon" branded ones, but I'm pretty sure these all came from the same Christmas pop-up shop. I have a "Tutti Frutti" with "LOADING: CLOAD" printed on the tape, (whereas yours doesn't have that...) My "Bug Off" looks exactly the same as yours! My "Sunday Golf" doesn't have the "LOADING: CLOAD" on the tape, but is otherwise the same. I have an "Electric Starfish", where the tape has the black text and "LOADING: CLOAD" like your middle image, but the inlay card was the one on the left on your image. I have "Golden Baton", and "Waxworks"; the tapes have the same font as yours, but in the light blue colour, and are blank at the bottom - no "Dixon pack" or "Loading:" text. I have "Mr Dig" with the "LOADING: BOOT" just like yours. Separately from that, I have a "Danger Ranger" which I'm pretty sure I got elsewhere - it's the Microdeal version, with red text like the original Mr. Dig image you have. Happy to ->CAS any of these if you want them Fred.

Couple of sort of related ideas - I got all 3 of the Tynesoft/MicroValue Four Great Games compilations on tape from Dixons. I don't think there was any Dixon branding on them though - will check tonight and report if different. It was surprising at the time because Dixons around me didn't sell computer games separately, and those were the only Atari things I ever got from Dixons. (My 800xl was from Currys, with the 5 Red tapes). Also, I got Sunday Golf, Bug Off and Tutti Frutti together from a random pop-up "Christmas shop" in about 1988. If that shop was actually selling old Dixons stuff, then "Crazy Cobra" by Illusion might be in the same batch.

UK one today - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/WOW-Atari-822-Thermal-Printer-Mint-and-Double-Boxed-for-400-800-XL-XE/312055935628?hash=item48a7fbb28c:g:9GgAAOSwdTJab4M0

Wow, nice work Voy! Just for info - Altirra needs the C: patch disabled to load the CAS file too...

Hi Phaeron, Apologies for reporting another potential tape issue - and maybe a weird one at that. I'm on Altirra 2.90 and I've got a WAV file which fails to load if Acceleration->C: Patch (SIO) is enabled, but loads fine if that is disabled - thus taking 7 minutes or so, which is quite nostalgic. (Pressing F1 while loading non-accelerated works ok). Obviously a very low priority issue! The tape is an odd one - it's Tank Commander, the Creative Sparks release; it has non-standard block lengths, non-standard gaps, and grubby noise between blocks that could be motor stop/start - maybe the master was written using code that started/stopped the tape motor when it wanted, and a similar sort of behaviour happens when it loads. (I think River Rescue is another that might have done the same, including Alternative's re-release). I've put a copy of the WAV here - http://www.teapotrecords.co.uk/tmp/tc.zip On a related note - anyone have any ideas how to get a .CAS file out of this? I'm not getting anywhere close with a8cas/wav2cas... Thanks, Wes

It's made it to the dizzy heights of BBC Newsbeat... http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/40312718/atari-confirms-it-is-making-a-new-video-game-console

Is that an AtariLab interface with the sticker peeled off the front? W.

Little update - CopyMate 3.8 is good on nearly all fronts with what I wanted to do (enhanced density full disk copy -> Sio2SD, with retry, Drive #2 -> #1) The only thing to note is in the name - "CopyMate XE" - it needs 128k or more, and won't run on my 800xl in stock 64k mode. I have U1Mb, and CopyMate was very happy in Rambo 320k mode for a start (I didn't try others - no need!)

Thanks for the comments everyone - I'll check the settings on my Sio2SD. I haven't changed those yet, and by observation, it's reading/writing at a similar speed to my 1050. I'll also see how the modified COPMAT38 goes, and the partial copy on your tool Russ. Attached is a 130k ATR file - it contains a basic game from Home Computing Weekly I typed in a few months ago! And thanks also for the simple DOS idea - copying by file is a good idea to see where problems come up. My disks/drives aren't in too bad shape, so usually it's just a couple of retries on a sector or two, and it all copies ok. So on the whole I've been more interested in "just copy the whole thing without aborting please". W. PS - I'm guess I'm quite "old fashioned" - I haven't got into SpartaDOS yet. One thing at a time...! radro.atr

Lovely - MyDos 4.55 does the job fine. (4.53 doesn't - it seems to shorten the ATR on the SD card to single density, and then have write errors when writing sectors after 2D0...) It at least does a generous number of retries on the bad sector - maybe 10 - so I got away with it this time... Thanks for the help guys. W.

Russ, using your copier - even if I type "1040" in as the number of sectors to copy (which I think is the correct number - 40 tracks, 26 sectors per track, 128 bytes per sector for 1050 density), it stopped at 720 and said it's all finished. It also gave errors working out the density on both the 1050, and the SD-ATR - 1 Error 138 at Sector 360 - but then it correctly used 128 bytes/sector for both the 1050 and the SD, which I think is correct. I can distinctly remember using a nice pretty sector copier that showed me the data/chksums, and I could tap retry repeatedly on a dodgy sector until by chance it got the chksum right... But I can't remember what it was called...

Thanks Russ - trying it out... Yep, my source is a DOS 2.5, ED formatted disk - the BellCom Sector Copier offers a "Start/End" sector to type in, but it won't let me type more than 2D0 - hence the copier only supports SD I think. Standard Atari DOS 2.5 will go further than 2D0 (which I can see on the SIO2SD) - so my disk seems to be ED - but there's one damaged sector at around 310 that makes it abort.

Hi all, This feels like a kind of problem I should be able to solve by googling, but I've somehow failed to find a working solution, until I've gone nearly insane with it... I want to copy my old 1050, DOS 2.5 enhanced density disks, onto ATRs on my Sio2SD. And I'd like it to retry (or at worst, ignore) any dodgy sectors that won't read. Also, ideally, I want Sio2SD to be drive #1, and 1050 to be drive #2, and to copy from #2 -> #1. No copy-protection issues - these are just my own work from decades past. BellCom sector copier - nearly works, but only as far as sector 2D0. CopyAll detects Enhanced Density and says, "Can't do it" CopyMate 4.4 gives write error/format error when trying to write to the ATR on the SD card. MyCopyR! same problem as CopyMate - fails as soon as it tries to write to the SD card. DOS 2.5 Duplicate Disk option - very nearly does it - but... one sniff of an erroneous bad sector and it aborts right away. At which point I've got a bit fed up! This doesn't sound like it should be rocket science. Has anyone got a favourite sector copier that I've not yet managed to fail with? Extreme thanks if anyone can rescue me... Wes

No problem, and thanks for considering - maybe one for later! For now, having seen the comment made in 2006 on AtariMania's page for Invitation to Programming 2: "Unlikely to ever feature on an emulator..." - it's pretty cool that Altirra provides a way of using these kind of tapes pretty much as they were intended already,.

Hi Bob - that's the point, the MP3 isn't for the data, it's for the fairly low-quality audio speech track that plays in the background from the tape while you do the lessons. The Basic code starts/stops the motor at the right points, and you answer questions as you go. It's probably 4 or 5 hours of that audio over the series. Being able to preserve that, and run it in an emulator is already very cool - but being able to distribute the audio stuff as mp3 would make a download of it a bit more friendly.

Hi all, Phaeron, could I request/suggest a (very low priority) feature - could the "Load cassette tape" feature support a compressed audio type like mp3, as well as wav? The reason is I'm contemplating trying to make an archive copy of some tapes like the Invitation to Programming series, which will end up with some tiny BAS files, but the low-quality audio speech might run into Gb as WAVs. Thanks for all the work on Altirra as always, Wes

That's another nice workaround, - just mix stereo out and add Din5 mono in the centre! Could either do that internally, or externally... Interesting - perhaps your stereo mod was wired differently to mine, and instead of picking up GTIA bell, it took one of the external/SIO audio lines - assuming you're getting full tape audio out of the stereo board, and not just the pokey-generated part of that. (Disk IO sound is totally pokey-generated isn't it? - so that should come through all the outputs)

What about strapping a tiny cheap circuit somewhere in there, that mixes GTIA Bell, External Audio and SIO Audio, and puts that into the stereo board, instead of just the GTIA Bell that it currently picks... something like an LM3900 chip, and try to copy the mixing behaviour a stock Atari has. (example circuit http://www.circuitstoday.com/multi-channel-audio-mixer-using-lm3900),which doesn't sound too demanding.... The other thing I suppose we could do is... disconnect Pokey output from the input of whatever circuit does the mixing in the stock Atari, and disconnect output of that mixing circuit from the Monitor DIN. Instead, feed output of the stock mixer into the GTIA Bell line that goes into stereo pokey board. Then connect output of the stereo pokey to both VBXE port, and I guess one channel of it to Monitor DIN audio. But these are all layman ideas - I loved electronics in school, but haven't used it in 20 years, and even then, not very much! And this is all rather theoretical though, to fix a very unimportant problem! Perhaps this is really to answer the question "What's the absolute perfect complete backward-compatible way to do this" should someone have a stereo pokey/vbxe upgrade to fit in the future.

Yeah, that makes total sense FJC - if you'd installed VBXE on a machine with stock mono Pokey, you'd pick the audio lines that mixed all 4 signals for the final audio out. Obviously if stereo-pokey is there, you'd want to take the audio from that, but stereo pokey by design doesn't pick up those two channels. So in an ideal world, the stereo pokey board would take all 4 inputs in, and they'd emerge mixed via the stereo output you wire to the VBXE port.

Hi all - just for info, the problems I had are resolved - it was a slightly confusing combination of: 1. As Brentarian/FJC were getting at, tape audio (both the data whistle, and any music/voice track) come through my Din5 monitor port's audio, but not through my VBXE port's audio, which I'd been using. My VBXE port only gives me OS-generated tape sounds which it makes when it's successfully reading blocks. (Unless I do POKE 65,0, in which case I get absolute silence, but the data still loads fine - if the tape is good). 2. Combined with that, the first tape I was testing on was not so good, and was causing a "genuine" data error. Through the Din5 port when that happens, you hear some slightly rubbish data noise, whereas through the VBXE port, the OS doesn't generate anything, so you hear nothing tape-related... So, all is well - but I suspect the bizarre combination of viewing VBXE graphics, while also listening to the audio-track of a tape loading is not possible... ! W.