CharlieChaplin

Er well, there are at least two programs with the name "Sound-tracker". One programs is by ASF and this is a sound-editor for chiptunes. Think it was done by Henryk Cygert who did programs like Miecze Valdgira and Miecze Valdgira II... The other one, also known as Sound Tracker player or Sound tracker converter (both err, all three programs are on one disk, since the converter exists in a 64k and a 128k version) was published by Mirage and ANG, this one is a MOD to MD8 converter and of course a MD8 player... -Andreas Magenheimer.

hmm, what about comp.sys.atari.8bit (english) ?!? what about atari.org (english) ? -Andreas magenheimer.

Well, I tried the unfinished Adventure port on a real A8 with Basic enabled. It loaded fine and I was asked to input a number from 8-12, so I entered 9. Next thing I saw was a strange screen and a garbage thing that was most possibly the player - but it could not move... so the game looks totally unplayable to me... -Andreas Magenheimer.

Hello folks, about the rules for ABBUC software contest 2006... they have already been published here !! As well as on atari-age and abbuc in various languages (german, english, spanish, polish and czech)... greetings from ABBUC - Andreas Magenheimer.

Well, you can find a huge list of games, demos and applications that use eXtra memory in the A8FAQ maintained by Michael Current (subjects 8.13, 8.14 and 8.15 if I remember correctly)... Of course the list is incomplete and I have not listed the cracked/patched game versions there... (just wrote a note about this possibility)... Now, MetalGuy wanted to know about programs that use the 130XE special banking video mode, also known as separate CPU / Antic access. As far as I know there exist only two programs utilizing this: 1) Video Blitz by Helvetica Bold (a nice demo) and 2) The [sparta DOS] Wedge by Ed Bachmann. No other programs seem to use this mode - and remember that many XL/XE RAM upgrades do not even support this mode. Besides, there is a newer version of Video Blitz available (by Tebe/MadTeam) that does not use/require separate Antic access and afaik the Wedge is a sort of file manager program, there are dozens of such programs available that do not require separate Antic access - but if you just wanna test this sep. Antic/CPU access feature, take these two programs... -Andreas.

Er well, and now the same please for *all* MyDOS formats - not only Single Density (90k)... would be very helpful... Besides, a stupid question: One cannot unformat a formatted disk on the A8, why not ?!? But why is it possible to unformat a disk on the PC and recover (almost) all data ?? -Andreas.

Well, Super Huey was/is available on 800/XL/XE diskette. Afaik SH is also available on cart for the 7800, as well as Ikari Warriors. Have not seen any of these games as cart versions for the XE yet... -Andreas..

Well, to play 400/800 only carts on an XL/XE computer you may: 1) install an alternative OS that supports 400/800 carts into your XL/XE (original 800 OS, SPOS, My-IDE OS, QMEG-OS, etc.) with a switch; so you can always switch between the XL/XE OS and the alternative OS when required... 2) use a translator that supports carts, currently I only remember the Ultra-Translator (by Tim Fitzpatrick or so), it can be found on some PD disks or PD libraries, think Video 61 is selling this translator as a cartriodge as well (one of those plug it in - and then pull it out again carts); you have to press a certain key-combination in the Ultra translator, then the whole screen turns to one single color without any text and at this point you can insert your 800 cart... (without the need to hurry)... greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

Well, you can also find some info about *.TIP here (again, polish language): http://atariki.krap.pl/index.php/TIP simply change TIP to HIP or RIP to get info about the other formats as well. Afaik, Heaven once posted the info about HIP (maybe RIP and TIP also) in english language here or he posted it at comp.sys.atari.8bit ... But... TIP uses a max. of 160x119 pixels, whereas your routine uses / claims to use 160x160 pixels (maybe even up to 160x192 or 160x200 pixels ?), so there seems to be some difference... Now, is it possible to use your trick or the TIP trick with gr.8 ?!? Meaning gr.8 (320x200) combined with gr. 10 and gr. 11, thus having 2 lum. (gr. x8 lum (gr.10) x 16 colors (gr. 11) or simply 16 lum. x 16 colors (256 colors) in a 320x200 resolution ?!? This would be absolutely cool !! -greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

Hmm, this sounds similar to the polish gr.-format "TIP". It is the last (?!?) step in the HIP, RIP,TIP gr. modes which use the GTIA gr. 10 graphic bug for a higher resolution. There is already a .BMP to .TIP converter available as well as .TIP viewers for the XL/XE (Tipview by Epi and Visage 2.7 by MadTeam). Alas, TIP has one drawback: when one converts BMP into TIP it creates some false colours - not sure why... and TIP has a max. resolution of 160x119 pixels... better than 80x96 non-interlaced APAC, but still not enough... Afaik there is a webpage (alas in polish language) where one can get all details about HIP, RIP and TIP as well as other information. It is something like... atari8info.pl or so (not sure about the correct URL)... -Andreas Magenheimer. P.S.: At atariarea.krap.pl or atariarea.histeria.pl you can download many HIP, RIP and TIP pictures and utilities (viewers, converters, etc.)...

Well, I have a disk with various programs for the Happy 1050 drive (most of them self-written by Happy drive users)... if interested just e-mail me to: amp at abbuc point de Besides, I also collected many utilities for other drive upgrades and speeders (like Speedy, US-Doubler, Turbo, XF). If there is a good website to upload them, let me know... -Andreas Magenheimer.

Hmm, the first version of Flowers mania was approx. 46kbytes, the new version is approx. 39kbytes now. Really sure it is unpacked ?!? Well, then it is approx. 7kbytes shorter - quite much for a bugfix. What has been fixed or removed then ?!? greetings, Andreas.

Hmm, are your 800XE and 130XE some of the "newer" XE`s - with the newer XE OS ?!? Not only that all of them (made in China) do have faulty GTIA chips, I heard that they also have some compatibility issues... -Andreas.

Hello folks, is there a fixed version of "Bandits" available somewhere that works correct on XL/XE computers ?!? If so, tell me the URL or post the fixed version here... greetings and thanks - Andreas Magenheimer.

And, there is also "Genesis" by Datasoft. And "Livewire 2"... and some more clones... -Andreas Magenheimer.

Errrm, some freezers for the A8 are able to do some of the functions you described. Software freezers were cheap, but not so good, hardware freezers were more expensive and much better... I do remember the hardware freezers Turbo Freezer (by B.Engl) and QMEG-OS Freezer (by S.Dorndorf). They could freeze almost any game by one keypress and with another keypress you could unfreeze and thus play a difficult situation again and again until you made it... There is a new version of the Turbo Freezer available right now at ABBUC, it features the original freezer, plus 512kbytes RAM onboard, plus Cartridge emulation, OLD-OS mode and many more features. The newest version of the QMEG-OS (version 4.04) also has a freezer and a built-in monitor and many other features, like ultra-speed (happy, speedy, US-doubler, turbo 1050, xf551, etc.), built-in sector copier, automatic XRAM detection, freeze or sectorcopy a whole bootdisk to XRAM (d8:) and start it from there, re-direct drives (e.g. drive 1 being drive 8 and vice versa), etc. etc. greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

Well, afaik Transdisk and Howfen-DOS accept only tape data from real Atari (where standard is 128 bytes). Emulators seem to accept both CAS files created with real Atari and images created with the CAS2WAV program. Afaik the CAS2WAV program does not save/sample with 128 Bytes, is uses the full 131 bytes (including start and stop bits of the tape drive!) as well as some info header (about the baud rate, the total length of the program, etc.). So, there is a compatibility issue with CAS programs generated on the Atari (with 128 bytes data length) and CAS programs generated with CAS2WAV (with approx. 131 bytes data length and a header). The Atari CAS programs can be easily converted to bootdisks and single-stage CAS files can even be loaded with some gamedos (like Micro DOS or MyPicoDOS) from disk. But CAS files produced with CAS2WAV will not load on the Atari... (you have to convert these files back to tape again and then use Transdisk or Howfen to convert to disk)... -Andreas. P.S.: Otherwise said: a standard boottape contains data with more than 128 byte per block, but it only sends 128 bytes to the Atari; alas the WAV2CAS program samples the complete data, incl. the data that is not sent to the Atari computer!

Nope, they were drivin out off the 16Bit ports... and driving right into... the 8bit ports, ha ha ha ! -Andreas Magenheimer.

Well, Theta Music Composer 2.x supports up to 4 Pokey chips, but afaik only inside the computer (internal version)... Think it has to be patched for 2 Pokeys internal and 2 Pokeys external... -Andreas magenheimer.

Afaik, ghostbusters does not use any samples, it uses voice-synthesis for the "Ghostbusters hahahahaha" speech... maybe you know SAM (software automated mouth)... ?!? I was told that voice synthesis in that case is much shorter than any use of samples... -Andreas Magenheimer.

Hmm, did I find a bug or what - post 19 (Hello Jan, ...) should have been a reply to a privat message. now it appears here in the forum... strange... - please remove that post... -Andreas Magenheimer.

Hello Jan, did you read my instructions here at atari-age ?!? I hope so, it contains the info from the original manual of the hyper-Xf-OS... (if you did not read it, search for it at atari-age forum)... Now, how to create a partitioned 3,5" disk. Just explained that at ABBUC forum (in german language of course). Well, with an alternative OS, like QMEG-Os or SPOS or... this should be easy, since such OS can boot from almost every floppy D1, D2, D3... D8. BUT with an original XL/XE OS one can only boot from drive one... I found some very awkward solutions, but they work: 1) set your Hyper-XF to D1 and boot without a disk, now choose the partition (A,B,C,D, F or M) 2) unplug the SIO-cable from the Hyper-XF, but do not switch off the floppy! 3) connect your 5,25" drive to the Atari and boot a normal DOS (without speeders!) from it... 4) when done, disconnect the 5,25" drive and connect the SIO cable (+Atari) to the Hyper-XF again 5) since you already chose a partition, now format that partition (D1) and write DOS onto it - you can repeat that process until all four partitions (ABCD) are formatted; if you want to access all four partitions at once (F and M mode or D1 - D4), make sure the DOS is configured for 4 drives... This way, I partitioned, formatted and wrote a sector copier to every partition (ABCD). Now I could boot my 3,5" hyper-Xf and transfer all my 5,25" disks to it: boot part. A from Hyper-Xf as D1 with sector-copier on it, while 5,25" drive is D2; then copy a disk from D2 to D1 into part. A; one can do the same with part. B, C and D. I never used the modes F and M very often, so here you can make your own experiences... note: in partition-mode you can only use the densities Single (90k), Medium/Enhanced (130k) and Double (180k). double-sided densities are not possible. A 5,25" floppy provides 2 partitions, whereas a 3,5" floppy provides 4 partitions. With a properly configured DOS or OS (QMEG, etc.) all four part. can be used at once - this is nice, when playing Alternate Reality - the dungeon on a 128k system: the main program is copied to XRAM and all other data can be loaded from the four partions of the Hyper-Xf (acting like 4 drives then) without changing disks every now and then... There is also a small utility called HYPMODE.COM, created by the author Stefan Dorndorf, you can load this utility from DOS and set the mode of the hyper-Xf with it. it assumes two letters: 1) drive number (1,2,3,4) and 2) mode (ABCDFMSX), so you load it and type for example 2B to set the D2 (the Hyper-XF) to mode B (= part. B)... Alas, it looks like the Hyper-XF-OS (or some DOS versions ?) has a bug: when you install the OS, the DSDD mode (360k density) does not work anymore with most DOS versions (with superDOs and turboDOs you get an error when formatting a disk in 360k)... greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

Well, it might be a stupid question (again and again), but what 7800 carts include the pokey chip ?!? Only Ballblazer ?!? Or are there any other carts ??? -Andreas Magenheimer

Well, afaik an Atari 8Bit computer with 2 PIA chips can control up to 256 megabytes of RAM (yes, megabytes!). Don`t think that anyone requires so much RAM with an A8, but anyway... There is a list of Stereo (Gumby) compatible programs in the A8FAQ maintained by Michael Current. I wrote it and of course it is still incomplete... but good enough to start with I think... -Andreas Magenheimer.

So, please create at least one level TWH and compile / assemble it and release the finished work as a playable demo to all of us (and send a copy to FOX)... of course it would be very nice if you create more than 1 level... he he he ... -Andreas Magenheimer.