CharlieChaplin

And errrm, what's the size of these programs ? If they are <= 32kbytes and do not use INIT (just a RUN adress), then Super-Copy can "relocate" them to a DOS-friendly memory adress of $1F00-xxxx and RUN adress 1F3F... http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-super-copy_15934.html

Well, every compiled TB XL program requires a Runtime and afaik, the Runtime for CTB programs uses RAM under the OS, so it is XL/XE compatible only and will not run on 400/800 machines. (And the CTB-linker simply links runtime+CTB into one single file, which then of course still requires RAM under the OS and therefore does not run on 400/800 machines.) If you want to create a compiled executable, try standard Atari Basic and then ABC/MMG compiler or better use Fast Basic. (Never used Advan Basic, so I do not know if its compiler produces a stand-alone executable or if it produces a compiled program that requires a separate runtime. The next Abbuc magazine will maybe tell us more...)

"Cygnus XI" or "Cygnus X1" produced by Atari UK (one title printed on the tape cover, the other printed on the title screen). The game has colourfull background gfx, alas, the gameplay is more or less the same as SEGA's "Buck Rogers". http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-cygnus-x1_1472.html

In my opinion, for a trackball (or a mouse) you need some kind of cross-hair, so you know where you are on the screen. A cross-hair would most-likely require a pm, not sure if there are any pm's left in Crossbow. [Besides, I prefer the BEST trackball, which looks like a trackball, but is fully compatible to an ST or Amiga mouse.] And errrm, last not least, allthough I would like to have an alternative controller for most A8 lightgun games, no matter what controller type you choose or support then, this is no longer aiming at a target (which requires good and fast eyesight), it is most likely just fast reflexes (move your cursor/cross-hair fast enough).

For those that want to put Albert onto a 90k disk, here is a version a) without PAL check, b) packed with Flashpack 2.1 (titlescreen; depacking the titlescreen with Exomizer took much too long!) and c) packed with Exomizer (main program). I also added a Basic-off routine and a small text title that says "Loading" but which can be replaced with any other text (e.g. "Albert") easily... Albert_packed.zip

There already is a german type-in listing named "Hubert" - a Q-Bert clone. http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=6955 http://www.mushca.com/f/atari/index.php?dl=347|HUBEBERT http://ataribasiclistings.mygamesonline.org/Homecomputer/Homecomputer_1986.7z Released 1986 in the german Homecomputer magazine. Maybe you can name your version Ben-10, errmmm, Hubert 10 ?

Well, here are the Startrek pictures I have. Afaik, the ones from Brian Hunt (disk images 2 and 3) were digitized with Computer Eyes or something like that and not drawn or painted. The other pictures (disk image 1) were originally in compressed Koala / Micro-Illustrator format and they all had redundant data at the end (which resulted in the viewer overwriting parts of the picture on the screen) and one of these pictures was damaged on all disks and images I could find, so the uncompressed 62 sector conversion is also damaged. Maybe someone is able to correct the damaged part of the picture in some way... (it is the one after "Trouble with Tribbles")... Think I have a few Startrek pictures (with actors) on other Gr. 15 and RGB picture disks, but these are maybe 2 or 3 pictures, afair. Some more pics with the drawn starship Enterprise or Klingon ships. Too lazy now, to search for them. Startrek_Pics.zip

Well, I used a Teac 55GFR (HD) PC drive successfully with Ataridsk (180k) and WriteATR (130k, 180k, 360k, 720k). With WriteATR and the Teac drive I could even write 130k A8 diskettes - but it did only write them, reading was not possible. Alas, not every PC 5,25" drive works with Ataridsk or WriteATR, back in the 90s we tested 10-12 different PC drives and only the Teac drive worked. Nowadays it is not that easy to find a good + working 5,25" PC drive and one must own an old(er) PC with a FDC to be able to use it.

Afaik, the XF has only 256 Bytes of RAM, so it cannot read a 512 Byte sector directly (in one go). The author of Hyper-XF-OS wanted to create a special program that would read/write/copy a 512 Byte sector in two passes, first half and second half. Alas, he never did. So the ST/PC mode is there in Hyper-XF-OS, but you cannot use it until someone releases such a special program for it - nowadays highly unlikely. (And to tell the truth, I mostly used the Hyper-XF-OS partition mode with four partitions per diskette, e.g. 4x 90k, 4x 130k, 4x 180k or mixed formats on one and the same disk. But in the last five years or so I did not use the XF with 3,5" drive anymore and besides the 1050, I more and more used SIO2xyz devices and multicarts like AVG, so the XF with 3,5" became obsolete for me and I have just sold it.)

My recordings were made with a "Stereo Phaser" by Portronic aka AMC-Verlag, to create a stereo impression.

Here is mine - and many others... pigwa (Beware, I am hard hearing, so if the sound recordings are not that great, you know why.)

Will wait a little longer with downloading it, because sooner or later TIX (or playsoft) will do a new version with improved sprites, errmm, pm gfx and other stuff and name it Patrol Redux...

There are various A8 games, demos and tools that support extra RAM and also various games, demos and tools that require extra RAM. Many years ago (approx. 2008), I made a loooonnngg list of programs that do either support or require XRAM. But I got too lazy to update that list again and again - nowadays the game and tool section would be much longer (and of course also the demo section which was already quite long back then). Maybe someone wants to update these old texts ?!? We have lots of 64k and 128k ROM carts out there, even some with 256k, 512k and 1024k - they work with 64k RAM from cartridge, but do require extra RAM when loaded from disk(file), i.e. if you load these programs from harddisk or SIO2xyz device then you need extra RAM to execute them. And there are also programs that only exist as disk or fileversions and still require a certain amount of extra RAM. Killer app is subjective in my eyes, I rarely play Star Raiders and it does not matter to me that it is considered to be a killer app (until now, I have never played MULE), the same can be said to any game, demo or tool. Some examples: 128k: http://a8.fandal.cz/search.php?search=130XE&butt_details_x=x 320k: http://a8.fandal.cz/search.php?search=320XE&butt_details_x=x 1088k: http://a8.fandal.cz/search.php?search=1024&butt_details_x=x There are many many more A8 programs out there that require extra RAM (and Fandal does not host any A8 tools or applications). I have been a big fan of TIP animations and collected and created more than 800 of them, guess that only 50% of them work with 64k RAM, while all others require 128k-1088k RAM. But if you do not like such animations (and their long loading time), then that simply does not count, even if there are hundreds of them. Regarding Numen, did you know there are at least two versions out there? The older version came on two disksides, it requires 320k RAM (updated version works on Compyshop and Rambo type upgrades) and shows the demo once. When the demo is over, all you see is a black screen. Like in most demos there is no endless loop. Some years later they released a new version that does an endless loop, so you can show the demo endlessly (good for computer shows and events that run several hours or days) - this version requires min. 384k RAM (320k + additional 64k RAM for looping the demo) and since no-one has 384k RAM on the A8, one could say that it requires 512k/576k RAM... is it a killer-app? Maybe it was back then, but nowadays we have better demos ("better" being very subjective here). RD_REQ.TXT RD_SUP.TXT

Last not least, here is the Powerpacker and Packer+Linker by T.Karwoth, used for Megablast and other programs. The disk also contains several other packers and archivers (e.g. Superpacker by Bewesoft, F[ast]-Pack by SRU, Dj-Packer, Arc+Unarc by B.Puff, etc.). PACKER1.zip

Looks like my memory was wrong. The packer and depacker in Atari magazin was from C.Ballhause, not TAT. But attached you will find the TAT packer and depacker which was most-likely used for Oxygene (on the image TATtool2.ATR, filenames Packer4.TUR and Entpack.COM). Find also attached the packer and depacker from HCA (Home Computer Aktiv), issue 6/1988. The type-in listing HOMPAK.BAS creates the ML-file HOMEPACK.COM which can be used to pack files, to depack files you must use the file Unpack.LST). TATTOOL2.zip HCA_1988.zip

(german) Atari magazin 1/1989 (january+february 1989, pages 75 and 76) or Lazy Fingers diskette 198901A.ATR, the listings are named Packer.BAS and Entpack.BAS (also available in LST format). LF8901_Disk_A.zip AM8901_Listing.zip

Megablast by Torsten Karwoth uses the Power Packer, also by T.Karwoth. (The game works on 64k and 128k machines, the 64k version features simple Pokey music, the 128k version features short samples from various Genesis songs e.g. Tonight Tonight Tonight, No son of mine and others.) Alas, the Power Packer has a very low packing efficiency, it is not really worth packing files with it (in the 90s I prefered F-Pack by SRU, DjPacker and Code3 Cruncher, but nowadays I mostly use Exomizer).

Oxygene by TAT 1988 (Lars Langhans and others), think it used a packer/depacker similar or equal to a type-in listing in german Atari magazine (afair, the listing was also by TAT). Depacking took 10-15 seconds while you were staring at a blank screen, not nice. In 1988 packers/depackers were quite uncommon on the A8 and so you thought the game does not work or had crashed... (later I packed this game with Code3 Cruncher, so you can see when it is unpacking). Most "packers" back then simply removed the zeros in A8 game files and therefore created dozens or hundreds of segments. Besides, last year a new version was released under the name Oxygene Be. The german Atari magazine announced in 1988 that most (if not all) forthcoming type-in listings would use this packer/depacker then to save space, but afaik, no type-in listing ever did. The german magazine Home Computer Aktiv also released a packer and a depacker (in 1987 or 1988), but afaik no program that used it.

A picture of an 800XL mobo (afair fully populated) with 128KB RAM can be seen in the BEST catalog. Think it is an extremely rare prototype or something like that... (16 chips with 8k RAM each = two rows with 8k chips). But thats where Tramiel Atari got the idea from for a 128k machine. Same with the XE/XEGS carts, they were not newly designed, they were also taken from unused designs of Atari Inc.

Copy.XEX on that DOS 2.0s disk = Super-Copy (the one I linked to in post #2)...

CasDis 1.0 by Vervan Software (US) or Casdis 1.1 by ??? (UK). This tool allows to convert multi-stage tapes onto diskette, but only for a max. of 8 stages. None of the stages must be longer than 42 kbytes, so some tapes simply will not work (either because there are more than 8 stages or one of the stages is longer than 42kbytes). There is also Transdisk in various versions (think the latest version was Transdisk 4.x). Transdisk has several "bootloaders", one for 48k machines, one for 64k machines and one for 128k machines. Alas, it always writes approx. 15kbytes bootcode onto the diskette and I think it also remembers how much RAM was used when generating the disk, i.e. if you used a 128k machine with Transdisk 4, this diskcopy will not work an a 48k or 64k machine.

Well, single stage tape conversion into bootdisk is possible with various tools, e.g. this one: http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-super-copy_15934.html Then you have to convert the disk into an ATR image. If you are working with an emulator, you can setup the tool as an ATR in D1: and and empty (formatted) ATR as D2, then save the data as bootdisk onto D2, so you have your ATR directly. This tool will however only convert programs with a max. length of 32kbytes. I have already (and successfully) converted the Frogger tape into a bootdisk with this tool. (By the way, this tool also allows conversion into a COM/EXE/XEX file and into a FCopy = pure binary file without a COM-header.) Not sure if it works with 16k RAM, since I only have Ataris with a minimum of 64k RAM.

I think this is possible and will test it soon (burn the WAV onto CD, playback the CD with my Hifi system whic is connected to the 1010 with a tape adapter). But I am not sure if the recording level of the data is loud enough.

I would not know how to do that any / either way...

Thanks to Tigerduck, I now have a recording of the Zeppelin loader music. He recorded it in full mono, still you can hear the (data) loading noise and I was unable to remove that. Evil me, I converted the mono sound into either pseudo stereo (?) or dual mono (?), so you can hear the audio on the left and right channels. Maybe somebody out there has some good filters available to remove white noise as well as the (data) loading noise ?!? The original WAV has a size of approx. 90MB (and my conversion also), too large to upload here. But here is the MP3 (with 224 kbit) at least... Zeppelin_loader_music.zip