CharlieChaplin

Well, Jakub is from Poland and he seems to be very active at atarionline.pl forums, maybe you can register there and ask him for the source - alternatively I could ask him. Think that the sample is simply "Let's all chant" by Michael Zager Band, sampled with a 4Bit sampler (e.g. from Mirage or a selfmade one) and he added a machine language player and a nice equalizer effect. There are dozens, if not hundreds of 2Bit and 4Bit sample demos available for the A8. Think I have several sample players, but I am not sure if I have some sample player sources in Basic, TB XL or Assembler. On Fandal's webpage you will find several demos with the search string "Digital" and "Sample" and also several games with sampled sound or sampled voices/speech: http://a8.fandal.cz/search.php?search=Digital&butt_details_x= http://a8.fandal.cz/search.php?search=Sample&butt_details_x= http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=323 http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=1918 http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=3139 Antic or Analog also published a sample player (ASP) with sources and schematics... Sample_TOOLS.zip sample_text_and_source.zip Samples.zip

Cavernia has 16 levels afaik. But it's too hard/difficult for me, I absolutely hate these very small moving platforms that do NOT move your player (you have to jump on them and then move with them). The electric thingies in the game are also not nice. This is a love + hate game for me, I love the gfx, but hate the (too hard) gameplay.

My solutions: a) use original BBSB cart, b) copy the US-Gold tape (and Americana tape) onto a bootdisk with e.g. Howfen tape to disk. Afair, there are already several fixed versions (level 6 bug and others) of BBSB available for download at AA forum...

regarding Action: - high level interpreter - correct, I think. - easier than basic - debatable, I think. - but slower - errrm, no, Action! is much faster than Basic You can find the Demo YBMB also at atarimania and read some comments there, e.g. "sikor - 04/06/2010: Great digitalized intro, programmers are Jakub Husak, programming language is ACTION!, not machine language!!!" "jhusak - 05/02/2014: I'm afraid Sikor, that I have coded it in machine language... MAC65." Thus, it seems Jakub Husak did not use Action! but MAC65 instead.

I think so, but errrm, as a non-programmer, I do not know. TIP Converter is a Java program that converts BMP, JPG, PNG pictures/frames into (A8) TIP format; while TIP Animator is an .EXE for the command line (I run it under Win XP) that generates the TIP animation (XEX-file) from the converted TIP pictures/frames and optionally packs it.

TIP = Taquart Interlaced/Interleaved Picture, it uses Gr. 9+10+11 for a max. resolution of 160x119 pixels (max. 160x100 with TIP Animator) and up to 256 colours. Here are some TIP gfx Alas, many TIP animations are painfully slow (and you could see the frame-drawing) when full 160x100 resolution is used, so I had to downsize them to even smaller visible sizes, like e.g. 100x70 or 80x50 pixels (the full size is still 160x100 pixels, but there is a huge black border around the visible animation).

My interpretation of "1200XL (0 for 3) (video and no keyboard func)" was... 1200XL (0 Dollars for 3), because no video and no keyboard function. 😁

Maybe you also like these (only converted by me with some PC Tools, like TIP Converter and TIP Animator). They are all packed with Exomizer (to save diskspace) however, so you have to wait for unpacking. And errmm, since I only have PAL Ataris, I used a PAL palette (OlivierP)... Raytraced.zip

Crunching, compressing, exomizing, etc. may help...?!? There are various packers and compressors for the A8 available - on the A8 and on the PC. Since the adventure is mainly text, it should be possible to make it 30%-50% shorter with a good packer program... If the program still does not fit on a 130k disk or image, then simply use a 180k disk or image.

His name is Mike...

Hmmm, buying rare A8 items at ebay for a high cost to never use them is always risky (they might be defect, empty, etc.). Maybe the seller already knew the buyer (collector) would never use these items and therefore sold almost empty shrink-wrapped boxes ? If you do not want to open them, you will never know for sure (and the rattling may come from some disk-sized cardboards inside the boxes)... ;->

Afaik, it is just one man who does all those magical A8 things (hacking, cracking, converting, porting, turning into stand-alone files, patching+fixing, etc. etc.).

Afair, these two games are Gem Drop and Tetricize (sp?) Would be nice if Last Squadron would also work with two buttons on a standard (unmodified) Genesis/MegaDrive controller - maybe the author could make it selectable in the menu / options screen (1 button, Joy 2B+, Sega) ? And as always, +1 for music on/off selection...

Red = final category ranking, thus: (first number = category 1-5, second number = number of votes) Category 1: Atariduino and MidiJoy 2.0 Category 3: VIAtari Category 4: mod. of ROM pcb's for use with Eproms Category 5: alt. cart cases (3D print) Category is NOT the same as place, so the number of votes does not correspond to a place, but in which of the five categories the item lands. So, even though the "alt. cart case" [Alternatives Modulgehäuse] got 13 votes, this is NOT the second place, but the majority of votes to make it land in category 5. The Abbuc members do express with their vote more or less the value of the hardware and to which category it should belong: Highest value = category 1 (500 Euro), category 2 (300 Euro), category 3 (200 Euro), category 4 (100 Euro), lowest value = category 5 (consolation prize). Therefore each member did not give any points, but directly voted for the category (1-5) he wanted the item to be placed in. I do not know what would have happened if VIAtari would have got 11 votes for category 2 and also 11 votes for category 3 (but luckily this did not happen) - or if any other hardware item would have had the same number of votes for two different categories.

Shanti 10 points! Looking forward to the cartridge version...

Okay, Netscape does not seem to work, but Firefox 52 ESR (my latest Win XP update) also does not work... :-(

Regarding Copymate, it looks like only the Copymate XE versions 3.7 and 3.8 do support enhanced density (130k). All other versions (up to version 4.4) do not support 130k it seems... and that's why I never use them.

Afaik, MyCopyR 1.x originally came as a bootdisk, while MyCopyR 2.x came as a file. (But one could convert MyCopyR 1.x into a file with e.g. Supercopy by P. Jakubek and thats what I did at some point.) Since I do not use Happy drives, I never encountered that Happy bug; on the other hand I find the manual enhanced density function in 1.x quite useful. Both versions support ultraspeed with Happy, Speedy, USD, Hyper-XF and other ultraspeed capable floppy drives. Both can copy 90k, 130k, 180k and also support XRAM (press Control-B for a reboot option, then Start to execute it). Do not know anything about the history of MyCopyR, simply found both versions in the (german) HAPS library. One can also find them online e.g. at Pigwa in the Holmes collection (MycopyeR, MycopyR! 2.0 and MycopyR! 2.1). Looks like MyCopyR! is the correct name and I always typed it wrong as Mycopier...

Errrm, yes - Diskcopy from TurboDOS XL/XE can do that. Set "Continue on Error" to "On" and it will only try once to read a sector, if an error occurs it continues reading. BUT: Every error sector will be written as an empty sector. MyCopier 1.x and 2.x can also do this (and both write empty sectors for error sectors). While you have to set the option "continue on error" manually in Diskcopy, MyCopier does that automatically.

Well, afaik the disk version of Summer Games can be played with up to 8 players - whereas the cart. version can only be played with a max. of 3 players. Both versions however miss an option in the menu: Choose several of the events you want! (You can only choose one event or all events, but not e.g. your favourite three events.) Most pirated disk versions I had of Summer Games had a defect world records table with Control and other characters in it. (I also had several versions of Winter Events with a defect highscore or world records table, but I could easily repair it.)

But then it is no longer an original Atari. ;-)

Well, at first I have to say, that I do not know if 5200 Tempest is a homebrew and still being sold or if it is "just" the 80s Atari version... so please do not throw stones at me. The simplest way to get an 8Bit conversion of 5200 Tempest would be: a) make a ROM dump of the 5200 cart. ROMs, b) send this ROM dump to Homesoft (E-Mail is available on his webpage), c) wait until he has done the conversion. In the past most if not all 5200 conversions were done by Glenn the 5200 man, but since 20 or 30 years Homesoft is doing most of the 5200 to 8Bit conversions... EDIT: Just read the description for 5200 Tempest in the AA store (normally I do not go there, since I do not own a 5200) and now I think it would be a good idea to ask the programmer Keithen Hayenga if he's okay with an 8Bit computer conversion of his code... in the end, maybe Albert could then produce 8Bit computer carts of Tempest ?!?

If you are interested I can send you one of the SIO-cables my friend made for me (length approx. 95cm, long enough I think)... it looks like this:

Real Sports Curling is available from Homesoft... (on disk 446).

Zuul = The Gatekeeper Where are the Ghostbusters ?