Urchlay

You said pressing Select fixes it... When it screws up, does the game audio keep going normally? And when you hit Select, it recovers fully? Or does it crash when it screws up, and after you hit Select, you still have to reboot?

Cartridge games are pretty close to indestructible I guess... But is it really possible to buy 20+ year old floppy disks on ebay and have them actually stand a good chance of working on 20+ year old drives? Yes, I know old low-density 5 1/4" disks & drives are way more reliable than the modern floppies, but maybe 1/4 of my collection (of mostly pirated games downloaded from BBSes) has gone bad over the years. Are factory-made game floppies really that much better at surviving the ravages of time than the ones I formatted myself back then?

Wireless isn't really that useful for non-laptop computers that have to have at least power & video cables plugged in, and a monitor as a "fixed emplacement"... though if it would allow you to maybe keep the Atari in the living room and the PC in a different room, it starts being useful again (don't have to run serial cable through the walls), as long as whatever software you use provides some way to remote-control the PC from the Atari. Hm. Actually. If one PC with one wireless SIO2PC can serve many Ataris simultaneously, *that* would make it very cool. Right now with the serial port SIO2PC, you're limited by how many serial ports you've got on the PC. I suppose the USB version, you could buy 5 of them (expensive!) and use them with 5 Ataris (no idea whether the current APE software could handle that, but new software can always be written). If the wireless version worked like Bluetooth (one transceiver on the PC, many remote devices), and if the Atari side of it were cheap... hmm.

Try the attached: berzerk_disasm.zip With DASM 2.20.07, it assembles byte-for-byte identical with the original Berzerk.com from your zip file. See the comments at the top of the file for the gory details... Note this is just a straight disassembly, with 2 sections marked as data tables so they came out as .BYTEs instead of garbage instructions. I didn't try to figure out how the code works, or assign meaningful labels, or anything like that. Also there are a couple of spots that look like this: L7EC2: .byte $4C ; 7EC2 4C L L7EC3: brk ; 7EC3 00 . .byte $80 ; 7EC4 80 ; a few lines later bne L7EC3 ; 7ED0 D0 F1 .. The BNE really is branching to the BRK... which also happens to be the low byte of the operand to the JMP ($4C) at L7EC2. Probably you want to change this construct to: L7EC2: JMP $8000 ; ... BNE L7EC2+1 ...but I don't actually know why the code was written this way (this is a "quick and dirty" disassembly). Hope this helps!

My 2 cents worth: Some way to get files from the internet onto the Atari is a bare minimum. I use an SIO2PC for this, but it isn't really a "mod", it's an external device that plugs into whichever Atari I'm using it with. SIO2SD and the cartridge version of MyIDE fall into the same category. And yes, you *could* go old school, use an 850 with a terminal program, and send files from your PC with Xmodem/Ymodem, or dispense with the PC and use a Lantronix box with an 850. The common theme here is that, without a way to download files & use them on the Atari, you can't really do much with your Atari these days (except buy cartridge games on ePay and play them, or try to get your ancient floppies from the 1980s to load). Maybe this isn't what Carmel was asking about though: all of these are (or can be) external devices which just plug in, no disassembly or soldering required. The only actual hardware mods I have that I think of as *necessary* are the video upgrades for the XL series (Clearpic, Supervideo 2.1, 600XL composite output). Atari got the video right on the 800 (it's beautiful), then they dropped the ball on the XL series for whatever reason. The 1200XL, especially, is so bad that the composite output looks like RF. These mods just fix Atari's mistakes, and they don't interfere with the functions of the rest of the system, and once you've used a Clearpic/Supervideo 1200XL or 800XL, you'll never want to use a stock one (the difference is that dramatic). While not 100% necessary, extended RAM (256K or more) is nice to have. The demo/game coders working on new stuff tend to take advantage of it, or even require it, so if you're interested in the new software being developed, you effectively need it. Stuff like the VBXE, or bob1200xl's 7MHz 1200XL mod, or internal MyIDE... I wouldn't call them "necessary", but I'm glad they exist (or are being worked on anyway). I wouldn't say everyone should buy stuff they don't have a use for just to be supporting the community, though. We aren't made of money... I do hope that one day someone will develop a "killer app" for the 7MHz mod or VBXE, a piece of software that is so cool/useful/etc that everyone will want to get the mod so they can run the killer app. That's the only way something like that will ever become common enough that other developers will commit to coding for it too.

Nice! Will the fixes for the 1050 drives get ported to the high-speed SIO driver in MyPicoDOS/AtariSIO as well?

Someone (Metalguy?) once told me the XEGS keyboard connector has the contacts for the console keys, it's just that the keyboard lacks the buttons for them... eh, unless I'm hallucinating instead of remembering (always a possibility). Most flexible, definitely. Still there's no way I know of to simulate console keys in software (there's no shadow, everything that uses them reads straight from the hardware register). But the extra buttons as keystrokes would still be useful... not quite enough keys there to play Star Raiders without touching the keyboard, but I guess this controller would be mostly for new and/or modified games.

Hmmm. It looks like a few bits got toggled here & there... including bits in the directory sectors, so it's not just that the file contents are corrupt, the whole image is. Is the actual floppy messed up, when you try to load the files in Mac/65 on hardware? I mean, it isn't just an imaging error, is it? (Hoping it is, but somehow I doubt it...) I couldn't find any docs on Mac/65's tokenized file format, so I'm figuring it out the hard way... will take a while. Probably will start a new thread for it, document what I find out as I find it out, unless someone replies to this and says "You silly person, the Mac/65 file format is documented at (some URL)". Do you know whether this version of DOS 2.5 was the version that was released? If the disk weren't damaged, and you assembled it, would you get an exact copy of the DOS 2.5 that Atari used to sell?

Hmmm, a challenge... A while back I had thought of writing a mac/65 detokenizer, guess it's time to actually start that project now that there's a use for it

Here's a thought... I'd pay $35 or $40 for a 5-button analog controller, if it worked like this: - Analog stick can be switched between analog and emulated digital (so it'll still work with regular games), via a switch on the controller. I dunno how much trouble and expense this would add though, maybe not worth it. - The other 4 buttons act as start/select/option/reset. Unfortunately only the XEGS has the console buttons available externally (the keyboard connector), and other Ataris would need to be modded... I guess then you'd have to make this feature also switchable, so the extra 4 buttons can map to something else (2nd port directions?)... but now you've got a frankenstein with 2 joystick cables and an XEGS keyboard cable. OK, maybe not very practical.

Thanks for that! You mentioned in another thread that you've also got DOS 2.5 sources... planning to upload those too? (or am I confusing you with someone else?)

I was just guessing it was VMS due to the DCL-looking syntax in the *.CLI files... I probably will end up doing a perl script that acts as a preprocessor, takes CAMAC input and spits out dasm or ca65 source. Be interesting to see what's different between this version and the release.

The code's for the Atari CAMAC VAX/VMS cross-assembler... Curt, any chance you can look through the archives, see if you can find anything relating to CAMAC? Source to the assembler would be perfect (but unlikely), documentation would be great, even a binary might be useful (there are VAX emulators out there). Of course it won't be difficult to port the Donkey Kong sources to a different assembler (dasm or ca65), but it'd be really cool to be able to assemble the old sources in the old environment too... And yes, I know, searching the archives is probably a momumental undertaking, and you've got a to-do list as long as my arm... just something to keep in mind if you happen to run across it.

I had a friend who built an analog controller out of the remote for an R/C car, for use with a Commodore 64 drawing program that was designed to use the Koala pad. Presumably the same controller would work for Micro Illustrator on the Atari (IIRC, the Koala pad's X and Y axes were read by reading the pot registers, which are the same pins on the Commodore joystick port as they are on the Atari). His controller also worked fine for paddle games, though of course only one axis was used by them. I'd like to see an A8 version of Gyruss that uses the 2600 driving controller. This isn't a pot at all, it's an encoder wheel like a PC mouse uses (uses a 2-bit Gray code IIRC). This controller would also be great for the Tempest Xtreem game that's being developed now. Unlike a paddle, you can turn it in the same direction forever (no mechanical stop, and no limited range like a pot would have). Er, and, it might be good for Pole Position type games... even better for those if someone attached a steering wheel to it, of course.

My rev. C cart was silver w/horizontal stripes, but it was filthy (label peeling off, covered in what looked like motor oil) so no point me taking a picture of it... The one on the bottom left is interesting. I've never seen an Atari branded cart that was brown, yet didn't have the rectractible cover. Also, its label is missing the part number and says "8-bit Atari computers" instead of the older "Use with console keyboard" or the newer "Atari Personal Computers"... I almost think it looks like a pirate/fake, except who would have bothered making knock-off BASIC carts (the single most common Atari 8-bit cart ever, I bet). Got any further info on that cart?

Search this forum for "cas2wav", you can make your own wav files from emulator cas files. Only difference between that and sampling an original cassette is that the real tape will have hiss, noise, wow/flutter (if that's what you call it... where the player speed isn't quite constant). Depending on your needs this can be a good or bad thing.

I have one of those, but it died. Moved the ROM from it to an old style cart, so now I have one that looks like the picture on the left (BASIC Computing Language), but is rev C. Pretty sure I've never seen the one on the right. Seems like the kind of thing I'd notice...

It's a little different now, because back then it was only us "computer nerds" doing it, and "home computer" software hadn't become a huge industry yet. Now it's widespread (including movies/music), and in the media a lot... leading to silly things like the DMCA being passed, or people getting sued for $thousands per mp3 found on their hard drive to "make an example" of them.

Indeed. However, as a kid too young to have a job, it was either suffer through bad cracked games, or only ever play the 5 games the parents bought me... Later on when I had my own money, 8-bit stuff had gotten hard to find. If I hadn't been a "dirty pirate" I'd never have played most of the good stuff. (And yeah, I know, people doing what I did contributed greatly to the death of the Atari 8-bit software market... try explaining that to my 13-year-old self though).

The worst gaming experiences I ever had were the cracked copies of Pitfall II and Montezuma's Revenge I got from BBSes. Pitfall II would randomly crash, but usually only after I'd been playing 10-15 minutes. The Montezuma's Revenge I had was the "preliminary" version, which played great except there was one buggy room on each level that would screw up the item display, making it impossible to pick up or use keys and swords for the rest of the game. It was possible to finish the levels without ever entering that room, but I would always forget where it was... Of course these are both great games, only "bad" because of incompetent crackers/pirates, I just couldn't come up with any really bad games nobody has already posted here...

Didn't Apple IIe and/or Commodore 64 version of Mac/65 exist? The 65C02 might have been used on one of the later Apple models... and/or people might have upgraded (I've seen old ads for Apple II CPU upgrades, but those might have been 65816's, can't recall).

Yeah... you know what I think I'm going to do? I think I'm going to include a script called "install_atari_roms" in the package. The script will download the XFormer zip file or the ROMs (try 3 or 4 sites), extract them, and install them where the emulator can use them... ...but the script won't be run as part of the package installation. Instead, the package docs will tell the user to run that script, if they feel comfortable with it, otherwise use the OS++ ROM and live with the lack of floating point and BASIC. It won't be quite as simple as if I could include the ROMs directly in the package, but it won't be hideously difficult either.

You definitely have a cooler job than any I've ever had, then...

What kind of job do you have, where you get to use a 1200XL and 1050 at work? (And are they hiring?) Seriously though... do you use the Atari stuff to do actual work, or are they there for goofing off on your lunch break and/or showing off to visitors?

Nobody's talking about getting sued (or anyway I wasn't). The emulator I'm talking about is GPL licensed ( http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html ), and to avoid breaking the license, I can't add proprietary code to my package. If I did violate the GPL in this case, it's highly unlikely I'd get sued or anything, but my package would get rejected from the site I want to submit it to. Plus, even without that possibility, I don't want to break the license, because I've used the same license for code I've written myself. How could I expect anyone to respect my use of the GPL if I ignore other peoples' use of it? (I realize you probably have zero interest in this stuff, but now you know why I'm asking about it, at least)