carmel_andrews Posted August 15, 2007 Share Posted August 15, 2007 Just curious as to whether there's a website that has the most/all the popular dos/boot pirate boot menu disks (incl. game files, pointless without them)...i.e Howfen, Rob C/Mega Rob C, Ian K/C.Elton (also known as US doubler menu), Multiboot and variants (Also know as John Williams Menu) as well as Homesoft and the various Polish Dos Menu's (like Gumi/Krawco and LK Avalon) I was going to say Transdisk 1-4, Taskmaster (Rambit) as well as C-sim (but these were more tape to disk convertors that just happen to use menu's to store game files on) Additionally, a comprehensive list of what games were hacked onto the menu's Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted August 15, 2007 Share Posted August 15, 2007 The only menus I had any time for were ones that had the disk in DOS format, not those stupid custom formatted ones. The one I came across most was just a generic GR.1 job with "Select game" then the games listed by the key you press to load it. I made my own one with the same design, but improved it to use less memory and be compatible with more games. Back to the menus, if they used DOS format then you'd just roll your own disks anyway, so the combinations are endless. I just created disks in the order I got games, so there wasn't much order to it. I also wrote a similar menu to load "cassette boot" and single-stage disk boot type games (coz I was too lazy to hack them into binaries at times). Rybags_menus.zip Attached are images of a couple of disks I transferred via APE, with each type of menu mentioned. The menus are nothing fancy - only compatible with DOS 2.5 type SD and ED disks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted August 15, 2007 Share Posted August 15, 2007 radmenu.zip Here is an old RadMenu... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted August 15, 2007 Share Posted August 15, 2007 DISK018B.zip here is another one... I am trying to find one where it had the Atari Fuji logo and it rotated the colors in horizontal bands... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted August 15, 2007 Share Posted August 15, 2007 DISK002A.zip Here is a disk showing the Atari Fuji menu... Unfortunately it only boots in the emu with OS-B option... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walter_J64bit Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 WOW, any of these boot menus work with the (MyDOS,SuperDOS) 360k format of the XF551! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwhyte Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 (edited) DISK018B.zip here is another one... I am trying to find one where it had the Atari Fuji logo and it rotated the colors in horizontal bands... What about the SpartaDOS v1.1 game menu? It had an Atari logo with a colorband DLI running... It wasn't compatible with all game files, but quite a few. Edited August 16, 2007 by dwhyte Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwhyte Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 WOW, any of these boot menus work with the (MyDOS,SuperDOS) 360k format of the XF551! Use MyPicoDOS for 360K disks... I modified it for my own Activision collection on a 360K disk... I remember putting a link somewhere... ... ... ... here it is... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 WOW, any of these boot menus work with the (MyDOS,SuperDOS) 360k format of the XF551! Don't know... never tried. I am still trying to find the disk in my ATR converted stash that has the DLI color FUJI creator... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walter_J64bit Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 WOW, any of these boot menus work with the (MyDOS,SuperDOS) 360k format of the XF551! Use MyPicoDOS for 360K disks... I modified it for my own Activision collection on a 360K disk... I remember putting a link somewhere... ... ... ... here it is... Thansk, so you mod this file thats awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a8isa1 Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 Just curious as to whether there's a website that has the most/all the popular dos/boot pirate boot menu disks (incl. game files, pointless without them)...i.e Howfen, Rob C/Mega Rob C, Ian K/C.Elton (also known as US doubler menu), Multiboot and variants (Also know as John Williams Menu) as well as Homesoft and the various Polish Dos Menu's (like Gumi/Krawco and LK Avalon) I was going to say Transdisk 1-4, Taskmaster (Rambit) as well as C-sim (but these were more tape to disk convertors that just happen to use menu's to store game files on) Additionally, a comprehensive list of what games were hacked onto the menu's I got to say DOS disk menus only for me as well. Fenders 3 sector boot (aka RadMenu) back in the day. However, now it's MyPicoDOS for my MyDOS formatted disks/images and Micro Sparta DOS, MSDOS, (from BeweDOS, I think) for SpartaDOS formatted disks/images. Both menu programs support subdirectories, long names, and high speed SIO. MyPicoDOS has the HSIO driver built-in. I believe MSDOS downloads the driver from the drive (or AtariSIO) As a side note, I sort of converted the old Yogi disk images to double density and MyPicoDOS. Connected 1.2MB drives to my ATR8000 and ported the images to real high density 5.25" floppies (format to 1.01 MB), just for fun. There's no high speed SIO for the ATR8000 but it was kind of fun to have 50 or so games per disk. -Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
re-atari Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 (edited) The only menus I had any time for were ones that had the disk in DOS format, not those stupid custom formatted ones. The one I came across most was just a generic GR.1 job with "Select game" then the games listed by the key you press to load it. I made my own one with the same design, but improved it to use less memory and be compatible with more games. Back to the menus, if they used DOS format then you'd just roll your own disks anyway, so the combinations are endless. I just created disks in the order I got games, so there wasn't much order to it. Attached are images of a couple of disks I transferred via APE, with each type of menu mentioned. The menus are nothing fancy - only compatible with DOS 2.5 type SD and ED disks. Back in my A8 days I always used a program called U.S. Menu for this. It was made by Erwin Reuss, whom some of you may know as the co-designer of the Speedy 1050 (IMHO the best engineered and fastest diskspeeder for the 1050 around) and as the co-owner of the CompyShop. U.S. Menu is very small yet in its simplicity offers everything I think a gamenu should have. It doesn't need DOS and is compatible with SD, ED and DD. When booting a disk, it automatically switches to the highest transferspeed the drive supports. From memory this is how you'd go about when creating a menu disk. You'd format a disk, initialise it with U.S. Menu (writes its own boot- and programcode), copy and lock the gamefiles with the DOS of your choice, and then start U.S. Menu again to enter the name of the files into the menu (max. 16 characters). When booting such a disk you'd get a blue screen with a menuheader with the sorted directory entries underneath it. IIRC the top entry would be highlighted in a white bar with the text in inverse video. Using the cursor Up/Dn keys you'd scroll this bar up/down the list. The highlighted entry would be started by pressing space. It might be I have my memory mixed up, and that the entries were given a alphabetical letter which you'd have to press to start it. I'm not sure after all these years. I think you could only put in 16 directory entries, but that was sufficient for me, even when using DD disks. Sadly I have never been able to find this program back when I returned to the A8 scene a couple of years ago. Maybe someone recognizes it from my description? BTW, the same goes for some other programs made by Erwin, like US Copy. This was a sectorcopy program that could utilize all available RAM in your A8, allowing single drive users to copy a disk in the least possible diskswaps. For instance, on a 256Kb XL you could read an entire DD disk in one go, and then write as much destination disks as you liked. The Option and Select keys were used to chose the source and destination drive. When copying progress bars for reading and writing would be visible onscreen. Needless to say this program also automatically switched to the highest possible transferspeed the drive(s) supported. Maybe somebody recognizes these programs, and, if so, cares to upload them? I haven't checked out the attachments Rybags uploaded yet. re-atari Edited August 17, 2007 by re-atari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 (edited) I use US Sector Copier 4 on a regular basis. You'll find Speed Start Initializer here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=74373 -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com Edited August 17, 2007 by www.atarimania.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 Well, but afaik the US Copy (stupid name for a german program - US meant ultraspeed here!) works only correct with a Speedy drive. One can use a Happy for reading disks, but formatting and writing does not work... I personally never liked the Speed Start Initializer, cause one had to format a disk with the program (no matter if the disk was already formatted), it was not possible to write the loader program only. Next one had to copy the programs onto the game disk using a DOS or Filecopier, lock all programs and then return to the Speed Start Initializer to name them. To much hassle for me, I prefered using a DOS (or Copy program) to format a disk, then copy all the files (without the need to lock them) and finally use the gamedos *only once* to init. the gameloader. Believe it or not, on ED disks the SSI wasted a lot of sectors, since you got only 931 free sectors and furthermore it was not possible to switch off the ultraspeed routine or free the memory it used (and some program files did not run, due to this us-routine or the memory it used)... Thus, I always used "Nano-DOS" by S.Haucke and "Micro-DOS II" by S.Dorndorf (not to be confused with MicroDOS XL by Antic or analog!) for Single and Medium Density and "PicoDOS 1.6" by M.Reichl (you may guessed it, the same author as MyPicodos) for Double Density. All these gamedos versions did not have a us-routine, which was perfect for drives that did not use it (like Turbo, XF551 and others) and programs that did not like ultraspeed for whatever reason. But hey, thats just a subjective point of view, one may use any DOS or Gamedos... but nowadays MicroSpartaDOS and MyPicoDOS really seem to be the best gamedos versions around... -Andreas Koch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 Well, attached you find some alternative DOS and/or gamedos versions, like Howfen, Mikran, Multiboot and others. There is also the unfinished Linux A8 version and some old experimental DOSses like MecDOS or Seqboot... -Andreas Koch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
re-atari Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 Well,but afaik the US Copy (stupid name for a german program - US meant ultraspeed here!) works only correct with a Speedy drive. One can use a Happy for reading disks, but formatting and writing does not work... I personally never liked the Speed Start Initializer, cause one had to format a disk with the program (no matter if the disk was already formatted), it was not possible to write the loader program only. Next one had to copy the programs onto the game disk using a DOS or Filecopier, lock all programs and then return to the Speed Start Initializer to name them. To much hassle for me, I prefered using a DOS (or Copy program) to format a disk, then copy all the files (without the need to lock them) and finally use the gamedos *only once* to init. the gameloader. Believe it or not, on ED disks the SSI wasted a lot of sectors, since you got only 931 free sectors and furthermore it was not possible to switch off the ultraspeed routine or free the memory it used (and some program files did not run, due to this us-routine or the memory it used)... Andreas, From your description I think we're indeed talking about the same menu program, the 931 sector limit somehow rings a bell. I agree U.S. menu had its drawbacks in terms of the red tape you had to go through before you finally had a working menu disk, but I guess I just had learned to live with them. Back then I considered it a great improvement over the multiboot menudisks. I can't verify your experience, that U.S. Copy only works with a Speedy enhanced drive. IIRC I have seen it work without a problem on standard 1050's, but I may be mistaken. I had a Copy Card 7.0 in my 1050 (still have it to this very day), and U.S. Copy worked without a hitch, and it did so at the Happy transferspeed. The Speedy a friend of mine had was even faster (you could tell by listening at the pitch of the sound). BTW, thanks for your upload. I will check it out! re-atari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
re-atari Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 I use US Sector Copier 4 on a regular basis. You'll find Speed Start Initializer here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=74373 Thanks for the link. I'm certain this is the one I was talking about. It looks like I hadn't remembered the correct name for the gamemenu program and the sector copier, and that doesn't really help when you're on a search... Well, it's good to have my memory refreshed every now and then. I think I now know how the Micron Technology manufactured DRAM's in the 130XE's must feel re-atari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ijor Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 I think that when choosing a sector copier or a menu is much a matter of personal preference. It doesn't take too much to make the "perfect" sector copier. Ramdisk support, hi-speed, a few options and that's all. There were several that implemented all of them. You can't make it "better". May be "fancier", but not better. Regarding boot menu, I always used simple ones. I like the disk to be in a simple Atari DOS compatible format. So that I could manage the files with whatever tool I wanted. I use Sparta or Mydos subdirectories on special cases only, not on games. Any menu that fits in the 3 boot sectors and supports DD was enough for me. To be honest, many times I didn't use a menu at all. Just use Omnimon built-in file loader. Yeah, it doesn't work in some cases, but it does in most of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMartian Posted August 18, 2007 Share Posted August 18, 2007 Actually, this reminds me that the Ultraspeed+ OS has some kind of disk menu installer in it too. I've never seen it, so I guess I'll throw it back into a system and check it out. I'll let you know what it works like.. (Unless somebody else beats me to it!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tjlazer Posted August 22, 2007 Share Posted August 22, 2007 Here are a few I use... Boot_Menu_Disks.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spanner Posted September 26, 2014 Share Posted September 26, 2014 Hi all Is there a way of copying from tape to disk with a Mulitboot XL disk,It has game on it already but if you press X it brings up copy prog to disk or tape,load prog from tape then to disk..? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+therealbountybob Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 Hi all Is there a way of copying from tape to disk with a Mulitboot XL disk,It has game on it already but if you press X it brings up copy prog to disk or tape,load prog from tape then to disk..? Yes you can use Multiboot to transfer some games to disk but many had multiple stage loads and may not work, so you may be better trying Transdisk 4.2 which you can download here http://pokeysoft.no/games/atari/a8util.htm (if you have APE or another PC interface) it's fun when you have a success! Most (not all) of the games are already available for download from atari sites such as atarimania fandal or atarionline.pl homesoft etc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACML Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 Here is a link to the XL friendly version of the Atari Fuji DOS menu loaders http://atariage.com/forums/topic/226752-atari-animated-fuji-menu-loader-for-dos/?hl=%2Bfuji+%2Bboot+%2Bmenu&do=findComment&comment=3016794 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 This all reminds me of the file crack stuff I do on the Apple ][. xD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bunsen Posted September 28, 2014 Share Posted September 28, 2014 I didn't check the attachments... I would be interested in the initializer of Mike Langer's "Bootmanager" (Homesoft). With this one you can prepare your own (DD) multigame boot disks which can be integrated perfectly to work with THE!CART. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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