Atari Computing Magazine - Argus Press Software

[porge]

Hi BB et al..

 

Perhaps when all of the tapes have been archived this would be a nice idea... the games may even fill two or three disks!

 

Does anyone have any cassettes or evidence that Atari Computing went beyond Issue 11?

 

Any info would be helpful, thanks guys..

[turk182]

Hi Guys,

 

For Anyone who is interested, here are verified .CAS files of Atari Computing Issue 3.

I managed to fix the Framing error which affected the first program on each side of my tapes, with the help of info in De Re Atari.

 

Enjoy!

AC3-1.zip

 

AC3-2.zip

 

Nice work. I didn't have any issues with framing errors on issue 3 (just checked my cas files) but great work fixing them. Here are scans of the card that issue three came on if you're interested:

 

 

 

Legend on the scans!

[porge]

Hi Guys,

 

I have now managed to create .CAS images of Atari Computing Issue 8.

 

I'm especially chuffed as I got my 'lost' adventure program 'Treasures of The Golden Reef' back again

 

Thank you very much indeed to Simon (Orpheuswalking) for loan of the source cassette, I very much appreciate it.

 

Note: The first item on side 1 loads but crashes on every Atari I have tried it on, including emulators. I have no idea what the first item is supposed to be, it may have even been included on the original tape in error... I have included it simply for completion of what was on the tape. So, ignore the first program, the usual Atari Computing editorial/intro is the second second program on side 1.

 

Enjoy!

 

Porge

ac8s1.zip

ac8s2.zip

[porge]

P.S. If anyone gets stuck playing Golden Reef, I'll try to help - perhaps it woul dbe best to start a new thread if asking for hints......?

[+orpheuswaking]

Glad to see you got it working

 

Now if only people could get my Handle right orpheusWAKING

[+therealbountybob]

Glad to see you got it working

 

Now if only people could get my Handle right orpheusWAKING

What's wrong with walking... it could have been much worse

 

Someone do that ATR compilation of all the games!

[+orpheuswaking]

What's wrong with walking... it could have been much worse

 

 

 

Oh it's been quoted worse in here, trust me.

[+Stephen]

Now if only people could get my Handle right orpheusWANKING

Fixed that for ya

[+therealbountybob]

not quite got the hand on that innuendo there Stephen

[porge]

Of those who have downloaded the Atari computing 8 .CAS images, has anyone figured out what that first piece of code on side one is for.....??

[+orpheuswaking]

I got it to load the first time I was playing with the tape, but heck if I can remember what it loaded

[dazpants1]

Hi all,

 

I have scanned through here and downloaded issues 1,2,3,8, and 11. Can anyone help me with 4,5,6,7,9, and 10 all?

 

Really appreciate if anyone can post them on here or send to me as i love this magazine, great memories

 

Thanks in advance for any help

 

Daz

[Garry]

I am trying to find all the Atari Computing tape magazines so that they can be preserved on disk images. So far, I've got the following (from this thread):

 

Tape 01 (November/December(?) 1983)
PART01.BAS Title screen, intro & contents
PART02.BAS Tari Trap (like Surround)
PART03.BAS Review of Caverns of Mars & Firefleet
PART04.BAS Hi-res editor (demo of text on graphics screens)
PART05.BAS Review of The Lone Raider
PART06.BAS Display List Editor, Chris Palmer (tutorial)
PART07.BAS Display List Editor, Chris Palmer (program)
PART08.BAS Shop Steward (simulation)
PART09.BAS Tower, Stephen Taylor (arcade game similar to Crazy Climber)

Tape 02 (January/February(?) 1984)
PART01.BAS Title screen, intro & contents
PART02.BAS Elephants Graveyard (simulation)
PART03.BAS Book review of Get more from the Atari by Ian Sinclair
PART04.BAS Podman, Noel Daniel (similar to Q*Bert)
PART05.BAS Sound Studio (sound editor)
PART06.BAS Clock (analog clock)
PART07.BAS Review of River Rescue
PART08.BAS Char Base (character editor)
PART09.BAS Flip, Stephen Taylor (puzzle)

Tape 03 (March/April(?) 1984)
PART01.BAS Title screen, intro & contents
PART02.BAS O.K. Corral, Paul Jenkins (gunfight arcade game)
PART03.BAS Taipan (simulation)
PART04.BAS Review of Blue Max
PART05.BAS Music, Maestro! (tutorial)
PART06.BAS Solitaire (classic peg puzzle)
PART07.BAS Review of Snowball Adventure
PART08.BAS Glug! (instructions)
PART09.BAS Glug! (won't run)
PART10.BAS Glug! (buggy version)
PART11.BAS The Keys of Time, Marc Freebury (adventure intro)
PART12.BAS The Keys of Time, Marc Freebury (adventure program)

Tape 04 (May/June(?) 1984)
PART01.BAS Title screen, intro & contents
PART02.BAS Snake Attack
PART03.BAS Yachte
PART04.BAS Review of Captain Sticky
PART05.BAS Mastermind
PART06.BAS Disaster (disassembler instructions)
PART07.BAS Disaster (disassembler program)
PART08.BAS The Keys of Time Part 2, Marc Freebury (adventure program) MISSING
PART09.BAS Review of Savage Pond
PART10.BAS Moon Lander, Bruce Archer

Tape 05 (July/August(?) 1984)
PART01.BAS Title screen, intro & contents
PART02.BAS Flying Bombs, Nick Pearce
PART03.BAS Review of Encounter
PART04.BAS Air Attack, Marc Freebury (arcade game similar to Blitz)
PART05.BAS The Atari Screen Formatter (tutorial)
PART06.BAS MISSING
PART07.BAS The Keys of Time - Final Conflict, Marc Freebury (adventure intro)
PART08.BAS The Keys of Time - Final Conflict, Marc Freebury (adventure program) MISSING
PART09.BAS Review of Solo Flight
PART10.BAS Thirty One, C. H. Seymour (intro)
PART11.BAS Thirty One, C. H. Seymour (dice game)

Tape 06 (September/October(?) 1984)
MISSING

Tape 07 (November/December(?) 1984)
MISSING

Tape 08 (January/February(?) 1985)
PART01.BAS (CRASHES EMULATOR - ignore it)
PART02.BAS Title screen, intro & contents
PART03.BAS CES Show - Las Vegas
PART04.BAS Rebound, Nick Pearce (arcade game)
PART05.BAS Review of Omnitrend's Universe
PART06.BAS Sprites (player-missile graphics tutorial)
PART07.BAS Review of Level 9's Dungeon adventure trilogy
PART08.BAS Quicktrack, Stephen Taylor (arcade game)
PART09.BAS (CRASHES EMULATOR)
PART10.BAS The Treasures of Golden Reef, Robert J Fry (adventure intro) (CRASHES EMULATOR)
PART11.BAS The Treasures of Golden Reef, Robert J Fry (adventure program)

Tape 09 (March/April(?) 1985)
PART01.BAS Title screen
PART02.BAS Title screen, intro & contents
PART03.BAS Bombing Raid, Bruce Archer (CRASHES EMULATOR)
PART04.BAS Review of MAC/65 Assembler
PART05.BAS Between the Lines, Mike Wilkinson (puzzle)
PART06.BAS Babies (arcade game)
PART07.BAS Review of Battle for Midway
PART08.BAS Lasertraz, Darren Broome (instructions)
PART09.BAS Lasertraz, Darren Broome (program, arcade game?)

Tape 10
MISSING

Tape 11 (August 1985)
PART01.BAS Editorial
PART02.BAS Pyromaniac, Bernard Hayez (arcade game)
PART03.BAS Reviews
PART04.BAS Info that next program is last program on tape
PART05.BAS Red 5, Michael A Baxter (arcade game)
PART06.BAS Cassette Craft, L Sutton (tutorial)
PART07.BAS Super Chopper, Darren Broome (arcade game)
PART08.BAS A Few of my Favourite Things, Alan Sharples (reviews)
PART09.BAS Info that next program is last program on tape
PART10.BAS MISSING

Can anyone provide the stuff that's missing (as shown in red)? I'd particularly like to get the Keys of TIme adventures for parts 2 and 3. Any other corrections and confirmation of publication dates would also be appreciated.

[Justin Payne]

I just found tape #3 in a drawer but the magazine is lost to time. I couldn't find scanned copies of the pages online. Do any of you guys have these. I think it would make a nice addition to one of the many archive locations.

[spookt]

I just found tape #3 in a drawer but the magazine is lost to time. I couldn't find scanned copies of the pages online. Do any of you guys have these. I think it would make a nice addition to one of the many archive locations.

 

 

There were no pages. The tape was the magazine and it was supplied fixed to a card like this:

 

[Justin Payne]

Ok. It's been so long since I bought it. I didn't ever remember reading a magazine but....less brain cells. Thx for clarifying.

[Preppie]

I just found issue 3,4,7 in my collection, is there any news on if this has been completely archived yet?  I can't seem to find them on atarimania, although I've downloaded some from the links in this thread.

[spookt]

13 hours ago, Preppie said:

I just found issue 3,4,7 in my collection, is there any news on if this has been completely archived yet?  I can't seem to find them on atarimania, although I've downloaded some from the links in this thread.

Hi

 

Having been away from Atari stuff for a few years and recently returned, I’d still love to get these properly archived. I managed to get hold of the cassettes for issues 1,2,3,3,4,5,6 and 9. I did download all the links here (and indeed contributed some) so I need to go back through my archive here to see what’s missing. I note you have issue 7, might be worth hanging on to it for now as I don’t have a physical copy of that one. 
 

I’m still on the lookout for the issues I’m currently missing so if anyone has any not in the above list let me know. 

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hello folks,

 

I recently bought an "Atari Computing number 10" tape at retrogames.co.uk and yesterday + today I tried to make images of it (sides A+B) and convert the tape onto diskette.

 

The WAV of side A is 147MB, the WAV of side B is 127MB, so both are too big to upload here...  (but if you really want them, you can send me a p.m. and I will give you access to my dropbox upload). Allthough I recorded the tapedata onto CD-RW (44khz, 2x mono), I could not create working CAS files of side A or B. ?

 

Converting the tape to disk however worked really well, only one program did not work (the last program "Alpine Ski" on side A, therefore named AlpineSki.DEF, where DEF simply means defect), all others worked fine.

 

ATR images:

- tapesides A+B are both on one DOS 2.5 diskette; some tape commands have already been changed, so the files do work fine from DOS, but some commands still need to be changed, e.g. CLOAD needs to be changed into RUN"D:Filename.EXT...  (Boot the image with Basic enabled and especially at the start be patient, since font and other data are entered, which takes quite some time. I was so evil to add DOS.SYS, DUP.SYS and Autorun.SYS, so the disk boots automatically.)

 

- tapeside A was also converted with CasDis onto diskette, therefore no changes of the tape commands were nescessary (well, at least theoretically - in practice some of the longer programs, like Feast, do not continue loading, so you have to press the Break key and manually type in RUN"C:" to continue loading; I found this a bit awkward, so I only converted tapeside A with CasDis and did NOT convert tapeside B with CasDis then)...

 

- the ATCO tape contains a boottape image of "Nemo's Vault", this is a ML-program and was the last program on tapeside B; I named it NemoVaul.CAS on the DOS 2.5 disk (you can rename it to *.TAP or *.ATI or whatever fits for you). Since you cannot load a ML boottape image from DOS 2.5, I converted it into a COM/EXE/XEX file and added it to the DOS 2.5 disk, so you can load it with L-binary load from DOS...

 

Attached you will find:

- ATR image with tapeside A+B on a DOS 2.5 diskette (ATCO_10D.ATR), boot with Basic!

- ATR image with only tapeside A on a CasDis bootdisk (ATCO_10C.ATR), boot with Basic!

- one WAV file named Alpine_Ski.WAV (the last program on tapeside A), maybe someone of the professionals @phaeron or @Kr0tki or someone else can repair it, so I can also convert this program onto diskette (and add it to the existing WAV recording, by deleting the damaged piece and adding the fixed one, so in the end someone can create CAS files of the whole tape)...

 

AT_CO_10.ZIP AlpineSki.zip

[phaeron]

2 hours ago, CharlieChaplin said:

- one WAV file named Alpine_Ski.WAV (the last program on tapeside A), maybe someone of the professionals @phaeron or @Kr0tki or someone else can repair it, so I can also convert this program onto diskette (and add it to the existing WAV recording, by deleting the damaged piece and adding the fixed one, so in the end someone can create CAS files of the whole tape)...

 

AT_CO_10.ZIP 46.79 kB · 3 downloads AlpineSki.zip 26.22 MB · 2 downloads

There is a dropout on the tape:

CAS: Checksum error encountered (got 55, expected 53).
CAS: Sector sync pos: 78.741 s | End pos: 81.230 s | Baud rate: 602.42 baud | Framing errors: 2 (first at 80.03)
CAS: Completed read with status 8f to buffer $03FD; control=FC, position=81.23s (cycle 2596141), baud=602.42s, checksum=53

Signal drops to almost nothing, AGC kicks in and is able to mostly recover some of the bits, but there are about six bits that are totally lost and would need to be reconstructed:

 

[Garry]

On 11/6/2019 at 8:46 PM, Preppie said:

I just found issue 3,4,7 in my collection

Does your copy of issue 4 have a good copy of The Keys of Time part 2? If it does, can you share it?

 

Also, can you share tape 7. As far as I know, this has not been archived yet.

[Garry]

On 11/7/2019 at 10:27 AM, spookt said:

I managed to get hold of the cassettes for issues 1,2,3,3,4,5,6 and 9.

Same question as above re The Keys of Time part 2 on issue 4. Also, does your issue 5 have The Keys of Time - Final Conflict? And can you share issue 6, please?

[Preppie]

1 hour ago, Garry said:

Does your copy of issue 4 have a good copy of The Keys of Time part 2? If it does, can you share it?

 

Also, can you share tape 7. As far as I know, this has not been archived yet.

I'm passing on tape 7 to get archived, although I have no idea if it loads or not.  I need a new PSU for my 800xl, so i'll check issue 4 when I get one.

[Gunstar]

Is tape 11 the final issue of this magazine? I'd never heard* of or seen* this one, or come across it on Atarimania, before this thread, *but since I'm American that's probably why. And I thought I already had all (that have been archived) paper(or PDF)/disk/tape magazines in my personal archives already!

Edited November 25, 2019 by Gunstar

[+CharlieChaplin]

11 hours ago, Garry said:

Does your copy of issue 4 have a good copy of The Keys of Time part 2? If it does, can you share it?

 

Also, can you share tape 7. As far as I know, this has not been archived yet.

 

Well,

 

I do not own a tape of AtCo 7, but I downloaded an ATR of it somewhere (maybe here at AA forum). Unsure if this ATR is complete or if it is missing some files. Will upload the ATR image tomorrow...