+CharlieChaplin Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 @RussG: Well, don`t let your hair get grey while thinking about DOS 2.75 ! Oh, I see, your hair is already grey... so it looks like I am too late... DOS 2.75 is nothing more than a bugfixed version of DOS 2.5 by an Atarian from eastern-Germany (then GDR). He found approx. 13 bugs, with 4 or 5 being serious bugs, which he corrected. While bugfixing DOS 2.5 he not only changed the version number, but also added new versions of Diskfix.COM and Ramdisk.COM. The latter was upgraded, so it not only supported 64k XRAM ( D8: like the 130XE), but also 128k XRAM ( D8: formatted in ED) and 256k XRAM ( D7: and D8: both formatted in ED) and it detected the size automatically (but only Ramdisks with blocks 8ACE could use the full 256k XRAM with this driver)... CDCOPY54K.COM is a small C/D copier program that was written for DOS 2.5 (it works with very few other DOS versions) and lets you copy programs from C to D, C to C, D to D, D to C. The program runs on any 64k Atari and still leaves 54k for copying. It does not convert the program, so if you copy a boot-tape to disk, it cannot be loaded from DOS or most gamedos-versions (since a boot-tape is not a COM/XEX/EXE file). The program was usefull to copy tapes to disk and then hack/crack/patch them there (the author M.Thiel was a hacker/cracker) or to copy single and multi-stage tapes to disk and then put a C-Simulator on the disk, so one could load them from this disk. Nowadays this program is almost of no use, since no-one (except me) uses the A8 tape-recorder anymore. The C/D copier program *afaik* does not use nor support turbo-tape or any higher baud rate than the standard 600 Baud... -Andreas Koch. P.S.: I changed the C/D copier program menu text from german into english... UTILS01.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 Nope. Emulators don't read cassette data files. They expect a sound file of the tape, I guess. At least, the file I made of the data from a tape wasn't recognized. A couple other .cas files I had didn't work either. Well, there is a difference in .CAS files... a) generated on the A8 with a C/D copy-program or a similar tool: These files are tape-boot-programs (not COM/XEX/EXE files) and can be used with C-Simulators (or C-Emulators). If the .CAS file is single-stage it can also be loaded from some gamedos-versions, like e.g. MyPicoDOS by HiasSoft or Micro-DOS II by S.Dorndorf. This .CAS file however will not load directly in an emulator (unless it was saved onto a disk with some boot-loader/gamedos/c-simulator on it)... b) generated on the PC with WAV2CAS or similar programs: These files are also tape-boot-programs, but they contain a header with additional data, like Baudrate, program length, etc. They can be used with an emulator, but if one copies these .CAS files directly to an A8 disk or tape they would not work, because of this header (which no A8 program accepts). One has to copy/convert them back into a WAV and then save them to A8 tape to get them working on the real A8 again... -Andreas Koch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ijor Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 Here in Chile there was a famous turbo with correction copier done by Iljor... maybe there was a typo, is that you Ijor ? Yep, that's me, I designed STAC. I just changed my pseudonym slightly since then. An optional part of the Turbo 2600 system was a hardware interface, which allowed to connect a standard tape recorder to the Atari. Using this interface it was possible to reach 2600 baud. I believe that this 12-byte header ($00 $00 $ff $ff $ff $ff $fe $fc $fc $f8 $f0 $c7) was designed specifically for this speed. Interesting. Sounds like there is more than just bitrate detection on that sequence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
russg Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 @RussG: Well, don`t let your hair get grey while thinking about DOS 2.75 ! Oh, I see, your hair is already grey... so it looks like I am too late... DOS 2.75 is nothing more than a bugfixed version of DOS 2.5 by an Atarian from eastern-Germany (then GDR). He found approx. 13 bugs, with 4 or 5 being serious bugs, which he corrected. While bugfixing DOS 2.5 he not only changed the version number, but also added new versions of Diskfix.COM and Ramdisk.COM. The latter was upgraded, so it not only supported 64k XRAM ( D8: like the 130XE), but also 128k XRAM ( D8: formatted in ED) and 256k XRAM ( D7: and D8: both formatted in ED) and it detected the size automatically (but only Ramdisks with blocks 8ACE could use the full 256k XRAM with this driver)... CDCOPY54K.COM is a small C/D copier program that was written for DOS 2.5 (it works with very few other DOS versions) and lets you copy programs from C to D, C to C, D to D, D to C. The program runs on any 64k Atari and still leaves 54k for copying. It does not convert the program, so if you copy a boot-tape to disk, it cannot be loaded from DOS or most gamedos-versions (since a boot-tape is not a COM/XEX/EXE file). The program was usefull to copy tapes to disk and then hack/crack/patch them there (the author M.Thiel was a hacker/cracker) or to copy single and multi-stage tapes to disk and then put a C-Simulator on the disk, so one could load them from this disk. Nowadays this program is almost of no use, since no-one (except me) uses the A8 tape-recorder anymore. The C/D copier program *afaik* does not use nor support turbo-tape or any higher baud rate than the standard 600 Baud... -Andreas Koch. P.S.: I changed the C/D copier program menu text from german into english... Yes, my hair is grey. My wife cuts it once a month. There is only one of them. Thanks for the utils. I'll have some fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 Yes, my hair is grey. My wife cuts it once a month. There is only one of them. One hair or just one wife? :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devwebcl Posted December 13, 2011 Author Share Posted December 13, 2011 Here in Chile there was a famous turbo with correction copier done by Iljor... maybe there was a typo, is that you Ijor ? Yep, that's me, I designed STAC. I just changed my pseudonym slightly since then. Great, so that was your copier; just like I mentioned we based our copier in the tape-speed from Computer Kontakt magazine and then later in your STAC. Do you still have that copier ? Did you do your copier before that publication (or any other European turbo tape program) ? (just for a time reference). Here also a Tennis (pong) loader was famous too, and the VCR loader. Those are creations done by you as well ? Cheers, Devwebcl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ijor Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 Great, so that was your copier; just like I mentioned we based our copier in the tape-speed from Computer Kontakt magazine and then later in your STAC.Do you still have that copier ? I think so. I should have most (if not all) STAC related material. I made digital backups years ago. Note that it is not exactly a "copier". Of course that the technique could have been used for copying, but I never implemented an actual copier software. STAC was delivered as a complete tape recording (and loading) solution, including ready made tape adaptations. The STAC loader included a custom depacker that would decompress on the fly while loading. Compressing long titles (even just with a basic RLE compression) was as significant as the turbo, an in some cases even much more. Did you do your copier before that publication (or any other European turbo tape program) ? (just for a time reference). I don't remember exact dates. But I think I developed STAC at 1987. The error retry logic was my own idea. The turbo (faster bitrates) concept have existed long ago before my work. Even omnimon has a raw turbo implementation. At the time I wasn't aware about that european program. I was aware about turbo programs, that's all. I didn't base the turbo in STAC in any other software, I implemented everything from scratch. Here also a Tennis (pong) loader was famous too, and the VCR loader. I don't know (remember) about a VCR loader. The pong loader was one of the first STAC clones (I understand it had no turbo, just error retry). IIRC, it was implemented by Pedro, that according to your links it was the same guy that later developed the hardware turbo. We were in touch at the time, they used to come from Chile rather frequently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
russg Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 Yes, my hair is grey. My wife cuts it once a month. There is only one of them. One hair or just one wife? :-) Thanks for the laugh. One of each. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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