Mathy Posted July 24, 2021 Share Posted July 24, 2021 Hello Adam I screwed up when I duplicated one of the Pedrokko disks (from the Bellcom collection). IIRC I copied side A to side B, so both sides are the same. Sincerely Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ballyalley Posted July 25, 2021 Share Posted July 25, 2021 21 hours ago, Mathy said: I screwed up when I duplicated one of the Pedrokko disks (from the Bellcom collection). IIRC I copied side A to side B, so both sides are the same. Mathy, I think that these Pedrokko programs are sound demos, right? I bet that these are available in other places besides the BELLCOM PF library. Oh, and when archiving hundreds of disks, then mistakes will be made. Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted July 25, 2021 Share Posted July 25, 2021 Hello Adam 2 hours ago, ballyalley said: Mathy, I think that these Pedrokko programs are sound demos, right? I bet that these are available in other places besides the BELLCOM PF library. Oh, and when archiving hundreds of disks, then mistakes will be made. They contain digitized sound, created with the Parrot (2?) interface. They probably are available as you mention. And mistakes will and have been made. But we have to be careful. When collections are merged, we have to take care not to throw out files that seem to be the same, based on filename and size. For example: Let's say collection A has the disk (side) in it that contains my copying error and collection B had the correct disk (side) in it, but both have the same name and size. In that case chances are, that the correct disk (side) is erased and the one with the error is archived. That's what we don't want to happen. Sincerely Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillC Posted July 26, 2021 Share Posted July 26, 2021 (edited) 2 hours ago, Mathy said: They contain digitized sound, created with the Parrot (2?) interface. They probably are available as you mention. There are 10 Pedrokko Parrot disks available as part of the Page6 PD library. https://page6.org/pd_lib/demos/pd_pedrokko.htm Edited July 26, 2021 by BillC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ballyalley Posted July 26, 2021 Share Posted July 26, 2021 5 hours ago, Mathy said: When collections are merged, we have to take care not to throw out files that seem to be the same, based on filename and size. For example: Let's say collection A has the disk (side) in it that contains my copying error and collection B had the correct disk (side) in it, but both have the same name and size. In that case chances are, that the correct disk (side) is erased and the one with the error is archived. That's what we don't want to happen. Understood; merging directories can be tricky if we don't take precautions. I check to make sure that files are the same by comparing them for matches using a hash MD5 method. I think that's the best you can do without doing an actual byte-for-byte comparison. It was using this method that I realized that two disks that have been dumped have the same program, but two difference revisions of it. I use Windows 7 and an decade-old program for my file comparisons. If anyone knows of a great free file comparison utility for Windows, then please point it out to me. Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ballyalley Posted July 26, 2021 Share Posted July 26, 2021 3 hours ago, BillC said: There are 10 Pedrokko Parrot disks available as part of the Page6 PD library. https://page6.org/pd_lib/demos/pd_pedrokko.htm Thanks for the link to the speech and sound clip demonstrations. The descriptions given by the Page 6 PD library surely beat those from the BELLCOM catalog. Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillC Posted July 27, 2021 Share Posted July 27, 2021 On 7/25/2021 at 9:28 PM, ballyalley said: Thanks for the link to the speech and sound clip demonstrations. The descriptions given by the Page 6 PD library surely beat those from the BELLCOM catalog. Adam I believe the majority of the Page6 PD library is available at that site, I browsed and it seemed only a few weren't available to download. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cx2k Posted October 6, 2021 Share Posted October 6, 2021 On 7/24/2021 at 3:32 PM, ballyalley said: Over the last day, I have merged several BELLCOM disk archive sources (I think that each archive was all pointed out in this thread) and I now have 971 "different" disks. I say "different," as some disks are identical duplicates. These duplicates were already pointed out, not by name, by Mathy (who, I think, originally archived some of these disks) earlier in this thread on March 28, 2014: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/125131-bellcom-pd-catalog-disk/?do=findComment&comment=2958278 He said that when some of the original disks were dumped that some might have been dumped accidentally with the same name as a previously dumped disk. Interestingly, I also noticed that depending on when a disk was purchased from BELLCOM, a buyer might get a different version of the same program. I did notice that this is mentioned in the paper catalogs. As an example, I noticed that "Disk 60 - D-UTILITIES" has two versions of Les Wagarf's program called DISKUTIL. Both Rev. 07-07-92 and Rev. 11-07-93 are archived. I'm not sure if alternate versions of all of the disks have bene dumped. Today, I checked my BELLCOM disk collection for duplicates using Foldermatch v3.7.0, an old Windows program, by Salty Brine Software. The duplicate criteria that I used were "Sizes Match" and "Contents Match" (byte-for-byte). I was surprised by the results, as there are five identical disks. My personal disk images have been renamed by me. I added a descriptor to each file called "BELLCOM_Atari-Bit_Public_Domain_and_Shareware_Disk_" otherwise the names have not been changed. Here is the list of five identical disk images in my collection (and probably other BELLCOM collections across the Internet): 1) Identical disks of "D028" - Side B holds the docs of CAD-XE on both sides of the disk. I couldn't find this disk D28 listed in a paper catalog, so I'm not sure if CAD-XE is supposed to be on side A of the disk. BELLCOM_Atari-Bit_Public_Domain_and_Shareware_Disk_D028_A.ATR BELLCOM_Atari-Bit_Public_Domain_and_Shareware_Disk_D028_B.ATR 2) Identical Disk "448 - Hobby Tronic # 2" and "549 Hobby Tronic # 4" - Both disks are "Hobby Tronic Demo '89" I think that means that they're both disk 448. BELLCOM_Atari-Bit_Public_Domain_and_Shareware_Disk_448.ATR BELLCOM_Atari-Bit_Public_Domain_and_Shareware_Disk_549.ATR 3) Identical Action! disks. Disk "441 - Action! Utilities #6" and disk "442 - Action! Terminals." Both of these disks are disk #441. BELLCOM_Atari-Bit_Public_Domain_and_Shareware_Disk_441.ATR BELLCOM_Atari-Bit_Public_Domain_and_Shareware_Disk_442.ATR 4) Identical Disks - Disks "361 - Mastermatch 2.00" and "527 - Mastermatch" are both Mastermatch 2.00. This might be an error on the part of BELLCOM, or possibly it's a disk that was updated to a new version over the years, which caused to disks to be the same. BELLCOM_Atari-Bit_Public_Domain_and_Shareware_Disk_361.ATR BELLCOM_Atari-Bit_Public_Domain_and_Shareware_Disk_527.ATR 5) Identical Disks - The backs of disks D70 - Battle Trivia" and disk "D90 - DeTerm" are the same. They both contain the data files for "Battle Trivia." BELLCOM_Atari-Bit_Public_Domain_and_Shareware_Disk_D070_B.ATR BELLCOM_Atari-Bit_Public_Domain_and_Shareware_Disk_D090_B.ATR I'll try to upload my collection of 971 BELLCOM disks to archive.org so that others can look through this BELLCOM disk collection that I've sorted to the best of my ability. The collection is about 400MB, as it also includes pdfs of five paper BELLCOM catalogs. Perhaps someone can find another BELLCOM archive disk collection that will has the correct disks for those that were accidentally duplicated. Adam Hi, Has your archive been uploaded to archive.org? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ballyalley Posted October 6, 2021 Share Posted October 6, 2021 33 minutes ago, cx2k said: Has your archive been uploaded to archive.org? I haven't upload the files there. I got bogged down, quite badly, by trying to figure out which files are duplicates. I haven't thought about this in a few months. I would hate to do a raw data dump of the BELLCOM files... but maybe that would be best before I forget this completely. Maybe later in the week...? (No promises, but remind me in a couple of weeks if this slips my mind.) Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farb Posted October 14, 2021 Share Posted October 14, 2021 FYI, the "dir" command in a8diskutil will calculate CRC for each file on an Atari DOS 2 disk. This could be helpful in identifying identical files between disks. You can also use the "compare" command to compare if two ATR files are identical, and if not, how they differ. http://www.a8preservation.com/downloads/a8diskutil-darwin-amd64-0.8.6.zip (Mac) http://www.a8preservation.com/downloads/a8diskutil-win-amd64-0.8.6.zip (Windows 64-bit) http://www.a8preservation.com/downloads/a8diskutil-win-i386-0.8.6.zip (Windows 32-bit) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astra2001 Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 (edited) On 5/2/2008 at 6:00 PM, Hornpipe2 said: Backing up all my old 8-bit software from back in the day and I run across this BELLCOM Public Domain Software Catalog disk. Looks like it's the BELLCOM catalog on-disk - you can load up the different text files and browse through them to see the software available for order. Everything sector-copied OK through SIO2PC. I can use my scanner to get an image of the disk if anyone's interested. BELLCOM.zip 58.97 kB · 244 downloads Hey those BELLCOM catalog disks are an awesome find. I ran it with Altirra's Printer Output emulation at Warp Speed (held down F1) and made a new PC text file BELLCOM_GAMES.txt for all GAMES 1 to 3 menu items covering disks 001 to 040 : https://1drv.ms/t/s!AlUZeMD10-TYmAXHDzkONo84O1Yg I will eventually do the other categories, but this is cool to now have text descriptions for all the BELLCOM disks available in a standard text file. Edited November 21, 2021 by Astra2001 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astra2001 Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 (edited) 11 hours ago, Astra2001 said: Hey those BELLCOM catalog disks are an awesome find. I ran it with Altirra's Printer Output emulation at Warp Speed (held down F1) and made a new PC text file BELLCOM_GAMES.txt for all GAMES 1 to 3 menu items covering disks 001 to 040 : https://1drv.ms/t/s!AlUZeMD10-TYmAXHDzkONo84O1Yg I will eventually do the other categories, but this is cool to now have text descriptions for all the BELLCOM disks available in a standard text file. I got the BELLCOM disks from Pooldisk Too, however thanks to the catalog I've discovered that 008.atr is completely incorrect. What BELLCOM 008.atr should be : DISK 008 - ANTIC SPECIAL ANTIC.DOC (14 SEC) INTRODUCTION TO DISK 008. *DEATHSTR.BAS (115 SEC) 1 PLYR ARCADE /JS FLY THE 3-D TRENCH AND DESTROY THE DEATH STAR. *ZAHRCON.BAS (52 SEC) 1 PLYR WORD GAME /KB HANGMAN WITH A SCI-FI THEME. *SPDTRIAL.BAS (49 SEC) 1-2 PLYR ARCADE /JS RACE YOUR CAR AROUND THE TIMED TRACK WHILE AVOIDING OIL SPILLS. *STELLAR.BAS (54 SEC) 1 PLYR ARCADE /JS MEET THE INVADERS HEAD ON IN THIS SHOOT-EM-UP. *3DMAZE.BAS (57 SEC) 1 PLYR ARCADE STRATEGY /JS WALK THROUGH THE ENDLESS CORRIDORS SEARCHING FOR THE EXIT. YOU CAN EVEN CHOOSE THE MAZE SIZE. *MICROIDS.BAS (41 SEC) *MICROIDS.DOC (14 SEC) 1 PLYR ARCADE /JS MANEUVER A SERIES II MICROID TO CONSUME A DEADLY MUTANT STRAIN. *LONEAGLE.BAS (53 SEC) 1 PLYR ARCADE /JS HELP CHIEF LONE EAGLE SAVE HIS HORSES FROM HUNGRY BEARS. *MAZEMANC.BAS (48 SEC) 1 PLYR ARCADE STRATEGY /JS CLEAR MAZE ROOMS OF PRIZES IN THIS WELL DESIGNED GAME. *ESCHERSK.BAS (56 SEC) 1 PLYR GRAPHICS /JS THIS NOVEL PROGRAM ALLOWS YOU TO DO COLORFUL 3-D ISO-SKETCH DRAWINGS. *HOOKEY.BAS (47 SEC) 1 PLYR ARCADE /JS MODIFIED INTO A GOOD Q*BERT-TYPE. COLORFUL AND REALLY FUN TO PLAY. What's actually on Pooldisk Too BELLCOM 008.atr : CARTDUMP.BAS (and similar other cartridge dumping tools) So does anyone have BELLCOM 008.atr matching the BELLCOM catalog? I also noticed 008 is curiously missing from this otherwise complete online BELLCOM catalog on Page 4 : https://archive.org/details/bellcompublicdomainsharewarecatalog/page/n3/mode/2up Great, now I can't sleep at night! Edited November 21, 2021 by Astra2001 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ballyalley Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 5 hours ago, Astra2001 said: I got the BELLCOM disks from Pooldisk Too, however thanks to the catalog I've discovered that 008.atr is completely incorrect. [...] So does anyone have BELLCOM 008.atr matching the BELLCOM catalog? From my experience with the BELLCOM catalog, it's possible that some, or many, of the BELLCOM disks have different versions. According to reading the BELLCOM disks when I was first active in this thread, the company would silently change disks to include upgraded versions of a program on a disk. I'm not sure if a disk was ever completely changed, but I suppose that it's possible. Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astra2001 Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 1 hour ago, ballyalley said: From my experience with the BELLCOM catalog, it's possible that some, or many, of the BELLCOM disks have different versions. According to reading the BELLCOM disks when I was first active in this thread, the company would silently change disks to include upgraded versions of a program on a disk. I'm not sure if a disk was ever completely changed, but I suppose that it's possible. Adam I think the catalogs went through revising in different years the BELLCOM Catalog on disks is 1986, the other PDF online is 1989. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astra2001 Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 (edited) On 11/21/2021 at 1:28 PM, ballyalley said: From my experience with the BELLCOM catalog, it's possible that some, or many, of the BELLCOM disks have different versions. According to reading the BELLCOM disks when I was first active in this thread, the company would silently change disks to include upgraded versions of a program on a disk. I'm not sure if a disk was ever completely changed, but I suppose that it's possible. Adam Hey Adam, can you tell me how to use the [D]elete option from the BELLCOM disks boot menu? When I press D nothing happens just makes the keyboard sound to let me know the key was pressed. All other options work by pressing the corresponding key. Update : I got it pressing Ctrl and D, but only after quiting Clipdairy an app for Windows which was intercepting Ctrl D. Edited November 22, 2021 by Astra2001 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ballyalley Posted November 23, 2021 Share Posted November 23, 2021 4 hours ago, Astra2001 said: Hey Adam, can you tell me how to use the [D]elete option from the BELLCOM disks boot menu? Sorry, it has been awhile since I've used these disks. If it's not obvious, then I can't remember how to do it right now either. There are several Atari 8-bit podcasts. Wouldn't it be neat to listen to one that covers oddball subjects such as the BELLCOM disks? Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duncan33 Posted January 22, 2022 Share Posted January 22, 2022 On 10/6/2021 at 5:32 AM, ballyalley said: I haven't upload the files there. I got bogged down, quite badly, by trying to figure out which files are duplicates. I haven't thought about this in a few months. I would hate to do a raw data dump of the BELLCOM files... but maybe that would be best before I forget this completely. Maybe later in the week...? (No promises, but remind me in a couple of weeks if this slips my mind.) Adam Has your archive been uploaded to archive.org? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duncan33 Posted January 23, 2022 Share Posted January 23, 2022 I need "Bellcom" floppy disks no. D001_A-B, D002_A-B Does anyone have and can share? I am writing via google translate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted January 23, 2022 Share Posted January 23, 2022 3 hours ago, Duncan33 said: I need "Bellcom" floppy disks no. D001_A-B, D002_A-B Does anyone have and can share? I am writing via google translate Can you tell us what is on the disks. I could not find them in the Bellcom catalog. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ballyalley Posted January 23, 2022 Share Posted January 23, 2022 21 hours ago, Duncan33 said: Has your archive been uploaded to archive.org? No, that "project" fell on the back-burner and then I forgot about it. My RSI has kept me pretty far away from any computer projects over the last few months. I suppose uploading my entire Bellcom directory (or directories; I can't remember) to Archive.org might work best. It will be messy, but it will include everything I've managed to accumulate from multiple places over the years. One hang-up that has kept me from uploading it all this way is that I feel the complete catalog is not quite "complete" in the common sense of the word, for there are many "duplicate" disks that aren't truly duplicates at all. I don't have any unique Bellcom items; they're all available in multiple places, but public domain software has always fascinated me and I've managed to keep around my slowly growing pile of Bellcom software. Is there a community of Atari fans who would be willing to figure-out and sort through the large Bellcom collection? Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted January 23, 2022 Share Posted January 23, 2022 23 minutes ago, ballyalley said: Is there a community of Atari fans who would be willing to figure-out and sort through the large Bellcom collection? Not yet. It's on my thousand-numbered-Atari-things-to-do-list. I do wish more people would try to contribute to the Atari 8-bit universe more. I know some people can't (understood) but I see a lot of babbling here and other places. I wish they would use some of that energy towards something a little more constructive to the Atari 8-bit users/fans, etc. Things like archiving, programming, tutorials, hardware development, historical research. etc. Luckily we do have some amazing Atari contributers doing all sorts of great things. Specifically speaking about the Bellcom disks, it seems like it is/was the largest collection of public domain/shareware software collection so it makes sense to try to collect, organize and put in one place on the Net before any other PD collection. Luckily we have some of the catalogs making a great place to start. Any Atari fans who are librarians out there? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Robot Posted January 24, 2022 Share Posted January 24, 2022 I have an interest in Atari PD and magazine disk collections but I don't collect anything so I don't archive anything. I'm happy to collate and index though. I think the ratio of doers vs takers in the Atari community is actually pretty good, we have a thriving hardware scene and lots of new homebrew being created. There are a few (not many) archivists and documenters as well, we even have podcasters and video creatives here. We could always use more but it's not a desperate situation. Compare the Atari 8bit scene with the C64 or Amiga scenes, things are a lot worse there, I think probably because of the relative popularity of the systems compared to this one. They seem to have more software people, less hardware, very little archival. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted January 24, 2022 Share Posted January 24, 2022 https://commodore.bombjack.org/commodore/index.htm is pretty impressive. Many books, manuals, some software and magazines are available there. I can't speak for the software archive of Commodore computers. That maybe much worse. Other than the Apple IIgs archives, the Apple II archive state seems to be pretty poor. There is a lot on Archive.org but it is kind of disorganized. Plus due to the structure of Archive.org, it doesn't function well with some types of archive collections. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Robot Posted January 24, 2022 Share Posted January 24, 2022 10 hours ago, Allan said: There is a lot on Archive.org but it is kind of disorganized. Plus due to the structure of Archive.org, it doesn't function well with some types of archive collections. I struggle to use Archive as a place to archive, there is just too much that can only be done by Jason. It's more a place to just dump everything when the Archiving is complete. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duncan33 Posted January 24, 2022 Share Posted January 24, 2022 On 1/23/2022 at 4:48 PM, Allan said: Can you tell us what is on the disks. I could not find them in the Bellcom catalog. I don't know what's on these disks. I have the D-003-D-126 disks. D-001 - D-002 is missing. I have the disks from the Internet Archive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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