Creating .ATR images from disks

[Tezz]

no, all the London trains are to and from m/cr Picadilly so you didnt go wrong. I never went to Silica or Software express, I heard that Silica was pretty much the #1 in the UK, I really should have made the trip. I used to go to Ladbrook Computing in Preston, they supported the A8 up to the death and we used to go to another somewhere in Leeds, I forget what that was called (somewhere in Armley). We did always go to the CES show in Earles Court each year. BTW. Ocean were far from Anti Atari, in fact the guy we first learnt from was a big A8 fan working in Ocean. It was only the low uk Atari market which prevented them from being involved. Sadly only the poor Green Beret was released under their sister company Imagine. Ocean had a complete 800xl and 1050 with happy setup in the office

[carmel_andrews]

Simon...must have been a bit of a trek for you coming from Brum (Birmingham) to sidcup... or were'nt you based there

 

That's where i bought Mac65 (Cart version) from, at a pricey £70 I still have it and the manual (no box)...unfortunately the cart i think has gone wonky (alway's boots into DDT)

[carmel_andrews]

I recall there is another Atr making util... but it's too much like make Atr (called Atr util)

 

Is/was catweasl an ST thing or a PC thing

 

Ocean were 'pretty good' when it came to the ST...but that was about it.... unfortunately i wasn't much into the St/e although i owned both

 

Tezz...did you do the 6502 thing way back way...or was it only just recently...shame that RED RAT didn't sign you up if you were doing it way back when (or even Ocean...but you would have been confined to probably working on the nes or c64)

[simonh]

Simon...must have been a bit of a trek for you ...

 

Actually, I was living with my parents in Bedfordshire at the time. Still quite a trek though. Yeah, I remember things being really pricey - can't remember all the individual values now, but I remember spending over a Grand!

 

I started off with Atari's Assembler/Editor cartridge. But after I established contact with English Software, they gave me a copy of Synapse's Synassembler, which I found much more usable. That's what I finally used to write D & DSB.

[carmel_andrews]

Got Atari's Assember jobbie as well (incl manual) no box

 

 

Diamonds...Wasnt that similar to Henri (by Adam Billyard of Electraglide fame) and Mr Do (Datasoft)

 

Synassembler...Sounds similar to mac65 or AMAC (never saw it though)

[Tezz]

The catweasel unfortunately was never an option for PC/Amiga users to access A8 disks, it never had the drivers created for it even though it was supposed to support it. Obtaining a PC 360k drive and configuring catweasel etc would prob be more of a headache than the easier option of the sio2pc to the real equipment that we all favor now. If you've got accress to an Amiga with a 5 1/4" drive, I successfully read and wrote Atari disks/images with a freeware utility previously with that. With regard to Catweasel, it was/is a great device, I wrote a few time to Jens Shoenfeld many years ago who created to Catweasel but never really got anywhere with the A8 support, Jens was mostely a c64 guy.

 

my 6502 skills were not at the level of creating a full game back then, I never got round to getting Mac65, I was pretty broke in those days. There were very few openings at Ocean even in those days they were swamped with applicants. We went for a brief interview/show around and stood little chance of breaking into it at our level. We were demo coding on the ST by then. The guy working for Ocean we knew was working on C64 titles mainly

[Tezz]

I started off with Atari's Assembler/Editor cartridge...

yes I used Atari Assembler editor too, it was so slow and limited. i guess mainly why my coding was held back. I really should have saved and bought Mac65. Was the Synapse assembler commercial or just for in house use? i dont recall seeing it

[simonh]

I started off with Atari's Assembler/Editor cartridge...

yes I used Atari Assembler editor too, it was so slow and limited. i guess mainly why my coding was held back. I really should have saved and bought Mac65. Was the Synapse assembler commercial or just for in house use? i dont recall seeing it

I think it was commercial. See http://www.powow.com/oldatarian/syndx.htm

[Tezz]

I started off with Atari's Assembler/Editor cartridge...

yes I used Atari Assembler editor too, it was so slow and limited. i guess mainly why my coding was held back. I really should have saved and bought Mac65. Was the Synapse assembler commercial or just for in house use? i dont recall seeing it

I think it was commercial. See http://www.powow.com/oldatarian/syndx.htm

Thanks for the link, that's intereting that it was actually created by Steve Hales of DimensionX and Fort Apocalypse fame.

 

Getting back into 6502 in the past few years, I use Tebe's PC based MADS macro assember today. I wouldn't have dreamed of the facilities available today back then. Coding is a joy again.

[carmel_andrews]

Tezz...coding on an ST...I guess you then progressed to the 'miggy' (Sacrilege)

 

How's about doing an improved version of 'Domain of the Undead' or Little Devil

 

Are you planning on doing any more programming projects

 

 

Getting back to Simonh....Are you planning on getting A8 hardwaree anytime soon (like an xl or xe)...Are you programming via the a800win emu...if so...hows about an updated version of diamonds/dan strkes back (like a sequel etc)

[simonh]

Getting back to Simonh....Are you planning on getting A8 hardwaree anytime soon (like an xl or xe)...Are you programming via the a800win emu...if so...hows about an updated version of diamonds/dan strkes back (like a sequel etc)

 

25 years ago, I was a teenager, single, with time to spare on my hands. These days I'm a working parent with an active social life. Don't hold your breath for a sequel

[ijor]

The catweasel unfortunately was never an option for PC/Amiga users to access A8 disks, it never had the drivers created for it even though it was supposed to support it. Obtaining a PC 360k drive and configuring catweasel etc would prob be more of a headache than the easier option of the sio2pc to the real equipment that we all favor now. If you've got accress to an Amiga with a 5 1/4" drive, I successfully read and wrote Atari disks/images with a freeware utility previously with that. With regard to Catweasel, it was/is a great device, I wrote a few time to Jens Shoenfeld many years ago who created to Catweasel but never really got anywhere with the A8 support, Jens was mostely a c64 guy.

 

I wrote a few programs for accessing A8 disks with the Catweasel. If you have the MK4 model, contact me and I'll happily provide it. I had a version for the MK1 as well, but I haven't touched it for years and was never ready for anything except in-house usage.

 

There are also a couple of generic FM/MFM programs for the Catweasel made by somebody else (don't recall his name right now). I never tried them but I understand they can access A8 disks. There are version for all the PC Catweasel models.

 

You don't need a 360K drive. A 5.25 HD is good enough for reading the front side. You need a 360K only for writing (it is somewhat possible with an HD drive as well, but it is quite "problematic", i elaborated about this some time ago). And also usually for accessing the flippy side because most HD drives cannot.

 

You don't actually need a Catweasel for accessing A8 disks. With some limitations and caveats it is possible with the standard PC floppy controller. This was discussed here several times.

 

You can probably read A8 disks on the Amiga, but you can't reliably write them. This is again, because of the 288/300 RPM difference (YMMV).

[Tezz]

I wrote a few programs for accessing A8 disks with the Catweasel. If you have the MK4 model, contact me and I'll happily provide it. I had a version for the MK1 as well, but I haven't touched it for years and was never ready for anything except in-house usage.

 

There are also a couple of generic FM/MFM programs for the Catweasel made by somebody else (don't recall his name right now). I never tried them but I understand they can access A8 disks. There are version for all the PC Catweasel models.

 

You don't need a 360K drive. A 5.25 HD is good enough for reading the front side. You need a 360K only for writing (it is somewhat possible with an HD drive as well, but it is quite "problematic", i elaborated about this some time ago). And also usually for accessing the flippy side because most HD drives cannot.

 

You don't actually need a Catweasel for accessing A8 disks. With some limitations and caveats it is possible with the standard PC floppy controller. This was discussed here several times.

 

You can probably read A8 disks on the Amiga, but you can't reliably write them. This is again, because of the 288/300 RPM difference (YMMV).

That's great, thanks for the info. I've not heard of anyone else using it successfully. We used to sell a few pc based Amithlon/Windows boxes with the Catweasel mkIV included for the Amiga side but I've never used the mkIV PCI version to attemt to access A8 disks. I think the Catweasel in my A1200 tower is the clock port Mk3 version. I've not used my tower for several years now so I'll have to check it out. We fitted out the Amiga tower with a 5 1/4" drive for such purposes and it works fine in the other formats, Amiga, PC, C64 etc. The freeware utitlity that I used to use on the A500 with it's external 5 1/4" drive didn't work on the Catweasel. I've got the SIO2PC hooked up to my A8 now but it'd be useful to get the Catweasel to read the disks also.

[Tezz]

Tezz...coding on an ST...I guess you then progressed to the 'miggy' (Sacrilege)

yep, we certainly did, we bought the ST in 1987 and the Amiga 500 in 1988 following on to the great A1200 when that was released later. We continued on coding on the ST till around 1992 and held on with the Amiga as my main machine until with all the mods possible to do, it eventually got left behind technically and we were forced into the PC scene around 1997. We held back as long as possible from the PC world. The two machines that I hold in great regard are the A8 range and the A1200, a tribute the late great Jay Minor and his team. Edited June 20, 2008 by Tezz

[simonh]

...I still have the 5.25" single-density disks with my assembler source code for the games I wrote. I would love to hear from anyone who is able and willing to create .ATR images from these disks...

 

I'm in US and can do it.

 

My grateful thanks to bf2k+ (the first of two very helpful forum members) who earlier today emailed me a zip archive containing ATR images of the disks I sent him.

 

This afternoon I was able to load, read, assemble and run "Dan Strikes Back" from the source code, on the Atari800Win emulator! What a rush!!

 

The other disk images contained half finished projects that never saw the light of day

 

bf2k+ ... once again, a public "Thanks!"

 

~Simon

[+bf2k+]

...

 

bf2k+ ... once again, a public "Thanks!"

 

~Simon

 

You're Welcome!!

[simonh]

Here's the results:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=127969

[simonh]

 

On 6/19/2008 at 6:30 PM, simonh said:

 

On 6/19/2008 at 4:21 PM, carmel_andrews said:

... hows about an updated version of diamonds/dan strkes back (like a sequel etc)

25 years ago, I was a teenager, single, with time to spare on my hands. These days I'm a working parent with an active social life. Don't hold your breath for a sequel

It took a few years to get here, but, the last installment of the trilogy has finally been created!

Edited September 20, 2021 by simonh