Atari 8-bit software

[ruthven]

Building my software collection for my 130XE... Right now I'm looking for various disk utilities and applications--can anybody recommend any good sites? I've found some great game archives on the web but not much in the way of apps. Thanks!

[+Philsan]

http://gury.atari8.info/s_sel.htm

http://www.atarionline.pl/

[BillC]

Building my software collection for my 130XE... Right now I'm looking for various disk utilities and applications--can anybody recommend any good sites? I've found some great game archives on the web but not much in the way of apps. Thanks!

The Atarimania website lists 300+ items under Atari 8-bit utilities, unfortunately a lot of it is missing the actual software.

The Pigwa FTP site actually has a lot of software, but it isn't that easy to locate what you want.

 

Bill

[olavese@online.no]

Building my software collection for my 130XE... Right now I'm looking for various disk utilities and applications--can anybody recommend any good sites? I've found some great game archives on the web but not much in the way of apps. Thanks!

 

Have a few on my site

http://pokeysoft.no/games/atari/a8list.htm

[+MrFish]

You need to download the Holmes collection. Large number of applications and utilities. I believe there is still a torrent out there for it still. I think pigwa has it in pieces, but not the archives for each collection/disc.

[russg]

Building my software collection for my 130XE... Right now I'm looking for various disk utilities and applications--can anybody recommend any good sites? I've found some great game archives on the web but not much in the way of apps. Thanks!

Another approach to making a collection would be to ask for a particular utility to do what you want.

The pigwa site has many utilities, but is hard to navigate if you don't know what you want.

I'd suggest Disk Wizard II, you should have at least three DOSes (2.5,MyDOS 4.53 and SpartaDOS 3.2g.

Just some suggestions, I'm sure others would have some favorites.

[ruthven]

Thanks everyone for your replies. I had been to a few of those sites--they're good sites, yet I figured I'd still pose the question just in case there were any obvious app sites I had missed... and I'm glad I asked because http://pokeysoft.no/...tari/a8list.htm is probably the best of all and I was unaware of this one--thanks!

 

You need to download the Holmes collection. Large number of applications and utilities. I believe there is still a torrent out there for it still. I think pigwa has it in pieces, but not the archives for each collection/disc.

 

Wow, I'm glad you said "torrent"--this reminded me--I TOTALLY FORGOT that I downloaded a MASSIVE Atari 8-bit collection torrent that must have a ton of apps!! I downloaded it over a year ago knowing that I'd soon be getting a 130XE... still, it's good to know where to get apps on the web.

 

Another approach to making a collection would be to ask for a particular utility to do what you want.

The pigwa site has many utilities, but is hard to navigate if you don't know what you want.

I'd suggest Disk Wizard II, you should have at least three DOSes (2.5,MyDOS 4.53 and SpartaDOS 3.2g.

 

Just looking for general kinds of stuff I guess--mostly various disk scanning utils--I work with so many *old* 5 1/4" disks that it's nice to have a program that can check a disk for bad sectors (when I'm having trouble getting something I transferred to work, or making sure a disk is "good" before I use it to store, say a BASIC program I've written). I'm assuming Disk Wizard II will work out for this--it's one of the few I've downloaded so far but haven't tried yet. Thanks for your suggestions--I figured it might be a good idea to get the major DOSes (of which I've heard much mention of MyDOS and SpartaDOS)--need to look more into what possible use I might have for these.

[ruthven]

Ok, one more question.. breaking off topic from apps: I've been in the process of transferring tons of games to floppies.. most work on my 130XE, however several do not. I've tried writing disks from alternate images of these games--in some cases I've found alternate images that will work on the hardware, however most of the time it doesn't matter what image I work from. I'm guessing I'm running into a PAL issue here (I use NTSC)--I went through these same woes transferring C64 and Amiga games. In some cases these malfunctioning games are somewhat "playable" but the display is all garbled--unquestionably a PAL issue. But in most cases the games just locks up at a black screen (or resets the computer) a few seconds after the file is loaded. I'm guessing that's a PAL issue too--on the C64 I learned that PAL images can cause all sorts of strange behavior (not always resulting in a garbled screen). I've tried "previewing" images on an emulator (AtariWin800) in NTSC mode to see which games will be compatible before I waste time writing them to disk. In some cases I can catch an incompatible PAL image early and save myself the effort. But most of the time the games will work regardless in the emulator's NTSC mode, yet some of these still don't work on my 130XE. I've downloaded so many games at this point that lately when I run into this issue, I just forget about the game and move on. But there are a few games that I'm dying to play on my actual machine that I just can't ("Guard" comes to mind).

 

So I guess my question is: does anybody know of any NTSC game image archives? Or better yet, is there some sort of PAL to NTSC conversion program I can run before a game--I did find some sort of NTSC to PAL converter over at http://pokeysoft.no/...tari/a8list.htm so that makes me wonder...

[Fox-1 / mnx]

NTSC vs. PAL is not a great issue. Agreed, there are titles that have such incompatibility issues but the majority isn't. With games it may happen the colors are not right but most will run. A few of the more recent titles may cause problems but that's about it.

 

I think your problem is disabling/enabling the internal BASIC. Booting without holding the OPTION key enables BASIC and this may cause problems with programs which don't expect it to be enabled.

 

 

edit: some old programs, originally written for the Atari 400/800, may require the old operating system to run. This can be overcome by installing that old o.s. either by an EPROM (hardware modification) of my loading a software o.s. from disk (or disk image).

Edited September 15, 2010 by Fox-1 / mnx

[ruthven]

My particular 130XE has some sort of custom OS built in (into ROM I guess) called Omniview XE. I had no idea what this was at the time, but now looking through the supplied documents I can see that it makes the computer behave very differently than "normal". For instance when booted without a disk, the computer doesn't go to BASIC but rather some Omniview XE terminal. I couldn't figure out how to do anything in here--eventually I figured out how to exit to BASIC--I can't even remember how to do that now, been so long since I booted it without a disk. Supposedly this system automatically improves compatibility with older 400/800 programs by having an "ultra compatible 400/800 style OS" which will copy itself into RAM "freeing up the $C000 page". Now most software I've attempted running just boots up no problem, so I guess I've just assumed that this OS was just doing it's thing automatically going to the most compatible mode. But now looking deeper through the documents I see that this is not accomplished automatically--you need to hold down the select key while pressing reset. Apparently this frees up 4k of RAM, so maybe this is what I need to do... Also this OS reverses the enabling/disabling of BASIC (i.e. BASIC is enabled only when holding down the option key). So by default, I never have BASIC enabled when booting any of these games. Maybe some of them require it and I'd have to hold down the option key at boot to enable it... but I doubt that's the case with more recent games.

 

Actually, I notice that most of the more recent games (if not all) are European anyway--I don't even know what country in many cases, the titles I couldn't begin to pronounce. So it really doesn't surprise me if these are PAL only. But the weird thing is that I can play some of them just fine and others won't work at all. So it could be like you say where the PAL coding doesn't hinder compatibility for the most part, but then you get that handfull where it is an issue. Or then again, maybe it has completely to do with freeing up that 4K of RAM. Or maybe I should try an old OS disk or translator disk for some of those older games. I guess there's a few things for me to try...

 

I just hope I can get some of those games working. Those newer European ones are definitely the most impressive looking! "Guard" is the most graphically impressive 8-bit home computer (or console) game I've ever seen.

[Fox-1 / mnx]

The software was probably written to run with a standard O.S. Using a non-standard one may cause, well, non-standard behavior.

 

If a modified system has a custom O.S. it's usually added, not replaced, so one can switch back to the standard O.S. when required.

[russg]

I'm trying to see if I can find the 'guard' you're talking about.

Is this it?

[miker]

Not to forget about this:

http://www.mushca.co...index.php?idx=1

 

Here are ATRs ready to play (currently 370+).

Edited September 17, 2010 by miker

[ruthven]

I'm trying to see if I can find the 'guard' you're talking about.

Is this it?

 

Yeah that's the one. I was impressed playing it in the emulator. 3 layer multi-scrolling detailed graphics that move surprisingly fast--looks like a Genesis or SNES game with less color depth.

 

Unfortunately the images over at mushca.com I believe are all DS DD--I can only work with 130K images at max for transferring as I have a standard 1050 drive. Doesn't matter though--I can just extract the individual games I need from those images--I've already done so with a few of the compilations from that site. In fact, mushca.com's image of Guard is one of the few I haven't tried yet--I'd temporarily given up after trying 6 or 7 other images of it from around the web. I haven't gotten a chance to try it yet with the extra 4K memory, which I'm starting to think is the most probable cause of my problems. I'll let you guys know how it turns out.

[russg]

I'm trying to see if I can find the 'guard' you're talking about.

Is this it?

 

>Yeah that's the one. I was impressed playing it in the emulator. 3 layer multi-scrolling detailed graphics that >move surprisingly fast--looks like a Genesis or SNES game with less color depth.

 

snip

 

OK. I got an .atr of it. the atr is only 512 sectors 65K, but it loads and runs on my stock 800XL.

You have to hold OPTION for the entire load, it loads partially and then pauses, then continues to load.

However, it won't run on my OMNIMON OS, so your OMNIVIEW OS is probably also a problem. Do you have

a switch to change OS? I'm being a little lazy, I didn't try writing it to a floppy and loading it

from a real floppy, just used my APE cable.

Uhm... It is nice graphically, but play is sorta not so hot, you just hold the fire button and go up

and down, left and right with the joystick. Just my opinion.

Bottom line: Your OS won't do it, and maybe there's a problem with your ATR burn.

Here's the ATR I used.

Oh, I'm NTSC, I didn't try PAL, but since it is Polish, it should run on PAL.

Guard.zip

Edited September 17, 2010 by russg

[russg]

I shoulda mentioned where I got the guard.atr.

It is from Holme's archive, could be found at the pigwa site under Holmes ATRs Games A to L.

[ruthven]

Thanks. That one from Holme's Archive was one of the few I hadn't tried yet. And now I can scratch that one off the list cause it didn't work. I'm convinced it must be this weird OS of mine. I don't know if there's a way to disable it completely--I can't find any mention of this in the documentation. Maybe the solution is to boot from an old OS or translator disk first, then warm reboot with the game disk. I did try "freeing up the $C000 page" by holding down select while pressing reset. I almost thought this was going to work as the game seemed to get further into loading--the display started flashing garbled characters randomly (as often happens loading games)--previously I hadn't gotten Guard to display anything but a black screen (or a loader screen on some .ATRs/XEXs) while loading. But then it ultimately hung on a black screen again. I feel like it definitely got further along by freeing up the memory--maybe this method will work with one of those other versions of Guard I previously tried. Oh well, maybe I'll get back to it but for now I'm moving on; plenty of other games out there.

[Fox-1 / mnx]

I'm convinced it must be this weird OS of mine. I don't know if there's a way to disable it completely--I can't find any mention of this in the documentation.

 

Disabling is not possible (well, not useful actually) since you need some kind of code which can at least boot the disk. The most basic way to install a custom o.s. is adding an EPROM on top of the original o.s. and connect a switch to select which of the 2 is active (Atari o.s. or Custom o.s.).

 

Another way is to remove the original o.s. chip and install an EPROM twice the size which holds both the o.s.'.

 

Either way, there should be something like a switch or jumper somewhere to select the o.s. If there isn't, and the original o.s. is completely removed, well, that's just not that smart I think.

 

A soft-O.S. may or may not work but surely worth a try.

[ruthven]

Either way, there should be something like a switch or jumper somewhere to select the o.s.

 

That's what I meant by "disabling" the custom OS--more like re-enabling the original OS. So from the sounds of things I'm going to have to open up the Atari to find the switch/jumper..? Hmmm...think I'll save this for if I get really desperate to play some of these games. Good to know though, thanks.

[russg]

I tried translator B in OMIMON OS, no go. It looks like it is loading, goes a little, pauses with a screen full

of something, then continues loading the bigger part of it, then ends with a black screen when it should bring

up the game. All the while loading holding OPTION.

It seems very OS specific, XL/XE I guess.

I thought OMNIVIEW was an 80 column OS, basically OMNIMON with 80 columns. OMNIMON, you hit SELECT and RESET to

enter the ML monitor.