5200 games on the ATARI 800 XL/XE ?

[Lord-Chaos]

There are some old ATARI 5200 games which are not available for the ATARI 8 Bit and some good homebrewn 5200 games .

 

Is there a chance that we will see these games on the ATARI 8 Bit computers , too ?

 

ATARI 5200 and ATARI 800 XL are very similar and it should be possible to create these games on carts and even sell them just like the 5200 version.

 

I live in Germany and since the 5200 was not released in Europe (and imported consoles are a big problem , different TV system , we use 220V instead of 110 and shipping costs) , so this would be the only way to play these games on a "real" thing (instead of an emulator).

 

The ATARI 800 XL was quite popular in Europe , since it was very cheap and there are still many active users in the ABBUC , the biggest ATARI 8 Bit club in Germany.

 

Thimo

[Curt Vendel]

The main issue is that the memory registers and addresses of the two systems are slightly different, recently Clay re-wrote 8bit Crystal Castles into an almost perfect (I think he mentioned he still had some work on a few things) port of it to the 5200.... Bill Hogue's (am I spelling his name right?) Miner 2049 is a real oddity, it works on BOTH the 8bits & 5200, it was written that way. There is the famous and elusive "Glenn the 5200 man" who used to convert 800 to 5200 games. For more info on converting 800 to 5200 games, read this article:

 

 

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/5200...nv_to_5200.html

[holygrailvideogames.com]

Glenn the 5200 man did a great job on a number of games. About 15 years ago I played Super Pacman and other games thanks to Glenn the 5200 man. I had hundreds of disk full of stuff. I wish I still had all of those disk.

[+Cafeman]

Well, I do plan on converting my own 5200 homebrew Koffi to Atari 8bit. It's a side-project but will get done eventually, probably over the next month or two.

[Mr.Bacardi]

Yeah, he made some fantastic conversions ! Anyone know how Glenn did it ? I guess he must have had access to the source codes....

I tried to convert one of the 5200 only games for the XL, but gave up pretty soon :-( I think the main problem is that some of the 5200 shadow vectors are localised in the zero-page and the equivalent XL vector is at $200 (for example). So you can't hack the binary file easily as you have to change a 1 byte long value into a 2 byte long value.

One of my ideas was to install a patched 5200 OS to the XL (the 5200 OS source is available at Jindroush's page). What do you think about it ?

 

Greetings,

- Mr.Bacardi -

 

Glenn the 5200 man did a great job on a number of games.  About 15 years ago I played Super Pacman and other games thanks to Glenn the 5200 man.  I had hundreds of disk full of stuff.  I wish I still had all of those disk.

[Nukey Shay]

I think it would be a novel idea...but it would still be a challenge to port games to the 8-bit system because of the 5200's control scheme.

 

Going the other way might be easier depending on how well the porgram is layed out. If it's a main body containing JRS's for everything (like Dig Dug does)...it would be easier to find and correct incompatable code, I think.

 

For trying to convert zero page shadow registers into the 8-bit's words, couldn't you use zero page addresses that have been manually copied from the shadows? (provided that you have enough zero page space, of course).

[Mr.Bacardi]

For trying to convert zero page shadow registers into the 8-bit's words, couldn't you use zero page addresses that have been manually copied from the shadows? (provided that you have enough zero page space, of course).

 

I'm afraid, i didn't catch that ...

 

I just had a look on the 5200 OS listing again, it's quite well documented; and I think it shouldn't be a big problem to adapt it to the XL... For me it sounds the easiest way for porting 5200 games to the XL - especially if you are planing to convert more than 1 game The changes to the original 5200 binary file should be tiny...

[jindroush]

There are some old ATARI 5200 games which are not available for the ATARI 8 Bit and some good homebrewn 5200 games .

 

All 'official' releases but two were

1) released officially by Atari on 8bits

2) converted by Glenn.

 

The two remaining are

1) Meteorites

2) RS Baseball

 

I modified RS Baseball to work on my 8bit atari, but I gave up when I got the overlay (too complicated controls, would be unplayable on keyboard).

[Bratwurst]

Well, I do plan on converting my own 5200 homebrew Koffi to Atari 8bit. It's a side-project but will get done eventually, probably over the next month or two.

 

Any chance it would run on a 600XL??

[+Cafeman]

I don't know -- how much RAM does a 600XL have? The 5200 cart is 32K ROM, which i believe needs 48K to run on an 8bit via disk drive.

[Bratwurst]

Bleah, apparently only 16K RAM stock. I could get a memory expansion I guess, but that's a bit more trouble than it's probably worth. (No insult to your program, I'd just get a 5200 instead.) I don't have the floppy drive either, just a tape drive. Would it have been even possible to get that program onto the tape medium?

[Bill Lange]

I don't know -- how much RAM does a 600XL have? The 5200 cart is 32K ROM, which i believe needs 48K to run on an 8bit via disk drive.

 

Are you going to do a disk based version for the 8-bit machines or a cartridge based one?

 

WRL

[Mr.Bacardi]

There are some old ATARI 5200 games which are not available for the ATARI 8 Bit and some good homebrewn 5200 games .

 

All 'official' releases but two were

1) released officially by Atari on 8bits

2) converted by Glenn.

 

The two remaining are

1) Meteorites

2) RS Baseball

 

I modified RS Baseball to work on my 8bit atari, but I gave up when I got the overlay (too complicated controls, would be unplayable on keyboard).

 

So this means you have a XL version of 5200-Battlezone ? What about Xari ... and one "looney toon" game ? (I think it was roadrunner)

I'd love to have disk versions for my XL !

[+Cafeman]

Bill -- I'm just going to get Koffi running on Atari800win 3.0. I'm unsure of the differences of making a disk/cart version. But I'm not making carts, and I figured if I made a disk version then people could actually play it on their 8bit computers. If I made a cart version (is there a difference?!) nobody could play it on the real machine. erm, right?!

[Bill Lange]

There are slight differences to making a cart on the 400/800 than on the 5200. These are just memory location difference, of course you have to make the regular 5200 to 400/800 memory/register changes too which should be included in the equates header file (if you are using one).

 

I've been able to make carts (images) for both the 400/800 and the 5200 with DASM, but I haven't been able to make a disk loadable binary with it. I can however easily make disk loadable binaries with the Atari Assembler Editor and other 8-bit assemblers .... not fun ... but not to bad on an emulator running at 500% speed. :-)

 

I'm not sure how many people still have working disk drives with their 8-bit machines so making Koffi as an 8-bit cart image might be a better decision. Let someone else (AtariAge) or whomever produce the actual cartridges ... that has got to be a lot of hard work on your part! SUNMARK has 8-bit cart cases and boards.

 

If you make it as a disk based game, people can run it on an emulator or only if they have a working disk drive. If you make it as a cart image, it can be run from an emulator or anyone can run it on a REAL machine if they want to invest in the cart.

 

Just my .02

WRL

[+Cafeman]

I thought that modern users of Atari 8bit computers had some way to create their own Atari-readable game disks.

 

Well, is there really any reason to make an 8bit computer ROM image if everybody is going to just run it on an Emu anyway?

 

I'm not making 8bit carts, thats for sure. We'll see I guess. The work implied by this conversation has dampened my desire to do it!

[Bill Lange]

It is easy enough to create a Atari readable disk from an .ATR file, which is a disk image, but my point is that not many people still have working disk drives or had them in the first place.

 

There are less changes that have to be made to convert a 5200 cartridge image to a 400/800 cartridge image then to a 400/800 disk runnable program.

 

 

Well, is there really any reason to make an 8bit computer ROM image if everybody is going to just run it on an Emu anyway?

 

This is a really good point. I don't have an answer to that one! :-)

[jindroush]

So this means you have a XL version of 5200-Battlezone ? What about Xari ... and one "looney toon" game ? (I think it was roadrunner)

 

Re-read my post. I wrote 'officially released'. None of the soft you mention was released and in most cases, is unplayable *CENSORED*

[Bratwurst]

If a cartridge was made- would I still require the RAM upgrade or is the 'RAM' on the cartridge circuit board itself?

[+Cafeman]

If a cart were to be made, it would need to be a 32K cart and it would no doubt run on your system. The 5200 only has 16K RAM itself, since it used ROM carts.

[8BIT 1337]

@Cafeman: I'm *thrilled* at the opportunity to try your game on my 8-bit. I don't have a 5200 and I've always regretted missing out on the homebrew market for that system. I actually hope *more* homebrewers consider it in the future as well.

 

I always wondered who Glenn was. He seemed to have it in for Atari (I recall reading "Another cart buried due to the mismanagement of Atari" as one of his conversions booted). Maybe he worked there and had left under poor circumstances?

 

For the record: I still use my disk drives (I have 3 working 1050s currently). Almost exclusively actually (I have very few carts (hard to come by for me) but *tonnes* of games on disk). I can't be the *only* one still using them.

[Bill Lange]

I have an 800XL and two semi-working 1050 drives. I can read from both drives, but I have trouble writing to or formatting either. I just picked up another 800XL and a 600XL from e(P)ay so I can figure out where the problem is. I also have a huge box of 5 1/4 diskettes full of software. There most be 200 floppies.

 

WRL

[Lord-Chaos]

If a cart were to be made, it would need to be a 32K cart and it would no doubt run on your system.  The 5200 only has 16K RAM itself, since it used ROM carts.

 

I still have lots of Crossbow carts.They could be used for producing an ATARI 800 cart game.

 

Crossbow is a 128K game and XE carts can be used for 128K games.But also for smaller ones (or bigger ones).

 

The only problem is, that they cannot be switched off , that means , a certain area of RAM is ROM when the cart is inserted.

 

Thimo

[Bill Lange]

www.sunmark.com has new 8-bit cartridge cases as well as the hardware that goes inside.

 

WRL

[Jetboot Jack]

The Sunmark cart's are only for 16K data size (2X 2764 @ 8k)...

 

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