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Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative


Farb

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One more note partially because its something amusing that I'd not seen before.

 

.atx > .scp > .raw conversion of Stealth failed miserably in a completely unreadable disk. So did .scp > .raw conversion

 

Using my original Kryo .raw resulted in a readable but not exactly working image, with this :D

 

yNbi2g.jpg

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This kind of conversion process is affected by several factors. First the whole thing depends on the write splice location. If it is not aligned to the index location then it will probably fail. The 3 titles you converted usually do are aligned to the index hole. arawconv doesn't properly convert the protection on Archon II.

 

 

The problem only happens when the same disk is written either by a 40 track drive, or by an 80 tracks drive but not in double step mode. If the disk is virgin as it comes from factory, or it is degaussed (bulk erased), and you write only on the 80 track drives and only using double step, then it should read without problems on the 40 tracks drive.

 

I agree almost entirely except I find 80 track double stepping drives are always a little weaker and ever so slightly different in alignment compared to the 40 track single step drives, It is a level of added complexity you wish to avoid if possible. Spot on using bulk erased virgin disks... I have found only bulk erasing at just the distance needed to get them erased works best for me, overdoing it seems to have weird affects, maybe I should wait longer after erasure to use them when I run into issues... just a thought.

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remo, try ape at SIO 1x with, vapi.dll, and without vapi dll... and make sure APE's settings are all normal, no percom or XF compatibility etc

 

Ah that's interesting, Stealth must be ultra picky. I've never had to change those APE settings that I can recall.

 

After changing the divisor to $28 and changing the SIO bitrate to 'match Pokey rate' it does load...

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Ah that's interesting, Stealth must be ultra picky. I've never had to change those APE settings that I can recall.

 

I don't remember exactly about Stealth. But yes, depending on the version some Broderbund titles are extremely picky about the timing. IIRC some versions don't load with a Happy, not even in Unhappy mode. Only way is to load some of the third party firmware emulators for the Happy. Note that many Broderbund titles (again, not sure about Stealth) have multiple versions.

 

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I thought that zappo screen was from the copy protection detecting something like if the drive responded to a happy command, or a disk that's not write protected - it would issue a format command. (Ie an original disk would be write protected, and therefore safe from a format)

Edited by Nezgar
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I thought that zappo screen was from the copy protection detecting something like if the drive responded to a happy command, or a disk that's not write protected - it would issue a format command. (Ie an original disk would be write protected, and therefore safe from a format)

 

Not exactly a Happy, but a "The Chip" command: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/257578-happy-810-resources/page-3?do=findComment&comment=3616248

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I saw those replies and I have a difficult time understanding that reasoning. It's not very common device because it is fairly new. And the only way it will become more common is for people to start using it. The firmware is free, open source and you can build the hardware for around $20 if you already have an SIO cable lying around. If a barrier to adoption is lack of skill to build/program one, then we should focus efforts to address that.

 

 

 

 

Sorry, didn't see here earlier that Kris built new version of SDrive-NG called SDrive-MAX with that capabilities.

It could be very nice device.

But how many users use it and know about it?

 

 

I've highlighted the relevant parts but these are exactly my points. We (the wider Atari community) know about SIO2PC devices, and SIO2SD devices, UNO Carts, SIDE2+U1MB combinations, and any other number of disk-image loading devices for our Atari machines. I consider myself fairly well-versed in the community and I've never seen mention of any "Sdrive-MAX" device, though I saw some threads perhaps last year from users of the first SDrives. It looked interesting but certainly offered nothing compelling to me. I also never really grasped how to assign disk images to virtual drives, swap disks during use, and so forth, but to be honest it wasn't a device that attracted much interest from me at the time.

 

However, if this new SDrive-MAX will be able to handle ATX files created by this archivists working in this thread, it sounds as if it will would be worth checking out, so thank you for letting me know such a thing exists!

 

 

Regarding RespeQT/AspeQT. I'm not very familiar with the software, and I can't tell for sure how easy or difficult would be to implement support for ATX images. Copy protected images require strict and accurate timing. It won't be able to run reliably on every single platform and hardware solution. But may be this is not the right place to push for support. I suspect that the RespeQt team doesn't follow this thread. May be better to post at their own dedicated threads. We'll gladly provide any help if it is needed.

 

Thanks for that. :) The current baseline version of RespeQt (the R4 release) is able to handle rock-solid SIO transfers at POKEY divisor 0 speeds even running on a ridiculously low-powered RPi Zero. I expect it could handle ATX images just fine if someone who understood the existing RespeQt disk access code was able to communicate directly with you folks in this thread. I'll post a link to this thread in the RespeQt subforum and see if it generates interest from any of them.

 

Lastly, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE no one think I am criticizing the efforts in this thread! It's important work, vital even, to accurately preserve so much of the retro-community's digital heritage before it's too late to do so and I applaud those who have led the way and done all the heavy lifting, collecting disks, imaging them, distributing the files, etc. So thank you all! I just want to help make sure that people who might be able to help make them more easily and widely accessible on real hardware know about all the options to do so - so thank you, Farb, for letting me know about the SDrive-MAX, and thank you ijor for your offer of assistance to the RespeQt team.

 

And with all of that, I'm done taking up so much time in the thread. Again, thank you all!

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The current baseline version of RespeQt (the R4 release) is able to handle rock-solid SIO transfers at POKEY divisor 0 speeds even running on a ridiculously low-powered RPi Zero. I expect it could handle ATX images just fine ...

 

There is no much relation between one and the other. Supporting divisor 0 requires speed and bandwidth. That is not a problem on modern hardware. OTOH, the accuracy that you need for copy protection, requires tight control, precise information and low latency. And that was actually better on older hardware, exactly the other way around. That doesn't mean RespeQt won't be able to work with ATX images, of course it would work. Just that is not that easy and that not every title might work on every platform.

Edited by ijor
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@lemiel: The force is with you, don't worry. Everything you ever wanted to know about it:

https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=SDrive-MAX

 

@Farb: "It's part of my job to make sure that doesn't happen and I've been doing everything I can to prevent that :-)"

Let me be your wingman, I can offer full spectrum dominance, including the 6th branch under SSP (Secret Space Program), so the "little rocket men/users" shouldn't be a problem at all. ;-)

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Is there a list of games that run from floppy disks here? I have about 20 atr images, each image includes a directory display and game loader for a collection of 8 bit games on each floppy image, but all of them could be duplicates of what is already here. The only possible unique feature is that some of the images use doubler interleave and transfer rate for quick loading.

Edited by rcgldr
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Is there a list of games that run from floppy disks here? I have about 20 atr images, each image includes a directory display and game loader for a collection of 8 bit games on each floppy image, but all of them could be duplicates of what is already here. The only possible unique feature is that some of the images use doubler interleave and transfer rate for quick loading.

Unfortunately, this project is only focused on original disks. However, you should check Atarimania to see if there are any programs in your ATR images that aren't available on that site.

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The APE divisor comments only bring to the front that ATX (in general) images are meant to work on real stock hardware, using any 'in-between' emulated device will always be prone to problems as the focus will be on transfer speed and as seen the titles like Stealth and as noted EA stuff is very time / load sensitive so either people start creating a bat / special cfg (if possible, I do use ape) or people will run in to the same issues as people owning Happy drives etc..

 

Personally I'd think the notion of in-between Xfer software really should be tweaked to match a standard drive speed so there's maximum compatibility rather than try and force faster loads for ATX files..

 

Again, just a thought..

 

Paul..

 

That is unless someone can catch all the possible problematic routines, bad op code use etc to fool the ATX into faster speed but I bet there will be title after title that catch them out in the end..It could be in saving or at the end of the game...Who will check?

Edited by Mclaneinc
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@ rcgldr: please see my post:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/234684-atari-8-bit-software-preservation-initiative/page-47?do=findComment&comment=4056002

have upload the complete archive as a txt file, so you can see the complete content. Enjoy.

 

@tschak909: :-)

It is a little bit like Goethe's Faust: he is working and working and in the end, he doesn't know more...

 

What about your presentation at Atari East? Do you mind to publish this in the Wiki here:

https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=PLATO%20%28computer%20system%29

?

Would like to show at the biggest meeting in Europe, at the Fujiama in July.

It maybe a step for the last final frontier of Atari:

https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Atari%20Learning%20System%20Software

and of course to may get more users aboard to finish Atari Plato stuff...

 

Many thanks in advance.

Edited by luckybuck
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@rcgldr: you have ATR images with special loader which enables Synchromesh, that's interesting. In ATR is not possible to store interleaving data. But in ATX I think yes. But how to copy it without SCP or Kryo I do not know.

 

@luckybuck: AtarWiki ok, but references to Abbuc forum in German have most of knowledge.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I was looking at the ATX file Age of Adventure from Electronic Arts.
Track number 2 has the following sectors (relative track numbers)
06 07 08 09 0a 0b 0c 0d 0e 0f 10 11 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0a 0b 0c 0d 0e 0f 10 11 01 02 03 04 05
This track contains 34 sectors.

I just discovered something about this track by looking at the sector content (but maybe this is a well known subject for others)
There are 49 sectors indeed, not 34. And the list is
06 07 06 08 09 08 0a 0b 0a 0c 0d 0c 0e 0f 0e 10 11 10 01 03 04 03 05 06 05 07 08 07 09 0a 09 0b 0c 0b 0d 0e 0d 0f 10 0f 11 01 00 02 03 02 04 05 04

For example, let's examine the first sector (sector number 6)

 

post-8819-0-22506900-1532183999.png
The sector is a very short sector and we can see the next sector header (surrounded in red) and even another one (also surrounded in red)
The first sector is $F8 -> 07 and the second one is $F9 -> 06. Both header CRC are OK.
I can not be sure about the fact that there are 48 sectors with only the ATX because I can not check that both headers have a C7 clock mark.

My question is how this file was generated ? Is it with a8rawconv from a SCP file ?
In this case, there may be an issue when extracting sectors from the raw dump.
I did not look at other ATX files from Electronic Arts but the issue may appear on other titles.

I think I got this file from Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative (that's why I post here) but can not be 100% sure so I add it to the post as a ZIP file
Age of Adventure (1986)(Electronic Arts)(US)(Side A).zip

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My question is how this file was generated ? Is it with a8rawconv from a SCP file ?

...

I think I got this file from Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative (that's why I post here) but can not be 100% sure so I add it to the post as a ZIP file

 

 

Take a look at the page for the Age of Adventure Side A dump on the website:

 

http://a8preservation.com/#/software/dump/80

 

The CRC of the file you provided does not match that page. So this is either an older dump we did and have since corrected or not ours. Our dump was generated using Kryoflux and a8rawconv 0.92.

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