Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative

[baktra]

4 hours ago, www.atarimania.com said:

@tane Yes, I'd love to add this to our database but either as a standard 90K .atr file or an executable, not the weird format you used.

 

Thanks!

I created a proper 90KB bootable image. Not sure what is the background of the game or where it comes from, though. 

The disk can be correctly duplicated with DOS 2 and its "duplicate disk" function.

Turbo Tennis (english) 90KB.atr

[www.atarimania.com]

@baktra Thank you very much… and apologies for hijacking the thread!

 

Great work on the Epyx title. 

[Fred_M]

39 minutes ago, baktra said:

I created a proper 90KB bootable image. Not sure what is the background of the game or where it comes from, though. 

The disk can be correctly duplicated with DOS 2 and its "duplicate disk" function.

What I found on the internet (translated) is that this game can be played during loading a cassette game.

[Mclaneinc]

12 hours ago, Porkchops & Applesauce said:

@Farb Woo Hoo, my first contribution to the project: Seawolf II + Gunfight [cassette]

 

This is a straight, unedited, and uncropped audio copy from my tape deck to PC.  The WAV files work as-is in Altirra, but I figure I'll leave the cleanup to you experts.

 

Seawolf II - Gun Fight (1983)(US)(EPYX)[cassette].zip 46.62 MB · 10 downloads

Atarians thank you for the work!

[Mclaneinc]

1 hour ago, Fred_M said:

What I found on the internet (translated) is that this game can be played during loading a cassette game.

There can't be many of them, things like invada-load were C64 territory only...

 

Interesting info there Fred, can't you think of any other 'play as you load' games on the Atari?

 

Edit: Just saw it was copyright this year so I think this may be the first of its kind?

Edited October 22, 2019 by Mclaneinc

[www.atarimania.com]

No, it's a translation of Turbo Tenis used in Chile at the end of the eighties.

Edited October 22, 2019 by www.atarimania.com

[+DjayBee]

24 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said:

No, it's a translation of Turbo Tenis used in Chile at the end of the eighties.

@manterola knows more about this. He showed it at Fujiama this year. 

[Fred_M]

2 hours ago, Mclaneinc said:

There can't be many of them, things like invada-load were C64 territory only...

 

Interesting info there Fred, can't you think of any other 'play as you load' games on the Atari?

 

Edit: Just saw it was copyright this year so I think this may be the first of its kind?

 

Here you are Paul, the site I found: http://atariteca.blogspot.com/2017/11/atari-completan-codigo-del-mitico.html

 

 

Watch the video until the last second, you will see LA Swat starting  

Edited October 22, 2019 by Fred_M

[Porkchops & Applesauce]

16 hours ago, Fred_M said:

I have uploaded your files to a8preservation for analysis. They will be added soon! ?

Awesome, thank you!

 

15 hours ago, baktra said:

Nicely preserved. Both games are stored just as a standard cassette boot files without any spectacular cassette loaders or specialties.

So preservation as .cas file should be sufficient.

That's great to hear.  Thank you!

 

Cheers!

[Mclaneinc]

13 hours ago, Fred_M said:

 

Here you are Paul, the site I found: http://atariteca.blogspot.com/2017/11/atari-completan-codigo-del-mitico.html

 

 

Watch the video until the last second, you will see LA Swat starting  

 

Thank you so much Fred, excellent research sir

 

I still wonder if anyone else has done this before, ie an in loader game...

 

Not a bad game of tennis / pong as well...Not as good as my old Grandstand machine though

Edited October 23, 2019 by Mclaneinc

[baktra]

19 hours ago, www.atarimania.com said:

@baktra Thank you very much… and apologies for hijacking the thread!

 

Great work on the Epyx title. 

No problem. I used the A8CAS tool to decode tape image from the WAVE file and then Turgen System's tape image extractor to remove few extraneous blocks from the beginning and end of the tape image.

A8CAS is a true miracle. 

 

 

[Farb]

On 10/22/2019 at 7:34 AM, Porkchops & Applesauce said:

@Farb Woo Hoo, my first contribution to the project: Seawolf II + Gunfight [cassette]

Thanks for the contribution, @Porkchops & Applesauce! I've added it to the website!

[BigBen]

The discs are from the luckybuck (Roland).

SynTrend_Graph_Disk_DX5066__synapse.zip SynTrend_Sata_Disk_DX5070__synapse.zip

[manterola]

On 10/22/2019 at 3:19 PM, DjayBee said:

@manterola knows more about this. He showed it at Fujiama this year. 

That is interesting... I never saw that game as a stand alone game before. 

It is correct that this pong game (can be used for 1 player, or fronton, or 2 players more like classic pong) was used as a way to entertain you while waiting for another game to load. This was very innovative at the time in Chile and it actually made the waiting less tedious. The cassette loader also included error recovery so you don't need to start over if an error occurred, you just needed to rewing the tape few seconds. Cassettes with this loading system and games were sold in retails stores in Chile probably end of 80s or beginning of the 90s, which were quite popular. 

As far as I know, a group of chilean Atarians met with the creator and reproduced/recover the sources and compiled a binary, so now you can create your own tapes with games using the system. 

What is great now is that I'll be able to play this point game without the need of a tape recorder. 

Great job! 

 

 

[Farb]

8 hours ago, BigBen said:

The discs are from the luckybuck (Roland).

Thanks @BigBen and @luckybuck! This allowed me to verify our current dump of the SynTrend Graph disk ?

[BigBen]

Here is the dump of the Atari logo cartridge of the German edition. The cartridge also came from Roland.

ATARI_LOGO.ZIP

Edited October 28, 2019 by BigBen

[luckybuck]

Thank you so much BigBen, we really appreciate your help. Have some updates for the boxes, please see below.

 

Have made the MD5 - 8dd0cd3b2c901cb0b7f0fd5e5720b237

 

which is binary identical (thanks to BBEdit) to the one from Marsupilami (https://www.atarinside.com/blog/index.php/atarinside-items/atari-logo/)

 

Thank you so much Marsupilami! Great work! As always. ?

 

SynTrend_Graph_Disk_DX_5066__Synapse_(Basic) seems to be the only disk, which needs a Basic cart, but I haven't investigated the software, yet.

 

Manual will follow in the near future.

 

Atari Logo German.pdf Atari Logo Quick Reference Guide_.pdf Atari LOGO RXG 8032.car

Edited October 28, 2019 by luckybuck

[Porkchops & Applesauce]

A tricky situation... I happen to have in my possession an EXTREMELY RARE and perhaps only "PRODUCTION MASTER" copy of The Battle of Shiloh by SSI on disk.  For those wondering, this is the disk from which the commercially produced copies were created from.  You can't get more authentic than that!  I'd love to contribute it for preservation but for obvious reasons I'm reluctant to ship it.  Is there anyone near the San Francisco Bay Area with the means and equipment to make a proper image of this disk?

 

 By the way... I also happen to have the PRODUCTION MASTER for Shattered Alliance by SSI.  Sadly, this will no longer boot in any of my drives I tried.  It may be lost forever, but I'm happy to see this has already been preserved.

 

Edited November 2, 2019 by Porkchops & Applesauce
spacing

[Mclaneinc]

Nice titles there.....The non working one, would you be willing to send that to one of the preservation people to look at?

[Porkchops & Applesauce]

@Mclaneinc  After posting I wanted to see what was needed to make preserved disk copies.  I didn't know.  However, after looking into it I decided to purchase a SuperCard Pro.  Now I just need to get the mechanical drive.  I'll see if I can pull anything off the non working disk.  So stay tuned.  Cheers, friend!

[Mclaneinc]

Great news, for those with originals its almost like a must have device, sadly almost every original I had is now gone during moves etc

 

Its pretty much all digital here now....

 

Nice to see someone with the masters....Any story about how you have such disks?

 

Paul..

[Porkchops & Applesauce]

@Mclaneinc  I suppose the statute of limitations has run out that I can now say.  I used to work at a duplication company and oversaw the master copies.  By the time I came on board these disks were already well past their production run, so I figured no one would miss them.   Plus, they weren't the only copies.  You had the 'Gold' copy that came from the client.  From that you made a backup 'Silver' copy, and then the PRODUCTION MASTER (seen here) as the source copy for mass duplication and distribution.

 

So yes, these disks are about as rare as you can get, and likely the only ones in existence.  After preservation I do plan to sell them to anyone interested in owning this unique part of Atari history.

 

Edited November 2, 2019 by Porkchops & Applesauce
removed word

[ijor]

52 minutes ago, Porkchops & Applesauce said:

@Mclaneinc  I suppose the statute of limitations has run out that I can now say.  I used to work at a duplication company and oversaw the master copies.  By the time I came on board these disks were already well past their production run, so I figured no one would miss them.   Plus, they weren't the only copies.  You had the 'Gold' copy that came from the client.  From that you made a backup 'Silver' copy, and then the PRODUCTION MASTER (seen here) as the source copy for mass duplication and distribution.

 

Very interesting. Do you mind sharing some historical and anecdotal information? At which duplication company you worked?  At the US or Europe? Do you remember which publishers used to duplicate disks at that company? Anything else interesting?

 

Quote

So yes, these disks are about as rare as you can get, and likely the only ones in existence.  After preservation I do plan to sell them to anyone interested in owning this unique part of Atari history.

 

Masters are rare indeed, but they appear occasionally. Of course, they are probably unique for those specific titles.

[Mclaneinc]

Great background story which many people like myself love to hear, its nice when a person has an interesting insider story on our favourite pastime. Luckily we get the original coders and other people who worked in the industry or scene in here with other other bits of interesting stories like yourself...Really adds to the whole thing...

 

So thank you for passing it on.

 

Paul.

Edited November 3, 2019 by Mclaneinc

[Porkchops & Applesauce]

@ijor Oh man, where to begin?  I actually worked for a couple duplication companies in Silicon Valley during the early 90's.  Major clients then are still big today; Microsoft, Apple and Adobe just to name a few.  Most of the software where I worked saw business applications or firmware updates (how it was done pre-internet), but there were a few game companies like Activision, at the time Mediagenic.

 

It was kinda cool having access to all that software before the general public.  It was also an interesting time.  The tech world was rapidly changing.  5-1/4" floppies were on the way out, 3.5" floppies were quickly being overtaken by CD-ROM, and the internet was in its infancy.  Disk sets were growing comically larger to accommodate the exploding lines of code and late adopters of CD-ROM drives.  Microsoft was putting out 20+ disk sets on 3.5".  Crazy stuff!

 

The companies I worked for did not invest in this new technology however, and so sealed their fate.  The writing was on the wall, and there was a palpable desperation in the air you could taste.  I was fortunate enough to get out before the ship sank.

 

Looking back, I think one of the reasons I hold an affinity for my Atari is that it was ultimately the reason I got that job, and set the stage for my entire career since.  It taught me computer literacy at a time before it became the norm.

 

Cheers!