Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative

[ijor]

We are having troubles finding an unmodified copy of Alternate Reality The City. It is not very rare, but this game writes to one of the original disks, you can't play the game if the disk is write protected. So most copies are modified. The specific side (front side of disk 2) is not copy protected, so in theory the user could use a copy, but probably most people don't bother.

 

If somebody believes he owns an unmodified, never played, copy, it would be great if you could contribute a dump. A low level dump would be best, but even a simple non working ATR set could be useful. Please don't provide the relevant side alone because it seems there are at least two type/versions and we need the whole set to identify them properly.

[ijor]

A short message from "dump QA" (I attached what I have to fix these.).

• Superman - The Game (1986)(Main Street Publishing)(US)

  Probably bad dumps because these titles make no check for protection and have several bad sectors in unused areas of the disk

Seems it is a mastering or duplication issue, not a bad dump. There are multiple dumps from different disks all with the same "bad sectors" on track 34. There are also dumps without any bad sectors at all though.

[Farb]

It's time for an updated torrent. As always, thanks to everyone that contributed!

 

Here are the latest contributions:

 

From Harry1968:

Adventure Master (CBS Software)

Airline (Ariolasoft)

Atari Smash Hits Vol. 2 (English Software Company)

Atari Smash Hits Vol. 3 (English Software Company)

Atari Smash Hits Vol. 5 (English Software Company)

Ballblazer (Activision)

Basil the Great Mouse Detective (Gremlin Graphics)

BC's Quest for Tires (Sierra On-Line)

Beach Head (Access Software)

Boulder Dash Construction Kit (Epyx)

Cavelord (Atari & Ariolasoft)

Chessmaster 2000 (Software Toolworks)

Chop Suey (Antic)

Choplifter! (Broderbund)

Dragon's Keep (Sierra On-Line)

Enchanter (Infocom)

Encounter! (Novagen)

Ernie's Magic Shapes (Hi-Tech Expressions)

Four Great Games - Volume 2 (Micro-Value)

Ghostbusters (Activision)

Great American Cross-Country Road Race (Activision)

Koronis Rift (Epyx)

L.A. SWAT + Panther (Mastertronic)

Laser Hawk (Red Rat Software)

Leader Board (US Gold)

Leader Board Tournament Disk 1 (Access Software)

Magneto Bugs (Gentry Software)

Molecule Man (Mastertronic)

Moonmist (Infocom)

Mr. Robot and His Robot Factory (Databyte)

Necromancer (Synapse)

Ninja (Mastertronic)

Pac-Man (Datasoft)

Pawn, The (Rainbird)

Pinball Construction Set (Ariolasoft)

Pirates of the Barbary Coast (Cascade Games)

Pitstop (Value-U-Line)

Pitstop II (Epyx)

Polar Pierre (Databyte)

Pooyan (Datasoft)

Raid Over Moscow (Access Software)

Rainbow Walker (Synapse)

Rampage (Activision)

Realm of Impossibility (Ariolasoft)

Rescue on Fractalus! (Epyx)

Richard Petty's Talladega (Cosmi)

Rosen's Brigade (Gentry Software)

Screaming Wings (Red Rat Software)

Silicon Dreams (Firebird)

Solo Flight (Microprose Software)

Spindizzy (Electric Dreams)

Spy Hunter (Sega)

Spy vs. Spy I + II (Avantage)

Spy vs. Spy III (Databyte)

Star Raiders II (Atari)

Starblade (Electric Dreams)

Strip Poker (Artworx)

Summer Games (Epyx)

Sun Star (CRL)

Super Boulder Dash (Electronic Arts)

Super Huey (Cosmi)

Super Zaxxon (Sega)

Tales of Dragons and Cavemen (AMC Verlag)

Tecno-Ninja (KE-Soft)

Trailblazer (Mindscape)

Triad (Adventure International)

Triple Pack (Access Software)

Wayout (Sirius Software)

Winter Olympics (Tynesoft)

World Karate Championship (Epyx)

Zork II (Infocom)

From Advfan:

Atlantis (Ariolasoft)

Olin in Emerald (Adventure International)

Super Bunny (Datamost)

From Allan:

Amoeba (Atari)

From Farb:

Colleen Music Compendium (No Frills Software)

Diskey (Adventure International)

Ghost Encounters (JV Software)

Homeword (Sierra On-Line)

Psycho Shoot (ALA Software)

Space Shuttle - Module I (Swifty Software)

Spaceport (Umbrella Software)

Star Voyage Series (CodeWriter)

Trivia Quest (Royal Software)

Atari 8bit Preserved Software 2017-08-01.zip

[Foster]

There are some great additions in this release! Thanks to all involved! Great Project!

[Roydea6]

You saved me asking my next question. Thanks, remowilliams!

I have been saving a question now for several years::: What should I do with the older completed torrents, delete, combine, or ???

[Kyle22]

Seeding.

[Kyle22]

I have been saving a question now for several years::: What should I do with the older completed torrents, delete, combine, or ???

That's an excellent question.

[Shannon]

Polar Pierre (Databyte)

 

US disk version has two sides.. there is only one in the archive for Databyte..?

 

Silicon Dreams (1986)(Firebird)(GB)

 

Is that supposed to be Rainbird?

Edited August 8, 2017 by Shannon

[Farb]

I have been saving a question now for several years::: What should I do with the older completed torrents, delete, combine, or ???

 

Delete. The contents of each new torrent fully replace the contents of the old ones.

 

Polar Pierre (Databyte)

 

US disk version has two sides.. there is only one in the archive for Databyte..?

 

 

The dump that was donated only has one side. It could be that the second side was physically present but not dumped.

 

Is that supposed to be Rainbird?

 

I will check.

[Mclaneinc]

Thanks Farb etc, d/ling and then seeding....

 

And yes I am pretty sure its Rainbird (same company, different section)

 

Edit: Yes, Rainbird...as said Firebird and Rainbird are same company so sort of correct but released under their Rainbird label...

 

EDIT2:

 

Now I have the file its actually Silicon Dreams The Trilogy

 

By Rainbird, needs a renaming...

 

Edit3: This Silicon Dreams disk, is it a confirmed proper dump because I have a disk with the same creation date / time and almost exact wording on the file that's dated 2015 in my collection, it seems to suggest this was a version doing the rounds and possibly a TOSEC version which often were not so good dumps and the naming was very hit and miss.

 

If improper dumps get integrated in the initiative it makes it spoiled, just saying...Hopefully it was a proper dump?

Edited August 8, 2017 by Mclaneinc

[ijor]

Polar Pierre (Databyte)

US disk version has two sides.. there is only one in the archive for Databyte..?

 

There is no data on the back side of the provided dump. Note that the contributed raw dump does includes both sides, the back side is just empty. It is possible that something went wrong with the dump, or conceivable with the disk itself. But it seems this version is actually on one side only.

 

It is true that according to the manual at Atarimania, the actual game is stored on the back side. But my guess is that they just copied the manual from the US release and forgot to update that information. In the US release it seems that the game is in the back side and the front side is used for saving user made screens. You can see that in this case, the game is in the front side.

 

Btw, somebody has the original US release?

[Mclaneinc]

The game engine is on disk A the game screens are on disk B, once at the title screen you swap disks and off you go, either the dump is bad or its a different possibly hacked version.

 

DIsk B could be described as the back side of the disk possibly, I can't remember if it came with two disks or just a double sided disk.

Edited August 8, 2017 by Mclaneinc

[ijor]

The game engine is on disk A the game screens are on disk B, once at the title screen you swap disks and off you go,

That's how the US release work. Not this release, this is the European release. Here the game screens are on the same disk and side.

 

either the dump is bad or its a different possibly hacked version.

As I explained in the previous message, it is very unlikely that the dump is bad.

 

It is a different release, this is the European release by Databyte, not the US release by Datamost. It has a completely different copy protection. The protection and the loading screen is typical to other Databyte releases. It is not a hack, it is fully copy protected.

[Mclaneinc]

Yep sorry, mixed my mosts and bytes up...

[+David_P]

Seeding on my NAS as well. Thanks to all for your work on this!

[Farb]

Edit3: This Silicon Dreams disk, is it a confirmed proper dump because I have a disk with the same creation date / time and almost exact wording on the file that's dated 2015 in my collection, it seems to suggest this was a version doing the rounds and possibly a TOSEC version which often were not so good dumps and the naming was very hit and miss.

 

If improper dumps get integrated in the initiative it makes it spoiled, just saying...Hopefully it was a proper dump?

Ijor just confirmed (again) that what is in the torrent is identical to the three flux dumps we have contributed by advfan, orpheuswaking and Harry1968. Two of those three dumps were personally created by me from original disks. If the torrent matches a TOSEC dump, that must mean the TOSEC dump was also a good one.

 

Is that supposed to be Rainbird?

The two disks I dumped clearly said Firebird on them. Here's a pic of one of them:

 

http://a8preservation.com/#/software/dump/%2Fapi%2Fdumps%2F1334

 

I didn't see Rainbird anywhere on the label...

[Fred_M]

My disc certainly looks different than yours (Sorry, the picture is a bit blurry, but the label is very different than the one on a8preservation)

 

So there are two "different" discs?

 

[Shannon]

ok thanks... I was just going by the listing on atarimania. Can't see the picture it requirest me to sign in.

[Fred_M]

This is the picture on a8preservation

 

[ijor]

Rainbird and Firebird are two labels of the same company. Publshers with multiple lables became quite common later during the 16-bit era. Packaging is different, but the disk content, at least in this case, is identical.

 

So this image is actually both Rainbird AND Firebird.

 

[Fred_M]

Yeah, we know that it is the same company But I have never seen the disk Farb showed us

[Mclaneinc]

Ijor just confirmed (again) that what is in the torrent is identical to the three flux dumps we have contributed by advfan, orpheuswaking and Harry1968. Two of those three dumps were personally created by me from original disks. If the torrent matches a TOSEC dump, that must mean the TOSEC dump was also a good one.

 

 

I wasn't aware they had been confirmed as good, I can't read every thread on here

 

The point was that I was trying to make sure that it WAS a good dump, I saw that it was added on your post on the new torrent so I saw the dupe in my collection and presumed that the dump in the torrent would be from a later date as it was new to the torrent.

 

Me, I'd be happy people were trying to verify dumps but a 28 page thread isn't always easy to track

 

Anyway, its a good dump so its all good, if I spot anything else I'll search the thread next time.

[Mclaneinc]

Yeah, we know that it is the same company But I have never seen the disk Farb showed us

 

Same here, I've always seen the Rainbird version, Firebird was more seen as their budget range...Oh well, you see something new every so often...

[ijor]

Same here, I've always seen the Rainbird version, Firebird was more seen as their budget range...Oh well, you see something new every so often...

 

Firebird/Raindbird wasn't 100% consistent, IIRC. On most titles they used one brand on the US and the other brand in Europe. And not always the same brand on the same continent, it varied depending on the title.

[Farb]

 

I wasn't aware they had been confirmed as good, I can't read every thread on here

 

The point was that I was trying to make sure that it WAS a good dump, I saw that it was added on your post on the new torrent so I saw the dupe in my collection and presumed that the dump in the torrent would be from a later date as it was new to the torrent.

 

Me, I'd be happy people were trying to verify dumps but a 28 page thread isn't always easy to track

 

Anyway, its a good dump so its all good, if I spot anything else I'll search the thread next time.

My response wasn't mean to be snarky - sorry if it came off that way.

 

In case you didn't know, any dumps in the torrent that include a [!] in the title are verified dumps. My "again" comment was referring to the fact that we re-verified the dump (even though it already had the [!] flag) based on the concern you raised. There's always the possibility for human error in all of this so it's not a bad thing to do.

 

The primary resource for everything in the torrent is a8preservation.com which supersedes this thread because a lot of communication happens through other channels. That's also where we keep notes for dumps where applicable so it should be the first point of reference if there are any questions about files in the torrent.

 

For example, here is the page for Silicon Dreams:

 

http://a8preservation.com/#/software/title/%2Fapi%2Ftitles%2F653

 

Silicon Dreams was present in the past few torrents and the dump hasn't changed. What did change this time is that it gained the [!] in its filename and is why it was listed in my previous post.

Edited August 9, 2017 by Farb