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Karateka - MaxFlash Patched version.


Wilheim

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Hi, all!

 

Recently Nir Dary asked me if I have a version of Karateka that it would work on a multigame cartridge. I tried to put the ATR image on a MaxFlash studio image, but surprisingly it crashed when loading the first stage. Looking into the disk I was amazed that for some reason it reads the disk onto the $C000-$C3FF area (a bug?? I don't know), which it didn't have any use of it. It can work on an standard configuration, because the standard OS rom is protected, but when it comes with Maxflash, which patches the OS ROM disk reading routines, it overwrites the cartridge reading routines, which causes the crash.

 

Well, I patched that ATR image, so it doesn't writes the OS area anymore. And now it works! Attached is the patched ATR file. I hope you find it useful. By my side, I was able to rescue the princess in this version.

 

Best regards!

Karateka (1985)(Broderbund)(US) - MaxFlash patch.atr

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Hi, all!

 

Recently Nir Dary asked me if I have a version of Karateka that it would work on a multigame cartridge. I tried to put the ATR image on a MaxFlash studio image, but surprisingly it crashed when loading the first stage. Looking into the disk I was amazed that for some reason it reads the disk onto the $C000-$C3FF area (a bug?? I don't know), which it didn't have any use of it. It can work on an standard configuration, because the standard OS rom is protected, but when it comes with Maxflash, which patches the OS ROM disk reading routines, it overwrites the cartridge reading routines, which causes the crash.

 

Well, I patched that ATR image, so it doesn't writes the OS area anymore. And now it works! Attached is the patched ATR file. I hope you find it useful. By my side, I was able to rescue the princess in this version.

 

Best regards!

 

Alas, this version has a small graphic glitch, black+grey lines under the fighters...

 

post-3782-0-30735500-1512076874.jpg

 

On my PAL setup (1088k, XL-OS, Altirra palette) under Atari 800 Win and Altirra 2.90...

Edited by CharlieChaplin
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  • 2 years later...
On 11/30/2017 at 6:21 PM, CharlieChaplin said:

 

Alas, this version has a small graphic glitch, black+grey lines under the fighters...

 

post-3782-0-30735500-1512076874.jpg

 

On my PAL setup (1088k, XL-OS, Altirra palette) under Atari 800 Win and Altirra 2.90...

Bumping an old thread.

 

I just patched Karateka and fixed the bug on the demo. The bug exists because there is an error on the initialization of a zero page address by the desencryption routine. I had to be creative to fix this and maintain the encryption as well.

 

I think it could be fixed on the original ATX version as well, I'll take a look into it.

 

Cheers!

 

Karateka (1985)(Broderbund)(US) - MaxFlash patch - v2.atr

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10 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

okay so this is for the demo, are you doing the retail disk as well as 130xe retail cart versions too? is there a difference between them

Sorry, maybe I didn't make myself clear. This is the retail version, and the bug occurs in the intro when the protagonist appears on the island.

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Just for clarity, is it not a 130xe retail version, i.e. requiring 128K to run, but for all XL/XE's with 64K and even 400/800's with 48K?

The 'car' image from Atarimania should therefore run fine from any multigame cartridge that supports XEGS ROMs.

 

So when the above patched ATR image is setup on an AtariMax menu (to autostart) then presumably the replacement code under the O/S is required and so 64K becomes the baseline?

But for carts that can boot from ATR images then they'll only need 48K?

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While we're talking about graphical problems, has anyone else ever noticed that there are a few pixels missing on the Atari copyright section of the cartridge version? I've dumped the cartridge myself in order to verify that I wasn't seeing the results of a bad dump; but the pixels were missing in the dump I made as well.

 

A minor problem, but should probably be fixed anyway. I've highlighted the missing pixels in red here.

 

1599555436_pixelmissing.thumb.png.075639dda2b1fe227bc5380055b3ae3b.png

 

 

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45 minutes ago, MrFish said:

I've dumped the cartridge myself in order to verify that I wasn't seeing the results of a bad dump; but the pixels were missing in the dump I made as well.

I said that wrong. What I did was checked out the screen from an actual Atari Karateka cartridge I owned, and the pixels were missing there too. So, no need to dump.

 

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19 minutes ago, MrFish said:

Doesn't happen on the cart version. Doesn't happen on the file version either, which I think was derived from the cart version.

 

Maybe they work because they're not using any encryption process. The disk version is heavily encrypted, using DAUX1, DAUX2 and 128 bytes starting at address $80.

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2 hours ago, Jacques said:

Not sure if anyone is interested, but I attached Karateka binary file, which requires 130XE to run, though.

KARATEKA.EXE 80.54 kB · 7 downloads

 

Karateka.xex (128) is available on Homesoft, without starting glitches (as usual with Homesoft games).

http://www.mushca.com/f/atari/index.php?idx=K

 

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