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Big pick up from former software developer (Software)


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Again, I have no idea what this stuff is and I don't think I've found some hidden treasure that's going to make me thousands of dollars. I assume that some of these things pair together like the koala cartridge with the koala pad and the Action! cartridge with the Action! floppy, but beyond those obvious ones I'm at a loss. So any insight or info on it is greatly appreciated and if nothing else hopefully this gives some nostalgia and you can enjoy the pickup with me

 

For simplicity sake I just uploaded them to a folder on my google drive and I'm sharing the link below. If for some reason it doesn't work let me know so I can fix it

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=18UuV-EuY_vwF0GBX9s-t78IlVZVsy-lf

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That's what I was expecting. Some of this is Very familiar. Usually the disk pile can be quite mixed up with a couple systems. A number of the disks are of course the pirated copied disks all Atari people seem to have.... thanks for showing it.

Edited by _The Doctor__
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Interesting some of the disks are labelled DS / DD - so you'll need to use the percom RFD's to read them. Another DOS II disk labelled 3 drives with verify, so they would have had the 810 hooked up in conjunction with the RFD's.

 

Are you planning to try to backup the disks to ATR files on modern PC's? If so you can get a cheap SIO2PC device from either Lotharek or AtariMax, configured to have a PC emulate an additional drive so that you can sector copy from the physical drive to the virtual one. Then the resulting ATR disk image files can be easily shared online to look at.

 

Or, I'm sure there's folks who would do this archiving for you if you're willing to lend /mail the disks.

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I wouldn't begin to know how to back this stuff up which is why I'm showing it. If it only has intrinsic value for posterity purposes I would be glad to get it into the hands of the right person. Again, I have no idea what all of this is, but I thought maybe there would be something you hadn't seen before. If the case was no one had seen it before and this was the first chance to get them out to the public I wanted to make sure that happened.

 

Guy said he had more, but some of it was proprietary so he got rid of it

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Some of these look like they were development disks from Ronald Marcuse. Please try to get these backed up. They may contain source code and be one of a kind disks. There are a number of people that can help you here on Atariage depending on where you live in the world.

 

Allan

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@silentshadow56:

 

WOW! Great, thank you for sharing.

 

There are 4 disks, I would like to have for the Wiki:

https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Articles

 

Do you mind to share an atr image of those 4?

 

Maybe, I am too stupid, please see the question in my avatar, but in your link, I only can see photos, no atr images?

 

Many thanks in advance in the name of the community.

post-32599-0-59621300-1531012328_thumb.jpg

post-32599-0-28343300-1531012330.jpg

post-32599-0-92577300-1531012331.jpg

post-32599-0-54486700-1531012333.jpg

Edited by luckybuck
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that's the images I offered to make for you... using SIO2PC and software to get it over to the PC and then here.... There is also a stream level preservation society on these forums :) of which I'm partial to..

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/234684-atari-8-bit-software-preservation-initiative/?hl=%20preservation

 

http://a8preservation.com/#/home

http://a8preservation.com/#/guides/protection

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/276429-atari-preservation-disk-utilities/?do=findComment&comment=3982150

Edited by _The Doctor__
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Hey guys, I have no problem sharing this and getting it out into the public, but what do you mean ATR? I apologize for being so green at this, but that's why I'm asking questions

 

The nutshell version -

 

It means connecting the Atari, a floppy disk drive and a modern computer together to make copies of the contents of the disks to a virtual disk image file. In the Atari community, the standard is an ".ATR" file. These disk image files can then be distributed electronically, used in emulators, written back to real floppy disks or whatever. The way the vintage equipment is connected to a modern computer is via a relatively simple and inexpensive device called an "SIO2PC" device. A great number of people in the Atari retro-community have such devices.

 

A more complicated but probably better way to preserve these disks from an archival standpoint is to use fairly specialized equipment to make recordings of the actual magnetic flux patterns on the disk media and store the patterns electronically. This helps in case the original disks use non-standard recording methods (copy protection) or if the disks are starting to fail with age. There is a well-established on-going effort by some very dedicated and skilled software preservation folks in the community who are working their asses off to save rare and hard-to-find titles before age and time cause them to be lost forever.

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Ah the preservation project! Yes, sure, thank you, I am in contact with Farb and will see him this month. Also, I am seeding the archive and bring it to the Fujiama meeting (biggest in Europe) this month. So the images are in the best hands and many backups make them safe for generations to come. The upload on the Wiki takes some time, would like to have help, so it can speed up. But my 1st priority is to preserve and having a digitized version. Major things will be published at once, of course. Sadly, 2 attempt for box CX401 this year failed, but we have done everything we could and even more. Please go ahead with your help, we need you. :-)

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

The disk is protected and needs cracked, but I do have this.

attachicon.gifMMG Basic Commander and Debugger (1983)(MMG Micro Software)(Robert Martin).atr

 

 

The disk has a duplicate sector 712 and patches its code with an EORed value taken from both instances of this sector. I guess that the result is just a NOP but am not sure. Attached is a crack based on this assumption.

 

I am not sure if you only have the ATR or the protected disk.

If you have the protected disk then please run the other attached image, dump both duplicate instances and post back the result. An example of how to use the disk can be found here. But don't use the image attached to that post. It will dump other sectors.

 

@MrFish: Sorry for being late to the game, but it was holiday season. ;)

MMG Basic Commander and Debugger (1983)(MMG Micro Software)(Robert Martin)cr CSS.atr

Dos25Extract.atr

Edited by DjayBee
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The disk has a duplicate sector 712 and patches its code with an EORed value taken from both instances of this sector. I guess that the result is just a NOP but am not sure. Attached is a crack based on this assumption.

 

The cracked disk doesn't seem to be working. It gives the ready prompt, and the editor works; but BASIC doesn't seem to be active (no commands work).

 

This "sector 712" sounded familiar to me; and sure enough, when I went back to our emails -- when you were working on a crack for MMG Mail List -- it was same duplicate sector. In that case I had given you a PRO image; so maybe it was easier to figure out what was going on, having that in hand. Maybe you can benefit now from looking at the comments you sent to me in PM before, in regards to Mail List.

 

Message #1
Mail List has a duplicate sector 712.
The crack will take a little longer because the protection code is put together at runtime by something that looks like some compiled and/or p-code. I first have to find out from where on the disk the bytes are taken and what is done to them in order to get the code.
Message #2
The protection code of Mail List is created by adding 22 to values from DATA statements.

 

 

@MrFish: Sorry for being late to the game, but it was holiday season. ;)

 

No problem; if anyone deserves a holiday, it's you!

Edited by MrFish
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The cracked disk doesn't seem to be working. It gives the ready prompt, and the editor works; but BASIC doesn't seem to be active (no commands work).

 

This "sector 712" sounded familiar to me; and sure enough, when I went back to our emails -- when you were working on a crack for MMG Mail List -- it was same duplicate sector. In that case I had given you a PRO image; so maybe it was easier to figure out what was going on, having that in hand. Maybe you can benefit now from looking at the comments you sent to me in PM before, in regards to Mail List.

 

Then the NOP might be a wrong guess. Second try with an RTS attached here. It stood the test of 10 PRINT "HELLO" and RUN.

If this also does not work correct then we have to hope for FULS.

 

I started from Mail List and the code is similar but Mail List only compares two bytes which have to be different. The EOR is missing.

On the other hand the Commander has the plain code on disk instead of DATA statements.

MMG Basic Commander and Debugger (1983)(MMG Micro Software)(Robert Martin)cr CSS.atr

Edited by DjayBee
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