Atari Timewise, anyone reconstructed directory?

[tschak909]

The directory on the Atari Timewise disk is obfuscated. Silly really.

 

Has anyone managed to re-map all the files on the disk so that somebody can fix Timewise to be Y2K compliant? (I'd love to use it)

 

-Thom

[Rybags]

A quick look in a hex editor, it looks a bit deeper than that.  No directory or VTOC structure at all seems to exist around the normal place.

OK, firing it up.  It's asking for the data disk and Atarimania only supplies the boot disk.

I guess one thing (sort of) in favour of getting it going - it requires Basic which might make things a bit easier.

[tschak909]

6 minutes ago, Rybags said:

A quick look in a hex editor, it looks a bit deeper than that.  No directory or VTOC structure at all seems to exist around the normal place.

OK, firing it up.  It's asking for the data disk and Atarimania only supplies the boot disk.

I guess one thing (sort of) in favour of getting it going - it requires Basic which might make things a bit easier.

Just supply a disk and it will make a data disk.

 

-Thom

[Roydea6]

Timewise podcast here.

[tschak909]

The VTOC is a few sectors over, in $171

-Thom

[tschak909]

and yup, a few sectors over, a complete disk directory with proper filenames. Looks like a modified DOS.

 

-Thom

[tschak909]

looks like the BASIC programs LOGO and CAL are protected from LIST, is there any way to unprotect them?

 

-Thom

[Rybags]

I should have found that before... I got my dec to hex wrong and was looking around the $C000 area instead of $B000.

 

Basic protect - from memory there's been various threads and there's different methods.

Some screw with z-page pointers (which are prepended to the program as offsets that get added to memlo on load), some trash the variable name table and I think some just insert statement pointers inside the program that cause the list to go awry.  And possibly illegal tokens that screw up the listing as well.

I seem to recall mention also of PC based programs that can fix it.

 

But not a lot of personal experience there... my main work with such recovery was the pain in the day when Rev A and esp B would screw your work up for you.

[FULS]

7 hours ago, tschak909 said:

looks like the BASIC programs LOGO and CAL are protected from LIST, is there any way to unprotect them?

 

-Thom

These were written by phaeron. The JPG file is from Altirra's Help tab under Contents. The other written by phaeron somewhere else.

It would be great if someone could write a windows program to unprotect all protected Basic Programs so they could be Listed.

Recovering a protected Basic program .txt

 

 

 

[+CharlieChaplin]

I usually use the Basic Lister program (LISTBAS.COM) by O.Meisiek. It can list to screen, printer or diskette; when listed to diskette, it saves in LIST format... (use Enter"D:Filename.Ext to load it or simply display as ATASCII text)...

 

The short Basic deprotection program from Abbuc (BasList.Bas) only deprotects programs that used Poke Peek(138)+256... Peek (139)+256... or something similar. Funnily, the Repair Station cannot unprotect such list protections. The Basic Lister by O.Meisiek does that and many other protections. But it tests, if the program is a Basic file, so if it has a ML header it will simply print an Error message like "not a Basic program" and refuse to work...

 

Another way to recover a hidden directory is to use TurboDOS XL/XE and its Diskfix.COM program - there use the option "Recover Directory". This works for many DOS 2.x compatible disks that have a hidden directory (stored in other sectors than normally) but still use the usual DOS II disk/sector links...

 

 

BASList.zip TDOS21NT.ATR