Savetz Posted April 9, 2020 Share Posted April 9, 2020 Here's the Atari VCS Checkers source code Rev. A, lent to me by Carol Shaw with permission to share. https://archive.org/details/VCScheckersA/mode/2up Carol wrote in an email: "Ralph and I moved recently (still in Silicon Valley) and today we were unpacking some boxes and found some source code listings on 11" x 15" fan-fold line-printer paper. ... I sent the Rev B listing of VCS Checkers to The Strong previously, but I found the Rev A listing." These are nice clear photos that should be readable enough to be entered by hand if a member of the community inclined to do so. Someone has volunteered. If/when they do it, I'll post the text source code here also. At Carol's request, the original printouts will join the Rev. B version in the collection of The Strong Museum of Play. 14 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Propane13 Posted April 9, 2020 Share Posted April 9, 2020 So, Rev.A is a pre-release version? It'd be VERY interesting if someone could convert these to text so we could compare differences. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted April 9, 2020 Share Posted April 9, 2020 1 hour ago, Propane13 said: So, Rev.A is a pre-release version? It'd be VERY interesting if someone could convert these to text so we could compare differences. I have the same question. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted April 9, 2020 Author Share Posted April 9, 2020 2 hours ago, Propane13 said: So, Rev.A is a pre-release version? It'd be VERY interesting if someone could convert these to text so we could compare differences. Yes. —K Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voxel Posted April 9, 2020 Share Posted April 9, 2020 Please thank Carol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhd Posted April 9, 2020 Share Posted April 9, 2020 Thank-you for sharing this, and a big thanks for Carol for ensuring that the original is permanently preserved in an institutional collection. Is there any information on the hardware/development environment used to create this game? I assume that it was developed on a mainframe and then downloaded to actual hardware for testing, but anything more specific would be welcome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azure Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 Love seeing original code. We don't often get to see the programmer's original comments and variable naming. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Propane13 Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 All right, so I've decided to start transcribing and got page 1 and 2 done. I figured this would be smart to do as an open-source project, so if anyone wants to help (especially with validation against the printed source), that would be appreciated. Here's the link: https://github.com/johnkharvey/2600_checkers_source I'll try to hack on it in my spare time a little each day. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Propane13 Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 I've got through page 7 done. At this point, it's all variable names, so not much useful stuff there, but hey, I thought I'd let people know if they want to look for errors. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Propane13 Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 Update: Variables at the top are done, and the symbol table at the bottom is complete. I got the first page of "real" source code entered, but I think my next focus will be the 7 pages of "debugger" code at the end, just to get all of the bookends complete before hitting the main program. I'm likely going to call it a day on this for now since my eyes are tired; however, if people want to collaborate, I would welcome it, so feel free to help out. Even if it's just a page comparison to the PDF to find mistakes I may have made, it would be appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Andrew Davie Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 (edited) I found an OCR tool that did a reasonable job. Use this as a starting point for any conversions... Site was https://www.zamzar.com/ VCS Checkers rev A by Carol Shaw (1).txt Edited April 12, 2020 by Andrew Davie 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Propane13 Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 3 minutes ago, Andrew Davie said: I found an OCR tool that did a reasonable job. Use this as a starting point for any conversions... VCS Checkers rev A by Carol Shaw (1).txt 258.66 kB · 2 downloads That's much better than the one generated on the archive.org website. Good stuff! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Andrew Davie Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 To do it justice, I'd be editing the original PDF file so all pages were rotated and cropped accurately. I'd take out the left-side addresses/opcodes (blank 'em out) and just leave the actual source code. Then I'd OCR the result using https://www.zamzar.com/ and the resultant text should be reasonably clean and require much less editing to make an assemble-able file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
White Flame Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 (edited) Well, I guess I should have checked this thread sooner; nobody had started yet. I retyped the full text, sans all the hex bytes and the symbol table: https://github.com/white-flame/vcs-checkers Run the script to generate it properly formatted, with or without the original address foo. I attached the outputs here as well. listing.txt checkers.asm Edited April 12, 2020 by White Flame fixed github link 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Propane13 Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 (edited) Wow, that's awesome! I got through the debugger re-translating this morning, and split my project into individual pages in case people wanted to cross-check them against the original source. I only got through page 1 of the main source code, but the equates / debugger / symbol table should all be pretty close to complete and formatting-wise pretty accurate to the original doc. Note that there are still likely typos, as I was doing a lot of it by hand; not compiling anything (yet). I can let the project go dormant for now if there's already a completed product. But, if anything there I've put together that is of value, feel free to take it: https://github.com/johnkharvey/2600_checkers_source Definitely a good weekend exercise. Edited April 12, 2020 by Propane13 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davyK Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 Quality ink in those old impact line printers.....glad it didn't fade. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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