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CAS to ATR possible?


eegad

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Is there a utility somewhere that can convert single-stage ML tapes (as a CAS file) to an ATR disk image?

 

(I've been playing around with my 16k 400 this week, booting up CAS & ATR files via an sdrive-max.  Not too many games work in 16k of course.  And I've found a few that work only as a CAS, but not an ATR.  (Frogger for example - the single stage CAS works in 16k, but the available ATR on Atarimania needs at least 24k.  Any way to dump the CAS data to a bootable ATR?)

 

 

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Well,

 

single stage tape conversion into bootdisk is possible with various tools, e.g. this one:

http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-super-copy_15934.html

Then you have to convert the disk into an ATR image.

 

If you are working with an emulator, you can setup the tool as an ATR in D1: and and empty (formatted) ATR as D2, then save the data as bootdisk onto D2, so you have your ATR directly. This tool will however only convert programs with a max. length of 32kbytes.

 

I have already (and successfully) converted the Frogger tape into a bootdisk with this tool. (By the way, this tool also allows conversion into a COM/EXE/XEX file and into a FCopy = pure binary file without a COM-header.) Not sure if it works with 16k RAM, since I only have Ataris with a minimum of 64k RAM.

 

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3 hours ago, eegad said:

Is there a utility somewhere that can convert single-stage ML tapes (as a CAS file) to an ATR disk image?

 

(I've been playing around with my 16k 400 this week, booting up CAS & ATR files via an sdrive-max.  Not too many games work in 16k of course.  And I've found a few that work only as a CAS, but not an ATR.  (Frogger for example - the single stage CAS works in 16k, but the available ATR on Atarimania needs at least 24k.  Any way to dump the CAS data to a bootable ATR?)

BITD I played a version of Space Invaders on tape with my 8kB 400, later upgraded with Mosaic 64k board. After I got a 1050 I used a utility to read this tape and write a boot disk version to the 1050, so it is possible, it may also be possible to do this with Altirra.  I don't know whether it will work for you, but this is a link to such a utility on Atarionline.pl.

 

PS: You may also want to read the following thread about disc to tape conversion, it mentions utilities that work both directions.

 

Edited by BillC
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Generally you'd just convert it to an Xex.  In the modern day, ATR for a single game that doesn't do subsequent disk access can be pretty wasteful.

 

In the day there were loaders around that could handle single stage tape files that were copied to disk file without any manipulation.

 

Of course though, a lot of games boot to a very low memory location which means they will usually overwrite a Dos and often overwrite a loader.

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maybe the fujinet should have a document viewer linked to the server with the instructions as a default in slot 1 on initial shipping... people can then replace the darn thing with whatever they want thereafter...

Edited by _The Doctor__
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Here's a chance for me to perhaps learn something.  I used CharlieChaplin's suggested utility, along with Altirra, to load a single-stage boot tape of FROGGER.CAS.  This .CAS file boots fine on a 16k 400 via an sdrive-max.  I created a new disk in Altirra and formatted it. Then I loaded the boot tape file, wrote to a boot disk, and then saved the ATR.  The resulting ATR boots on a 800 with 48k. It does not boot on a 16k 400.  

 

Now, I totally get that if you convert a boot tape that works on a 16k machine to an .EXE and then try to load that from a DOS menu, or to rename it to AUTORUN.SYS, it likely won't work because DOS is taking up lower memory that the program wants to load into. But if it's made into a straight boot disk, with no DOS, why does that not work? Wouldn't the boot disk just have header bytes that basically say "dump the next xxx number of sectors into memory starting at xxxx address and then run at address xxxx"......which is the same as what the tape would be saying???  Maybe the block/sector length is different, but other than that, what's different? Same amount of data loading into same memory areas. I'm puzzled.

 

Much thanks for any enlightenment (...and perhaps 35 years ago I knew the answer, but it's long been forgotten)   ?

 

 

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Here are the files.  FROGGER.CAS is the original tape file, which loads and runs on 16k 400.  DOS20S.atr is the disk I made containing the tape-to-disk utility, along with the imported FROGGER.CAS file and the file it converted to FROGGER.EXE.   I then used the utility to create the boot disk FROGGER.ATR, which boots fine on a 48k 800 (or 64k 800xl), but which will not work on a 16k machine.

 

Thanks so much for your help in understanding what the problem is.

 

 

 

 

DOS20S.atr FROGGER.atr FROGGER.cas

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2 hours ago, sup8pdct said:

The ATR it starts loading at 1eee (assuming to clear dos then moved down to where it should go) It means it wont work on 16K. the original cas image begins loading at 480.

 

 

James

xBOOT pico allow files that load from $480 :)

Edited by xxl
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BITD there was a utility called CASDISK or something like that.  IIRC, it did exactly what you are asking about -- made a boot tape into a boot disk.  But I do think it only worked on single-stage tapes.  I've looked but don't find it now in my stuff, but maybe someone else has it archived.

 

Edit: There was also a similar utility(s) from the UK, I think. Maybe published or sold by Page 6 magazine?  I remember that this one never worked on my NTSC systems.  But you might have better luck.

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39 minutes ago, DjayBee said:

Because it tries to read a sector from disk and crashes if this succeeds

interesting protection :) so it will not work if we have a disk drive with a floppy inside and load the game from the tape recorder ;-)

Edited by xxl
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21 minutes ago, xxl said:

interesting protection :) so it will not work if we have a disk drive with a floppy inside and load the game from the tape recorder ;-)

Yes, seems so.

 

27 minutes ago, Larry said:

BITD there was a utility called CASDISK or something like that.

DOS20S.atr from post #8 contains such a tool which I used to create the ATR.

Edited by DjayBee
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Thanks to everyone for the replies.  And extra thanks to DJayBee for getting Frogger to work. Figures that the first game I was trying to do this with had copy protection to check if it had been transferred to disk.   (Reminds me of long long ago when I tried to convert my atari branded cart based games to disk files and they never worked. I finally ran Missile Command (I think) through a disassembler and saw that it was writing a bunch of garbage to some addresses that a cartridge would normally occupy. At first I was like "that doesn't make sense because you can't write to ROM". Then the lightbulb went off as I realized a disk copy would be in RAM and that was their copy protection. Clever....and I wasted several hours before figuring it out.)

 

Anyway, I just successfully used that tape to boot-disk utility to convert Apple Panic to a 16k boot disk, so it's all good.

 

 

 

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7 hours ago, Larry said:

BITD there was a utility called CASDISK or something like that.  IIRC, it did exactly what you are asking about -- made a boot tape into a boot disk.  But I do think it only worked on single-stage tapes.  I've looked but don't find it now in my stuff, but maybe someone else has it archived.

 

Edit: There was also a similar utility(s) from the UK, I think. Maybe published or sold by Page 6 magazine?  I remember that this one never worked on my NTSC systems.  But you might have better luck.

 

CasDis 1.0 by Vervan Software (US) or Casdis 1.1 by ??? (UK). This tool allows to convert multi-stage tapes onto diskette, but only for a max. of 8 stages. None of the stages must be longer than 42 kbytes, so some tapes simply will not work (either because there are more than 8 stages or one of the stages is longer than 42kbytes).

 

There is also Transdisk in various versions (think the latest version was Transdisk 4.x). Transdisk has several "bootloaders", one for 48k machines, one for 64k machines and one for 128k machines. Alas, it always writes approx. 15kbytes bootcode onto the diskette and I think it also remembers how much RAM was used when generating the disk, i.e. if you used a 128k machine with Transdisk 4, this diskcopy will not work an a 48k or 64k machine.

 

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8 hours ago, DjayBee said:

Why the heck do you at all costs create a XEX which needs a DOS instead of writing out a bootdisk?

;)

This can be done with COPY.XEX on your disk.

 

Frogger 16k.atr 90.02 kB · 5 downloads

 

Copy.XEX on that DOS 2.0s disk = Super-Copy (the one I linked to in post #2)...

 

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