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47 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said:

The problem is that there are still way too many pages / files that need to be updated. Some games date back to when we started the site and they need to be replaced with better versions. There are gradual changes being made but this takes a lot of time. Really, it would be a disservice to the community to release a half-baked effort on a wide scale right now.   

Can we not just have a current snapshot, literally just zip up all the files now, and then later release another archive every quarter or half year?

 

I have visited a number of websites (community websites like this one) that got hacked over the years and literally everything was wiped. They tried to restore the forum messages, etc. but nobody had any good backup. Much was lost over the decades of community contributions.

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All the programs are in the queue and will be added shortly. I hope contributors like @wesmond or @NuY don't feel like they worked hard for nothing, that's clearly not the case and we're not forgetting you. There's a LOT of stuff to go through in all areas and it takes time. Also, we don't always run a schedule of things to do so some updates may take longer than expected, though I understand several years is a long time!  

 

Thank you!

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On 5/22/2021 at 8:24 AM, www.atarimania.com said:

All the programs are in the queue and will be added shortly. I hope contributors like @wesmond or @NuY don't feel like they worked hard for nothing, that's clearly not the case and we're not forgetting you. There's a LOT of stuff to go through in all areas and it takes time. Also, we don't always run a schedule of things to do so some updates may take longer than expected, though I understand several years is a long time!  

 

Thank you!

This one's been waiting since 2012 http://forum.atarimania.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17763 ;-) (or some bits have - Reaction Timer maybe! I know, it's a bit of a thriller...)

Don't worry - it's no problem! I'm glad to help, and that they haven't been forgotten. It'll all get there in the end. Thanks for keeping going.

Edited by wesmond
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Here's the latest edition of our list of undumped software: List of Missing Software + V1.95.pdf

 

Consider that there are hundreds of programs that didn't make it to this "want list" so I'd say there are at least 5,000 titles that still need to be found! The format hasn't been reworked yet and I know it's not ideal... Hopefully, we'll come up with something way better in the coming months.

 

Speaking of type-ins, quite a number of them from magazines like ROM, Compute!, Inside Info, Teaching and Computers, Micro... are still missing and are on the list for reference. If there are volunteers, you know what to do :) 

 

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The main problem with titles that have an audio track is how huge they are when stored as .wav files. That's why there are so few Chilean tapes on the site for instance.

 

I know there have been talks about implementing the .ogg format for cassettes in Altirra. That would definitely make things a bit easier as the programs would be a bit smaller.  

 

 

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17 hours ago, www.atarimania.com said:

Here's the latest edition of our list of undumped software: List of Missing Software + V1.95.pdf

 

Consider that there are hundreds of programs that didn't make it to this "want list" so I'd say there are at least 5,000 titles that still need to be found! The format hasn't been reworked yet and I know it's not ideal... Hopefully, we'll come up with something way better in the coming months.

Just for amusement, I converted this into a SQL database to be able to query it, e.g.:

sqlite> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM missing WHERE note LIKE 'type-in%';
114
sqlite> SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT(company)) FROM missing;
731

My conversion is certainly not perfect. I pasted the text into a file, adding line breaks between each company.  I then wrote a parsing script with some simple header/footer detection (dropping the footers) and then proceeded to produce a table that was simply rows of (idx, company, title, note).  I made that into a database by producing SQL commands to create the table, insert the rows, and create some indexes.

 

It would be great to adopt some kind of text representation for this data to make it easier for people to explore the data however they want.

 

Anyhow, I've attached my work for anyone who might want to use it.

 

am195.zip

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On 5/29/2021 at 6:43 PM, Atari_Ace said:

Just for amusement, I converted this into a SQL database to be able to query it, e.g.:


sqlite> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM missing WHERE note LIKE 'type-in%';
114
sqlite> SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT(company)) FROM missing;
731

My conversion is certainly not perfect. I pasted the text into a file, adding line breaks between each company.  I then wrote a parsing script with some simple header/footer detection (dropping the footers) and then proceeded to produce a table that was simply rows of (idx, company, title, note).  I made that into a database by producing SQL commands to create the table, insert the rows, and create some indexes.

 

It would be great to adopt some kind of text representation for this data to make it easier for people to explore the data however they want.

 

Anyhow, I've attached my work for anyone who might want to use it.

 

am195.zip 74.86 kB · 9 downloads

I used to be a Micro$oft Access/Oracle/SQL/muSQL specialist in the 90s. If you need someone to make a nice graphical interface for the database to be used with Microsoft Access, IM me.

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Just running some trials as I have a number of things to scan. Please let me know if the quality is acceptable and what can be improved (for one, I know some pages are not exactly straight).

 

This is B & C Computervisions' public domain catalog dated August 31st, 1994:

B & C Computervisions - PD Catalog - August 31st, 1994.pdf

 

Incidentally, it would be great if someone had the following disks and could dump them as there are some missing games on them:

PBC056 - Game Disk #10

PBC057 - Game Disk #11

PBC058 - Game Disk #12

PBC095 - Game Disk #15 (by Jim Davis)

PBC096 - Game Disk #16 (by Jim Davis)

Edited by www.atarimania.com
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5 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said:

Time to revive this thread!

 

Expect lots - and I really mean LOTS - of previously unarchived software from the Houston haul just a year ago plus cracked disks from two other collections. Stay tuned!

 

 

Thanks for your efforts on our behalf; I have benefitted greatly from the Atarimania archive.  What can I do to help?

 

-CH-

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