Can an A8 emulator do this?

[Tickled_Pink]

Is there an Atari 8-bit emulator which can use ProSystem disk images (think they have a .PRO extension)?

 

I have a protected disk that I want to convert to a ProSystem image for use on an emulator ... wow. What a surprise.

 

And before anyone makes the obvious suggestion, the disk is pretty damned rare and I haven't found a copy (in PRO or ATR format) in any of the archives.

[ATARIeric]

i think steve "classics" @ atarimax would have that for you...

[classics]

Unfortunatly not. Due to different licence agreements and incompatibility of anything non-open with the GPL, PRO emulator support never came to be.

 

There is a new, completely open and probably GPL (or at least GPL friendly) protected disk format coming out soon. Until then you can try posting a copy of the PRO image, someone will probably be able to 'crack' it and make a ATR version compatible with the emulators for you.

 

Steve

[Tickled_Pink]

I'm going to have a crack at cracking it myself over Christmas. Seems to be nothing more than a bad sector check. Once done, I'll send the ATR to Atarimania for posperity.

[classics]

Any chance you can tell us what program it is?

[Tickled_Pink]

It's the disk-based programming language, PL65.

[rfucci]

Can you copy the disk itself, e.g., with a Happy drive ? If so, maybe I can lend help to create the ATR.

 

No special magic, just willing to try. Various tools at hand e.g. Omnimon.

 

Ron

[Tickled_Pink]

I don't have a happy (want one) but did have a backup made for me by Nir Dary a little while ago.

 

I'll give it a go myself first. Never hacked an 8-bit disk although I did managed to strip the protection from Audiogenic's Impact on the ST as an experiment - it was pretty simple, so hopefully this one will be as well.

 

If I can't do it then I'll pass it onto someone else

[Bruce Tomlin]

I'm going to have a crack at cracking it myself over Christmas. Seems to be nothing more than a bad sector check. Once done, I'll send the ATR to Atarimania for posperity.

As I understand it, Atari disk copy protection was generally nothing more than using one of the alternate address marks. There are four possible, and the drive returns this status, but an unmodified Atari drive would only write one of them.

 

Any TRS-80 user would be amused by this, since they had direct control of the FDC chip.

[ijor]

As I understand it, Atari disk copy protection was generally nothing more than using one of the alternate address marks. There are four possible, and the drive returns this status

 

No. Alternate Data marks (not address marks) is just one of the protections. Btw, you can only detect two types of data marks on the Atari, and you can’t detect any variation on the address mark.

 

Any TRS-80 user would be amused by this, since they had direct control of the FDC chip.

 

Yes, and I believe that it was used to write some protections for Atari. But most 1050 enhancements (probably all besides the USD) give you full control of the FDC as well. That’s the reasons that later protections used more advanced techniques, where direct control of the FDC doesn’t help.

 

Actually, “Bad/deleted Data mark” (that’s how they were usually called in the 8-bit) is not a very popular protection on the A8. Probably because is one of the easiest to handle for devices like the Happy.