Help, Dummie Here...

[zraider]

I pulled out my Atari 800 computer after 3 years, which has a floppy drive. I have several games on disk, such as Frogger; however, I've forgotten how to load these games. I have a couple of disks that if inserted in the drive, then the PC is turned on,

they boot up to the Atari "DOS" menu [directory listing, copy disk, load binary, etc..].

If I place the game disk in the drive after booting "DOS", I get a directory listing of the

disk that reads something like "dos.sys, froggerexe, jawbreaker0, jawbreaker 1..".

If I try to load these games, I get a message "Too many characters". Ok, so there's something on the disk, and it worked fine a couple of years ago. But I try

booting the game disk by turning on the Atari while holding the option key, and the drive

lights up & appears to try to be loading, but then stops after about 5-8 seconds.

So, if anyone would be so kind, how do I load these games ? Do I need "DOS" ?

Thank you.

[Curt Vendel]

Once you have a DOS menu on screen, you select A and hit return or type D1: and hit return and you get a listing of the games on the diskette you insert?

 

 

So you see something like:

 

frogger com 082

 

So, what you'll then want to do is select L to load the game

and type in frogger.com and hit return. Atari DOS uses the standard 8.3 convention so a filename is a maximum of 8 characters seperated by a . (period) and then a 3 character extension such as com (Command) or exe (Executable)

 

The 082 (or whatever number that follows) is how large the file is on your diskette, Atari DOS lists programs in how many Sectors of storage unlike MS DOS on a PC which lists how many bytes the file takes up.

 

 

 

Curt

 

 

 

I pulled out my Atari 800 computer after 3 years, which has a floppy drive. I have several games on disk, such as Frogger; however, I've forgotten how to load these games. I have a couple of disks that if inserted in the drive, then the PC is turned on,

they boot up to the Atari "DOS" menu [directory listing, copy disk, load binary, etc..].

If I place the game disk in the drive after booting "DOS", I get a directory listing of the

disk that reads something like "dos.sys, froggerexe, jawbreaker0, jawbreaker 1..".

If I try to load these games, I get a message "Too many characters". Ok, so there's something on the disk, and it worked fine a couple of years ago. But I try

booting the game disk by turning on the Atari while holding the option key, and the drive

lights up & appears to try to be loading, but then stops after about 5-8 seconds.

So, if anyone would be so kind, how do I load these games ? Do I need "DOS" ?

Thank you.

936299[/snapback]

[Goochman]

Try going to DOS again - are you sure the filenames are not:

frogger.exe vs froggerexe?

 

Filenames are limited to teh 8.3 naming convention so froggerexe is too many characters for a filename.

[LYNXGUY]

So, what you'll then want to do is select L to load the game

and type in frogger.com

Try frogger.exe if this file is listed

 

Please let us know what happens, thanks