Shannon

Nah that's ok. I'll stop the discussion. No need to continue. I know about the dysfunctional virtual keyboard. Anywho it functions well enough. I'm just saying that after using several computer based emulators ( Atari 800, Atari St, Amiga, C64) that retroarch could be far better. That is all.

I am very familiar with the atari8000 emulator. I maintain and compile the xbox version and I can tell you setting it up in retroarch and especially using keyboard based games is a PITA in retroarch. My xbox version is certainly easier to set up on a game by game basis. So I think you are very wrong in your assessments. I am mostly referring to running retroarch on a console based system which mainly relies on controllers and use of keyboards is not that common. A lot of the internal atari800 functionality is not even accessible from the standard retro-arch option menu. I have gotten many titles to run just fine on it. But not as many as I'm able to get running on the xbox version or a PC build of Atari800. The retroarch version is far more difficult to set-up than it needs to be. Try running a BIN image without a CART header on it and see just how far you get. No "true" analog support for 5200 games. I could make a whole list of things it makes far more difficult than they need to be. This goes for pretty much every computer based emulator in retroarch.

Not sure where you hear that one. Also RetroArch ports of computer emulators ( and in some cases console emulators ) tend to muck things up. The joystick / keyboard interface leaves a lot to be desired and they don't always expose all of the emulator options in the interface. Even when they do it's not the most organized. Still regardless it would be kind of nice to see. Atari800 for retroarch is barely functional.

How ironic and totally classic!

Plus 1 on that... Or would that be a negative 1?

I've been going through some of these images.. lately and I made an interesting observation about Bouderdash (Prime Leisure). Being that it is a UK/GB release of course I set the system to PAL. Well it appears the timing on the demo mode is off so Rockford manages to get stuck in some unusual situations! I did some more testing and switched to NTSC mode and of course the demo mode is fine. So I guess they didn't take much care in porting this particular title. Something I gather happened quite a lot!

Wish I could help. But all of my testing has been limited to emulation.

ok. Thanks alot for the answer. While doing some updating I realized that the OS-A AND OS-B ROM sets that I had were PAL ( one wasn't "technically" a real BIOS ). So I've been focusing on making sure I have the right sets for what I need.

Again. Thanks for your continuing support of our favorite 8-bit computer. I have a question. I'm looking at OS sets and I'd like to know the difference between OS-A NTSC and OS-A PAL. Is there a doc out there that breaks down the diff between the many versions that have been discovered over the years? Thank you

Just an update. @phaeron Thanks alot! That did the trick. I looked at the code and it was initializing KBCODE to 0x255. So I changed that to 0x00 and problem solved! So that makes for another thing fixed in Atarixlbox! Earlier I implemented bank switch handling code for 5200 64k and 512k carts. Does anyone know if 5200 images exist for 128k or 256k? I haven't tried that yet cause I don't know of any to test. I even updated the GTIA code to properly run Bosconian. Which works good in XE mode.. still has weird display issues in 5200 mode that I have to figure out.

Oh wow.. thanks Phaeron... after reading all that fancy dancy PORTB handling code in version 1.3 it looks like the solution is simpler. I will look into what you just mentioned and see if I can cook up something. Thank you.

I hope I'm not driving you guys crazy with all these questions. I have another one. I'm just trying to figure out if it is an emulator issue or a protection issue. Spy vs Spy and Spy vs Spy II. When running them in the Atari 800 emulator. Once the game loads it skips the options screen where you can set the options and starts running the game. Is this a result of copy protection checks failing? Thank you, Edit. Just for kicks I downloaded the xex versions from fandal's site and they appear to have the same behavior. So that makes me lean towards some issue with the Atari 800 emulator. The games work perfectly fine in Altirra. So maybe an issue with how Atari 800 handles the option/select/start keys? Edit 2: Found this in Altirra release notes.. - This game wins the Stupid Atari Trick of the Day award for using the joystick port output register (PORTA) to hold an XOR encryption key. Fixed. So I'm gonna take a look and see if that is the issue.

Weird.. I could have sworn I tried booting from Side B... But it seems to be ok now. Thanks

ok. Thanks for the info. I was just wondering if they just never continued converting the originals into the new graphic adventure or if those particular titles were just not around for archiving. BTW Adventures #2 and #4 .. I tried the .ATX files in the latest archive made available and all I get is a screen saying that if it is a single disk game to flip the disk and press enter. If a two disk game to insert the second disk. I didn't have this issue with other ones in the archive or with the ATR files that I currently have.

When I first saw this my first reaction was "Oh Shit!".. I just talked to him via PM on August 23rd about the control board in my awesome arcade machine ( something he was involved with at some point ) and I was patiently waiting to hear back from him only to find this out. He will be missed for sure and condolences to his family.

I got another question that's non necessarily protection related. But the S.A.G.A. series.. How come it stops at 7 and then picks up again at 13? Did 7 thru 12 even exists? It just seems odd there would be non.. not even "cracked" versions..

ok. Thanks for that info. I was getting my information from one of Phaeron's Doc which didn't mention that by default it implements a single floating bus. I just knew he had it as an option because it was resource intensive. I did see comments about Wargames in the source code when I was glancing through it. That's just an interesting piece of information. For the longest time I never even heard of dual floating buses on the Atari 800.

While I'm thinking about it. I noticed something interesting about some of the EA disk protection. In particular I'm thinking of the game M.U.L.E. But I'm sure other EA games are affected by this as well. In the Atari800 emulator I set the computer to Atari 800 so that the game would have access to all "four" of the joysticks. As you all know typically 48k is the highest the A800 would go. Well strangely enough the game would stop with the message "remove custom OS". So after looking into it I found that the protection checks $C000 for omnimon I believe? Anyways while tinkering around I found out that setting the memory to 52k in Atari800 would remedy the situation. Also the game is unaffected when in Atari 800XL mode ( but no four ports sadly ). So out of curiosity I tried it on Altirra under the same config ( A800 48k ) and the game loads fine. After some reading it appears to have something to do with the Atari 800 having a floating bus or something like this? So I guess the floating bus is not emulated in the Atari800. Altirra has it as an "option" in the menu but it must duplicate some of the behavior of the bus with that option unchecked. I'm just curious about peoples thoughts on this.

Nice. I'd have to say adding the comments really does help. Especially for demo's that are in other languages. Converting to MyPicoDOS is good as well. Thank you for doing that.

Ok so I'm a whole year late.. Interesting hack.. but I don't like how you can run into the spider "string" when he is going back up. On the original unmodified version you can actually slip underneath the spider when he is moving up. Not so in this version. Otherwise it seems pretty ok.

Well thanks for the help guys. I don't spend as much time messing with demo's as I do with all of the other stuff. So I'd like to get my set a little more organized while it is on my mind.

Thanks for the info. Like you said putting an emulator in fast forward does the trick just as well. Also creating a save state for after a game is completely loaded works out rather nicely.

Thanks invisible kid. That looks like that is it! Seems my collection IS complete. I thought for sure I only downloaded maybe 7 or so of the disks. It was a pretty cool site from what I remember.

Weird... I was able to play the one available on Atarimania ( In Atari800 ) for several levels with no weird issues. As for Altirra.. it actually has drive D : acceleration code that can handle most ATX protection formats. I've only occasionally had to turn it off.

Nope that's not it.. The homesoft disks use Boot manager.. the ones I have use My Pico Dos for a boot menu.. here is one attached as an example.. I only have disk 1 and 5 for some reason. I'm not sure what happened to the rest, if any, that I may have had. DEMOS001.rar Luckily enough I was able to find the demos on one of my drives. I had a couple hard drives fail on me the last couple years so I thought for sure it was a goner.. The directory is labeled MegaDemo. It has 24 disks in it. I also have an HTML file that looks like it is from the following site "http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/" Which appears to be no longer. Does this ring any bells for anyone? If anything this is a start. I just wanted to slowly piece together what I have and see what I can do with it.