[What is this?]

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/atari-acquires-atariage

 

[Altirra 4.10 released]

Help please regarding the "Printer Output" window.

 

I wanted it big and dragged it out of the main window.

Afterwards I wanted it to return to the main window but unfortunately docked it in the same place as the display.

Now I cannot move it anymore because it does not have a "title bar" like the "Call Stack" in the below screenshot. I also cannot close it because the "X" is missing too.

[Fujiama 2023]

1 hour ago, MrFish said:

I presume this is some type of variant NUC casing?

 

Nope, this is an FPGA based Eclaire.

[New Atari 800XL Revive Machine?]

The real problem is lack of "implementations". Santosp's Eclaires are the only ones I know of and he has not built these for years now.

 

Since foft's core is so mature, I really don't understand why the RM800XL guys insist in burning their time creating their own core from scratch.

[Fujiama 2023]

This is only helpful, if you either know about ABBUC or that Fujiama is an Atari meeting.

 

I talked to Mathy and he agreed to add something like "German Atari meeting" to future announcement postings here on AtariAge.

[Space Taxi - A8B version]

37 minutes ago, Yellowman said:

In the next ABBUC magazine there will be a game test of Space Taxi V2.4, no V2.5, I updated it quickly.

Like, there is now V2.6, well there are more ABBUC Magazine issues 

We might make it a permanent feature series in the magazine "Space Taxi for Power Gamers".

[Altirra 4.10 released]

7 minutes ago, woj said:

it seems the Sophia special registers cannot be read and written in one session of SPECEN flag (I mean, they can, but it messes up the internal configuration).

To me this sounds like a question for @Simius

[New Atari 800XL Revive Machine?]

And also reinventing the wheel for no obvious reason does not make too much sense.

[AdventureWriter & The Quill]

12 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

You aren't listening,

You aren't reading, 😎

CaseBooks 1&2 are parts of the first release.

Casebook 3 is the second release.

They are all present but there is no release named #2.

[NTSC core for VBXE?]

It seems Poland can not only create dramas but also great endings to them.

[NTSC core for VBXE?]

41 minutes ago, Piotr D. Kaczorowski said:

Given the scale of production at Lotharek's (I'll become his spokesperson in a moment), answering all questions (and the level of user questions, for example from the Atari 8-bit Computers group on FB, is such that they ask whether the J1 connector with a marked square on pin #1 is definitely pin #1, and where pin #2 is located?) would result in a doubling of products' prices, because an entire support department would have to be financed.

My only request was "I have received a tracking number from you but after two weeks my parcel is still only announced in the post's system" kept unanswered forever.

 

The parcel arrived later in good shape but still inquiries about missing parcels should be handled.

[NTSC core for VBXE?]

3 minutes ago, wildstar87 said:

was met with utter silence.

This seems to be the default way of answering to inquiries by the vendor.

[DOS 1 was Awesome!]

7 minutes ago, pcrow said:

I think there was some trick with NOTE/POINT in DOS 2 where you could end up with sectors in the middle of a file with less than 125 data bytes. 

This happens every time you open a file to append (unless the writing before ended exactly on the end of the sector by coincidence). 

[Duck! Me? - An old-fashioned 1980's style text adventure]

@jindroush you might have a try with your interpreter. 

[New Atari 800XL Revive Machine?]

2 hours ago, ijor said:

I'm not sure I understand. What's the difference between this and the Eclaire XL by @foft & @santosp? Just a matching case and keyboard? Or I'm missing something here?

 

This is the big unanswered question because the project is very vague in describing what they intend to create. 

They talk of both FPGA and emulation. 

[Datamost's Monster Smash as cartridge]

@Allan found a version of Monster Smash which was released by bargain-bin publisher Main Street Publishing (MSP from now on).

 

Today I did the usual dump-checking for a8preservation.com and made a quite interesting finding.

 

Most of Datamost's titles are heavily copy protected.

Most MSP releases have no copy protection at all and releases of other bargain-bin publishers, namely Green Valley Publishing, are quite often literally cracks.

 

I was curious, mapped the disk and alas there is no copy protection.

Then I did a binary compare to Datamost's original release which did not match at all. Both programs are truly different versions.

 

The left pane shows a RAM dump from Datamost and the right one the AUTORUN.SYS from Allan's MSP disk.
You can clearly see that Datamost's version has added code.

 

When I extracted the 12 KB AUTORUN.SYS, I saw that there are two more files on MSP's release. Booting the game in Altirra with ".tracecio on" revealed that none of them is actually loaded.

SCNMOV.OBJ is an 84 byte program which lowers MEMTOP to 32 KB and then reinitializes E:.

The second file ATMS3.CRT was more interesting. It is 8 KB and a closer look showed that it is a binary which loads to $A000-$BFFF with a run address of $AB2C.

 

Hmmm, what might this be?

I ran it in Altirra and ended up in BASIC (emulated XL) and MEMO PAD (emulated 800).

But it loads into the cartridge area and it also has a valid cart run address at $BFFA which also points to $AB2C, just like the run address of the file.

Hmmm, this might be a cartridge dump which does not run from RAM... (and which might have been the source of the - I thought probably cracked - AUTORUN.SYS).

 

Strip the first six bytes (XEX-header) and the last six bytes (run address) from the file. Now it is exactly 8 KB.

I loaded it as an 8 KB cartridge into Altirra and had a running Monster Smash.😎

 

Interesting...

Does Atarimania or a8preservation have an entry for a cartridge of this game?

No, both do not.

 

Let's examine the AUTORUN.SYS and compare it to the cartridge image.

The AUTORUN loads from $9000-$BFFF and runs at $AB2C just like the cart.

 

Now compare them and see if MSP has only added 4 KB of "something" to make the cartridge code run from RAM.

 

Yes and no. This bar shows the differences between the files (top cartridge, bottom AUTORUN.SYS).

You can see that there is a block of 4 KB unique to the AUTORUN but other than that they are more than mostly identical.

The small rectangle a bit right from the center represents the memory shown in the next screen shot.

 

Nearly all of the differences are replacements of JSR $AACD with JSR $9200 which I do not understand because $AACD is only an RTS command while at $9200 is the start of a larger routine.

Since I am not an expert in cartridges I stopped here and leave it to somebody else to find out what exactly happens there.

 

Disk imageMainStreetPublishing_MonsterSmash.atr

Cartridge image MonsterSmash.car exported from Altirra as CAR

[simple 800 XL spreadsheet cartridge]

1 hour ago, Geister said:

Has anybody put SynCalc on cartridge?

Like print a label and stick it on? 🤪

[Storing game high scores for legacy games on TNFS servers.]

952 Bros (German Mario Bros. clone)

 

Bros.zip

 

[Lunar Leeper]

Ultra-mega-necro-bump.

 

This image should work on any OS:

Lunar Leeper [any OS].atr

 

@therealbountybob If it works OK, you might use it for the HSC.

[Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative]

4 minutes ago, manterola said:

Millionaire is flippy (with two index holes and a second write knotch) but I cannot find any C64 mention. I still think it may need to be dumped just in case.

Regarding ML Baseball it has the Game Disk (B 1007) and one Teams Disk (B 1984). Interesting it looks like mine has different labels than the ones in the a8preservation.com

Thanks!

 

If they fit in your luggage, bring them to Fujiama.

[Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative]

6 hours ago, manterola said:

Months ago, I won an Atari lot and found some strategic games in it. I'm wondering if any of these games need to be preserved, or if they have all been dumped already. (See the pictures attached). 

Thanks!

 

Is Millionaire a C64/Atari flippy disk?

If yes, then it is not dumped.

 

Is ML Baseball the program itself or some additional disk?

[Storing game high scores for legacy games on TNFS servers.]

316 Lunar Leeper

 

Two dumps because it is either OS-B only (original) or XL-OS only (Fandal fix).

I made a universal version which works with any OS.

 

Lunar Leeper.zip

 

[Space Taxi - A8B version]

36 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

unless you sample SAM after you tweak the crap out of the phonemes!

I understood the idea as tweak the crap out of the phonemes and have SAM speek "live".

[My Software Library: A Preservation Effort]

46 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

I thought the Black Patch had a 1987 version and a 1989 version, the latter having updates and more titles.

Exactly.

Soulbuster's version is 1.1 and has 1989 on the program disks label.

 

There is also a v1.0 which then must be from 1987.

[My Software Library: A Preservation Effort]

6 minutes ago, SoulBuster said:

The fourth disk did not have any damage on it that I could see.

Fourth disk?

Your ZIP contains only one Master and two data disks.

Plus I suspected that data disk 2 ist actually side B of data disk 1, which would bring the disk count down to two.

 

Do you actually own two sets? Then please dump the second one as well.