DjayBee

I blindly replaced some stuff in the image. Please try the attached one if it works with more than two programs. And pleaase tell us how to operate the menu at all. PSTAR24A-maybe-cracked.ATR

I am not even able to select anything from Print Star's menu. Hmmm, how do you do that? I can only press ENTER. The disk is accessed an the message "Disk einlegen" appears. FInd attached a version with three protection checks removed. Btw.: Is it correct that the disk checks for a duplicate sector? PRNTST1A-cracked.ATR

Not as far as I know. But I did a quick test-unzip of the whole July-2016 torrent and attached the list here. FarbList.zip

Farb does exactly this.

Done this before; it is part of Farb's preservation torrent which is another fine reference for dumped stuff: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/234684-atari-8-bit-software-preservation-initiative/ Your version is identical but seems to be untouched because it does not have any saved text. HomeWord v1.3 (1984)(Sierra On-Line)(US)(a).atr HomeWord v1.3 (1984)(Sierra On-Line)(US)(a).atx.zip

I know that some Microsprose games do not work in PAL with exactly your problem that the keyboard is not working. Verify if your images work in Altirra in PAL video mode.

For the sake of completeness in preservation I created copy-protected images of both titles. Unfortunately ATX does not yet support ED disks, so I had to use ProSystem format. Btw.: Saper Constructor checks for a duplicate sector $39b/923. I just added some fake data for the 2nd one and it now runs - this should sometime be replaced with the correct data. Alchemist, The (19xx)(Softscan)(GB)(p).pro.zip Saper Constructor (1993)(ANG Software)(NL)(p).pro.zip

Bring 'em in.

The only difference to the one in the torrent - beside the now missing bad dumped sectors - is sector 720. The ATX has an incorrect alignment for sure; don't know for the original disk. If somebody is eager to find out if bad sector 111 is also needed for copy protection, play the attached crack in Altirra and put a breakpoint to "read sector 111". The crack has removed five protections incl. the skew alignment. Zeppelin (1983)(Synapse Software)(US).atr Zeppelin - Documentation.txt

How do you distinguish them?

This one looks much better in emulation(!) but still fails the alignment check approx. every 4th time. It has only one bad sector (111/$6F) outside track 5 which holds all protections except the alignment. Compare this to: The "old" dump from remowilliams succeeds(!) approx. every 4th time and has 11 bad sectors. There are possible reasons that it is needed: - The same sector is bad in the dump from remowilliams. - Zeppelin has several protection routines which are called at different points, so this call might be hidden somewhere. There are also possible reasons that it is not needed: - All code I have found up to now is unscrambled/unencrypted in RAM. - I could not yet find any reference to sector 111 in the code. Let's wait for another dump to show up and compare again. I will also come up with a crack soon, so somebody can play it and set a breakpoint to sector 111.

Post the image here. It might be easily fixable: Must if not all Artworx games use DOS as loader which could be repaired. Their copy protection (if already applied) is not very sophisticated and can be cracked or recreated.

Crackers with attitude who support their users.

Zeppelin (1983)(Synapse Software)(US) restarts quite often between games when it does one of its secondary protection checks. Therefore I suspect the dump to be bad. Perhaps somebody else can verify this behaviour with the attached dump. The protection choses a random track except tracks 5 and 6 and reads its 1st sector and immediately the 1st sector of the following track. The needed time is verified against a table and the game reboots if the check fails. Set a breakpoint to $2395 for the start of the initializing routine. Sector 37 is bad which does not make sense with the above protection because it will destroy the needed timing. In Altirra the timing itself fails nearly every time making the game reboot. This might be due to a non-perfect disk emulation in Altirra, but I doubt this to be true. Farb: Do you still have the original disk to verify the dump? Does somebody else have a working original disk which could be dumped? Zeppelin (1983)(Synapse Software)(US).atx.zip

If you want it really hardcore then go for this1): http://blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2017/03/atari-400-usb-keyboards.html *ducks* and *runs* 1) Link taken from Episode 41 of ANTIC podcast

These are due to lacking compatibility of the FAT-32 launcher. Some forum posts on Atarimax' forum describe the loader as not very compatible. Zaxxon boots only one sector and then EORs some of its code with the CHKSUM of the boot sector. Unfortunately CHKSUM is set to $00 with FAT-32 loader. The other two crash somewhere inside the modified MyIDE-OS. I could not immediately track down the direct cause for these crashes.

This is what I did to make it work: I created and attached a blank CF-image with 64 MByte using VHD Manager http://www.sordum.org/8705/simple-vhd-manager-v1-3/ - There is a certain minimum size above 16 MB for the image.(Images I created from inside Altirra where not mounted by my Win7-64bit in a way that I could format them - dunno why.) When the image was attached to the PC for the first time, a popup showed up that let me format it immediately (Use FAT). I copied the ATRs, mathpack.bin and osb.bin to the image's root-directory and flagged the two bin-files "hidden". Detached the image from Windows. Added the MyIDE][ device to Altirra AND added the CF-image as a hard drive to the MyIDE][ device (which is not obvious). Last I added the MyIDE][.bin as a BIOS to Altirra's list of firmware files. Current problems are: I don't know how to operate MyIDE's menu correctly. You must select the 2nd item to start the FAT-32 loader.I push "down" and the highlight in the menu disappears. Then pushing "2" and Enter starts the loader (without visual feedback). After coldstarting the emulated Atari the above menu selection does not work anymore. I have to close and restart Altirra.

I thought that the post Atari Nut pointed me to, contained some BIOS-image for the MyIDE. Thanks to you an Mclaneinc. The osb_roms.zip contained the OS and mathpack. Now it works at least in 130XE mode. I did no longer try to find out how to get a 512k RAM MyIDE in 400/800 emulation.

It might ... if the forum would allow me to register. The darn thing always answers "one of your responses below was not correct" when I try to register. Can somebody please supply me with the files attached to: https://www.atarimax.com/flashcart/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2079&p=10256#p10256 and https://www.atarimax.com/flashcart/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1330

THANKS that worked but now I have the next problem: When I boot as 400/800 (48k or 576k) it tells me that I need a MyIDE with 512kB RAM When I boot as 130XE it tells me that it cannot find OS-B ROMs

If someone can show me how to use the MyIDE-II emulation in Altirra then I can try to track down the cause. I am able to attach the MyIDE-II device to the emulation and also to load the BIOS for it. When booting, it shows a menu with #2 being the FAT32-loader which I can select. It then asks to insert FAT32 formatted CF-card. But I have no clue how to 1. create and 2. attach the needed image of a CF-card.

It might be due to a failing OS-verification. Try the attached version of Zaxxon. It's verification has been disabled. Zaxxon (1983)(Datasoft)(US).atr

If you refer to Farb's Software Preservation torrent: It contains only still-protected ATX images. Most of my cracks are based on these images. To get all my cracks you need to downlad all three archives ATXcracks0*.zip.

Yep, I stole this idea from ProSystem which marks protected images in red. Up to now I manually fed REG-files into RegEdit to accomplish it. It helps a lot when you have ATX and ATR with the same name in a directory. Find attached a modified ICO which I extracted from Altirra, painted it red in Gimp and exported it as ICO again. I hope it does not only look valid but is useable as well. Altirra64-290-28_500.ico

Hi phaeron, I have a two small feature requests: Currently Altirra does not allow to create an ATR from a PRO or ATX with error or phantom sectors. Would it be possibile to have the user select to write it anyway - keeping sector contents of bad-state sectors and an arbitrary phantom instance? Sometimes it is useful to just have all data from a disk to work on; like for dump comparison or as a starting point of cracking. Can you add a red floppy icon for file associations of protected images in Explorer?