DjayBee

The latest builds do no longer show "long sector" with LFE DISK active (i.e. sector 706 of Solo Flight 2nd Edition).

Find attached some "Frankendisks" for games I found (cracked versions) on Atarimania which currently do not have an ATX dump. Also I added repaired versions of four bad dumps with gone-bad sectors on them. Since all of these use exactly the same protection as existing dumps, I was able to "uncrack" and integrate them into existing ATXs. Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, The Rev 387 (1984)(Adventure International)(US)(Side A)[p] Torrent has Rev 397 atx taken from this version Eidolon, The v1.1 (1985)(Epyx)(US)[!][req 64K] Torrent has v2.0 atx taken from this version S.A.G.A. 02 - Pirate Adventure v5.0-408 (1982)(Adventure International)(US)(Side A)[p] S.A.G.A. 02 - Pirate Adventure v5.0-408 (1982)(Adventure International)(US)(Side B)[p] "uncracked" Atarimania's atr atx from S.A.G.A. 03 S.A.G.A. 04 - Voodoo Castle v5.1-119 (1983)(Adventure International)(US)(Side A)[p] S.A.G.A. 04 - Voodoo Castle v5.1-119 (1983)(Adventure International)(US)(Side B)[p] "uncracked" Atarimania's atr atx from S.A.G.A. 13 S.A.G.A. 01 - Adventureland v5.0-416 (1982)(Adventure International)(US)(Side A)[p] S.A.G.A. 03 - Mission Impossible v5.0-306 (1982)(Adventure International)(US)(Side A)[p] removed BAD-CRC-flag of gone-bad sector in original atx missing sector data from Atarimania's atr S.A.G.A. 05 - The Count v5.1-115 (1983)(Adventure International)(US)(Side B)[p] copied (only) track 40 from SAGA 13's atx to the original atx (due to "extended data" for the gone-bad sector which I could not remove from the image) missing sector data from Atarimania's atr S.A.G.A. 06 - Strange Odyssey (1982)(Adventure International)(US)(Side B)[p] copied (only) track 12 from SAGA 3's atx to the original atx (due to "extended data" for the gone-bad sector which I could not remove from the image) missing sector data from Atarimania's atr Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, The Rev 387 (1984)(Adventure International)(US)p.zip Eidolon, The v1.1 (1985)(Epyx)(US)!req 64K.atx.zip S.A.G.A. 02 - Pirate Adventure v5.0-408 (1982)(Adventure International)(US)p.atx.zip S.A.G.A. 04 - Voodoo Castle v5.1-119 (1983)(Adventure International)(US)p.atx.zip S.A.G.A. 01 - Adventureland v5.0-416 (1982)(Adventure International)(US)(Side A)p.atx.zip S.A.G.A. 03 - Mission Impossible v5.0-306 (1982)(Adventure International)(US)(Side A)p.atx.zip S.A.G.A. 05 - The Count v5.1-115 (1983)(Adventure International)(US)(Side B)p.atx.zip S.A.G.A. 06 - Strange Odyssey (1982)(Adventure International)(US)(Side B)p.atx.zip

Second batch with these publishers: Activision, English Software, Gamestar, MicroProse and a few other disks. Updates and additions primarily for Broderbund, Epyx and Synapse. Same disclaimer as last time: Let me know if something does not work correctly because I only do a basic "gets-in-game check". ATXcracks02.zip

Some more findings: Quest of the Space Beagle, The (1984)(Avalon Hill)(US)(Disk 1 of 2 Side A)[bASIC][OS-B] empty ATX file with no sectors Rampage (1987)(Activision)(GB) PAL only My First Alphabet (1981)(Atari)(US)[bASIC] wrong name: in reality Ships Ahoy by Unicorn Software and needs NATO Commander (1983)(MicroProse Software)(US)[bASIC] NO basic needed

When playing around with disk images from MECC and Sunburst I found out that both companies used plain DOS with a modified disk layout. The VTOC and directory are moved to non-standard locations (MECC $16A and Sunburst $2C1 and $2C8). I wanted to access these disks and also to be able to copy files between these disks and standard disks. Inside the disk image you can find: Atari DOS 2.5 Four sample patchers for MECC, Sunburst and back to standard DOS A patcher to limit the modified VTOC to only drives D1 and D2 The MADS source code for both patchers A BASIC program to create patchers for arbitrary VTOC-locations Usage of the patchers: Load the patcher (i.e. MECC.16A) to access modified disks. If you load DOS25.168 the patches are reverted back to the standard locations. It patches only three bytes of DOS code and changes DOS' copyright text to identify itself. Load D3TOD8.168 before the patcher to change only accesses to D1 and D2. This way you can copy disks from and to standard disks in D3 to D8 - even the 130XE ramdisk. D3toD8 also enables VTOCs between sector $xF8 and $xFF Bbecause the way DOS is programmed it cannot handle a $100-boundary between VTOC and the last sector of the directory. This tool loads additional code to RAM at $100. If you write DOS files through DUP's menu then the patched DOS will be written to disk. Modifications done by D3toD8 will be automatically unloaded. Otherwise DOS would crash during boot because at this time the code of D3toD8 is not yet loaded. Usage MKPATCH.BAS: Enter a name for the copy right text to identify it Enter filename for it. The extension will automatically be the VTOC-location in hex. Enter the VTOC location in dec or hex. It writes the patcher to disk I hope this tool is useful to somebody else. Dos25Patch.atr

I mentioned MECC mainly because most entries on Atarimania tell "disk missing" and I was puzzled to find Music I and III in your list as missing Sunburst titles. I have all these "missing" MECC-titles but Geography and additionally the Classroom Toolbox which is not listed in the database. How can I identify the differences between MECC and APX/Atari? All dumps I have show the same on-disk structure and a loading screen similar to this one: I also try to consolidate several dumps of Word Games into a "virgin" program disk and an additional disk with all user generated word lists from these dumps. I got the impression that the word lists FRIENDS and DIPRAPH came with the software since these two are on every dump I have. Can anyone confirm this? Nope, I only have SemCalc and Survival Math from your list. Btw your dump of "Targets - A Number Game" contains some bad sectors inside needed files. If someone finds a second dump, we can repair it.

I have two more feature requests. *beg*beg* Being able to define the position of the VTOC for disks with a non-standard format (see attachment with a VTOC at sector 362) Export one or all files from an image TNX Word Games (1982)(MECC)(US)BASIC.atr

Contact your team member Allan for a whole bunch of disks from MECC (which are btw. missing from your Master List) and Sunburst Communications. I found some more but want to check them first.

ROFL We always talked of duplicate sectors here in Germany. Only when I recently saw that everywhere else people are using the term phantom sectors, I changed this. And yes, the new layout looks fine.

Why don't you omit the brackets and rotate it by 90 degrees? That way the whole disk fits in one window without the need to scroll. And I believe it would be more readable without the brackets. I prefer seeing how many phantoms there are instead of just a "p". I found a bug in the current version: If you drag&drop a file onto atrtools.exe, it will leave back a file atari.fon in the directory with the disk image you opened. Still rubbing my eyes

How about the following? O (bold) used sector . empty sector 2-9A-I 2-18 phantoms of the same sector number # more than 18 phantoms Bad states (all in inverse color): blank missing sector d deleted sector c bad crc w weak bits e extended data l lost data If there are phantom sectors with bad state then invert the phantom-count as well.

Ah, OK. I was thinking of just one character per sector and for phantoms one hex-digit showing the number of sectors (accepting the seldom shortcoming that it is not possible to show more than 15 phantoms of the same sector). Selfish as I am, I would like to have it for documentation purposes (where I cannot hover the mouse over something).

Nope, the image in my post is done with a standard sector copier and lacks any feature beyond empty/used/bad. Having this information is helpful in cracking.

Can you add a sector count for phantom sectors (2-9A-F)? Ignoring the facts that 1. there might me more than 15 phantoms and 2. phantoms can have a bad status.

I have a feature request: Show a sector map for the whole disk image which shows full, empty, bad and phantom sector (with count). See the attachment for a "light version" of what I mean (tracks horizontally, sectors vertically)

Unfortunately Farb's torrent only contains an ATX for part1 and a separate disk of Hijack!. If you have disks for the other parts, then please dump them or let somebody dump them.

Something special for Mr. Bacardi Atari Smash Hits - Volume 1 (1985)(English Software Company)(GB).atr

Yep, they do not run with the PAL video system. I stumbled over it when I tried them on my hardware. Setting Altirra to NTSC made them work. They do work with NTSC video and a PAL OS. Interestingly Dimension X works fine in PAL.

Here you go with what I currently have. I worked along publishers and have done so far (with only a few exceptions): Adv. Intl., APX, Avalon Hill, Broderbund, Datasoft, Epyx, First Star, Sierra On-Line, Sirius, Synapse and by request many old educational titles from HesWare, MECC and Sunburst As already said: There might be some traps later on, since I only went in-game for a short time. Let me know. Concerning the of documentation I have: I am in discussion with a board member to put them online. Have fun ATXcracks01.zip

Hi, that was a lot of response. Is it possible to attach a 6 MB ZIP-file to a post here on AA? This is actually a good idea since I only do a quick test on PAL hardware and oly getting in-game. Haven't done any English Software yet and also did not dare to tackle ECA since I remember them to be hard from back then. But we'll see. If you think of Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus: They replace the SIO-routines completely and are quite difficult.

Using ATX files with real Atari computers is not easy or straightforward. Since I never liked cracks with modified intros or missing loading graphics, some years ago I cracked and documented some ATXs of games I liked back in the day. This year I continued to do this just for fun and meanwhile have reached 140+ disks. My first goal is to simulate the protection and needed checksums instead of just patching the protection out. My second goal is to change as few as possible on the disk images (quite often less than 10 bytes). If there is some general interest in these dumps I will make them public. So let me know if they are of any use.

Modifying something (i. e. sector status)? *hoping*

The final step would be emulation of a Happy drive inside the Atari emulator on the PC. Then it would be easy and straightforward to dump protected disks to ATX files. /me is just dreaming

Atari_Ace, your script helped resurrecting all these disks : Basic Arithmetic (1982)(MECC)(US)[bASIC] Classroom Toolbox (1983)(MECC)(US)[bASIC] Counting (1983)(MECC)(US)[bASIC] Elementary Biology (1982)(MECC)(US)[bASIC] Expeditions (1983)(MECC)(US)[bASIC] Pre-Reading (1982)(MECC)(US)[bASIC] Spelling Bee (1983)(MECC)(US)[a][bASIC] Word Games (1982)(MECC)(US)[bASIC] Earth Science (1982)(APX)(US)[bASIC] Music I - Terms and notations (1982)(APX)(US)[OS-B][bASIC] Music II - Rhythm and Pitch (1982)(APX)(US)[OS-B][bASIC] Music III - Scales and Chords (1982)(APX)(US)[OS-B][bASIC] Semantic Calculator, The (1983)(Sunburst)(US)[bASIC] Survival Math (1982)(Sunburst(US)(Disk 1)[bASIC] Survival Math (1982)(Sunburst(US)(Disk 2)[bASIC] thanks again

Thanks for your help. Your ATX was not exactly what I wanted but with your script I was able to do the job. Semantic Calculator, The (1983)(Sunburst)(US)BASIC.zip