Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store

Farb

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    859

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by Farb

    Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted

    22 hours ago, seastalker_returns said:

    IF the best backup method is to use a borrowed drive with RespeQt or AspeQt, or with an a borrowed 10502PC Sio2PC USB REV2 with KAFAR software, I'm all ears.

    Thanks for the offer to the community. If they are truly rare and undumped, please don't use them in an Atari 1050. There are folks here that have Kryoflux, SuperCard Pro and/or Greaseweazle (and experience using them) which are much safer options.  But you've probably already seen this mentioned many times in this thread 😁

     

    Perhaps @Bill Lange or @Pheonix could assist? If I'm not mistaken, they are not terribly far from you.

    Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted · Edited by Farb

     

    12 hours ago, ChrisChiesa said:

    My main concern is -- did you test the images you got at the end of the Kryoflux extraction process?

    I'm not sure who "you" refers to in this context? It is probably helpful to differentiate between people posting their flux dumps to this (or other) forum topics and the people doing the actual preservation work for the project. As I see it, the former are providing contributions to the latter. One should never assume that any one dump is 100% good without further information 🙂

     

    12 hours ago, ChrisChiesa said:

    I ask because the great majority of .atr disk images I've downloaded from the Internet have something wrong with them and will not work properly until I've investigated, debugged, and patched them, in one way or another.

    My frustration with this was the very reason I started working on this project.

     

    12 hours ago, ChrisChiesa said:

    did you actually boot, run, and put-through-its-paces every disk?  Somehow, with the number of items involved, I'm inclined to doubt it.

    It is extremely difficult to fully put every title "through its paces" as it requires both a lot of time and detailed knowledge of how the title should perform. You can imagine the time investment needed to fully test an Alternate Reality or Ultima IV release for example. And if you do encounter bugs or problems -- were they there originally or was it the result of a bad dump? Or maybe even emulator settings? Even on real hardware, OS revision, memory, video standard, BASIC revision, etc. can all affect how a program behaves.

     

    Any official ATX files that the preservation project releases will have a [!] in its filename if it's considered "verified". This means we have at least two examples (often more) of independently dumped media with completely identical data, media structure, media anomalies (e.g. protection), etc. These are often created on different disk drives and using different hardware (e.g. Kryoflux, SuperCard Pro, Greaseweazle, etc.) You can see full provenance for every dump we release on our website.

     

    Also note that ATX files preserve much more of the original disk information than an ATR does so it is our preferred distribution format for disks.

     

    At the end of the day, however, we are making a pretty fundamental assumption -- if multiple dumps of a title are identical in every practical way, then they are "good" regardless of how they behave. We've processed several thousand dumps and have seen no evidence that this is a bad approach. Using this process, for example, we have found releases of software that clearly had mastering errors in an early release that were fixed in a later one -- or later releases of titles that subtly altered the type of copy protection employed.

     

    Anyway, I hope this helps in understanding what we are doing and how we are trying to tackle the concerns you've expressed.

    • Like 5
    • Thanks 3

    Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted · Edited by Farb

    Thanks for your detailed analysis, @NewRisingSun.

    7 hours ago, NewRisingSun said:

    The latter behavior makes this game effectively unplayable, which is why I am surprised to see it on an original disk. Unless there is a way to kill trapped enemies after all that I am not seeing, and that would be radically different from the later version.

    I know this is a full retail release because it was a disk my father bought from a local computer store in 1982. I'm not sure what problem you are seeing, but I just tested and if you hit a trapped apple repeatedly over the head with your shovel, it will fall through the hole and disappear. You need to let the shovel bashing happen "automatically" via a single button press.

     

    MACE Newsletter v2n4 (April 1982) mentions that the version they tested occasionally doesn't play sound when digging. I saw this same phenomenon with our e76f1e59 ATX so that supports your theory that it is likely the first release.

     

    Based on your analysis, I have swapped [a] and [a2] in our database and noted how they differ [a keyboard crash bug] and [a2 no bad sector check].

    • Like 1

    Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted

    On 9/21/2022 at 2:25 PM, Great Hierophant said:

    My friends found a copy of Chuck Benton's version of Sierra's Frogger for the Atari 8-bit machines while trying to redump the PC version.

    Thanks for the contribution!

    14 hours ago, firebottle said:

    Edit: I looked this up on Atarimania and it says "Press N when HEX:BB 12 appears on screen, N again after Y TO SAVE? and Y after PLAY GAME?."

    As a general rule, when having problems loading one of the dumps we publish, you can first check the page on our website for that dump. In this case: http://www.a8preservation.com/#/software/dump/345

    14 hours ago, firebottle said:

    So I guess this is a machine language game...

    Thanks for pointing this out. I have corrected BASIC -> machine language in the database (which automatically updates the loading instructions).

    Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted

    We don't track changes in the preservation database currently so it would take effort to do so. As you said, since the Atari files are pretty small, Internet connections are so fast these days and our release cadence is low, it doesn't really seem like a problem worth solving at the moment vs. us focusing on other priorities. Besides, the stream of new contributions has slowed down considerably, so I don't expect our current release cadence to continue once our pending backlog is processed which will likely happen over the next release or two.

     

    The DAT files that are included in every release could be diff'ed and a list of changed files created. So it should be possible for an entreprenurial community member to create update packs if they really wanted to.

    Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted

    8 minutes ago, rcamp48 said:

    Because all of this hardware will cost over $2000 US , and I was wondering how many users would be interested in Subscriber access for life for a certain amount , have not decided yet how much, but I will have Telnet, FTP, Secured access to all of this plus a secured web page.

    May I kindly ask you to move this conversation to its own thread? I don't want there to be any confusion that this is associated with the preservation project.

     

    Thanks!

    Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted

    6 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said:

     

    As everything is dated June 28th or 29th, there's no way to know when the last modification for a given title took place unless you unzip the file, nor is there information on any added software.

    We aren't tracking individual changes at the DB level. Easiest thing is to do a text diff between the new DAT file and the previous one to see what has changed.

    Atari compatible hardware eclaireXL, in mini form.

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted · Edited by Farb
    Grammar typo

    21 minutes ago, tschak909 said:

    You coordinate a massive preservation effort, and subsequently wall it off after a considerable mass has been gathered.

    Hmm, so let me get this straight... our "massive preservation effort" that incurs a significant cost to run and maintain, gives all of its work back to the community for free and has never asked for a penny in return is still not sufficient for your tastes?

     

    The assets that are "walled off" as you refer to it are not yet ready to be distributed in their current form - this project has always been about curation. I've reached out to this community before for help accelerating things. It has largely met with silence.

     

    So thanks, you've supported my previous point perfectly.

    • Like 1

    Atari compatible hardware eclaireXL, in mini form.

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted

    (Ok, since we're venting...)

     

    I for one am grateful that this project was created and the its creators were kind enough to publish the v1 board to the community. Even that is more than they had to do. I personally have no problem with them selling them - would you prefer that the project was never created at all?

     

    I really don't understand the attitude some folks have that those who put significant time and effort into creating something are somehow obligated to give it away for free and/or distribute it under someone else's terms. All of this stuff takes a ton of work - do the people making demands ever reach out to creators to ask how they can help achieve what is being asked for? Or it just easier to insult them and move on?

AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2023 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...