[Just got my SDrive Max...A thing of beauty..]

6 hours ago, Mr Robot said:

There is a version of the case with that on it. The designer of the case has chosen to not share the designs even though it is based on something they only had access to because someone chose to share it.

So we've got one person who has already sold 185 S-Drive Max units in a nice custom case that won't share the design yet (maybe in a couple of months). Another has made useful alterations to a community case design and won't share them. And still others are selling what sounds like hundreds of S-Drive Max's at $75-$100 per unit -- are they contributing anything back?

 

Everything they are doing is built on the hard work of members of the Atari community that have chosen to give their contributions away for free.

 

Hearing things like this makes it very difficult to continue to put work into this project ☹️

[Just got my SDrive Max...A thing of beauty..]

Sounds good. I'm hoping he'll contribute back to the community given what he is selling.

[Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative]

4 minutes ago, Zarxx said:

No problem. Noted. In future I'll check and filter the menu & verified images.

Sorry, just realized my comment seemed like it was directed at you -- it definitely was not. I just wanted to make sure _The Doctor_'s comment wasn't misinterpreted by anyone to mean we weren't interested in backup copies of originals.

 

However you want to contribute what you dump is fine. We can do any necessary filtering on our side ?

[Just got my SDrive Max...A thing of beauty..]

Agreed that the XE-style case is nice! Is there a 3D model for it available?

[Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative]

 

49 minutes ago, Zarxx said:

Small collection of around 50 disks from eBay. (Number 5)

Thanks for taking the time to dump these, @Zarxx

 

17 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Just a reminder that this is for preservation of original disks that are not pirates or copies for the most part

Just to make sure it's clear, we are still interested in copies if they retain the original copy protection. They can be helpful for verification purposes especially when we have originals that have corrupted data.

[Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative]

Thanks, @Zarxx. That allowed us to verify Phantom ?

[Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative]

Thanks for all your hard work archiving these disks, @rcamp48!

 

And thanks for posting Diskkeeper @Timothy Kline.

[Dixons pack releases (UK)]

The correct genre name for those is Interactive Fiction or could just call them text adventures

Be careful, it looks like Adventure International had a trademark on that term as early as 1980

 

https://archive.org/details/1980-07-compute-magazine/page/n32

[Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative]

Farb: Are you closer to me than toddtmmw? I live in Kitcener, Ontario, Canada....ya I am thinking of getting someone else to do it rather than risk ruining the disks.....I also have a whole pile of original Atari ST disks that I can send for preservation.

 

I'm going to guess Ohio is closer to you than Frankfurt but I'm happy to dump them if you send them my way :-)

 

I would recommend sending them to someone with a Kryoflux, though. There is a much better chance of getting all the data off the disks even though they are not copy protected.

[Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative]

Can I use APE on a 5.25 inch drive on my DOS 6.22 machine to dump these disks, none of them are copy protected, they are all flippies with 90 K formats from the original Atari 8 bit users group, and they look like they are in good condition. Russ Campbell

Yes, you can dump them that way as well.

 

Doing so will require running the disk through the drive twice (once for each side). A Kryoflux setup like toddtmw and myself have can do it in one pass. Additionally, the Kryoflux will read each track 5 times so there's a better chance of recovering data from parts of the disks that may be starting to go bad.

 

If you do go down the route of dumping them yourself, be sure to check the drive head periodically for dirt and clean it if needed. One dirty disk dump can prevent subsequent disks from dumping correctly.

[Lost Epyx Titles?]

I can't imagine they were renamed as Epyx had gone to the trouble of printing name and game details which would be counter productive in getting the people interested and then renaming it..

I wasn't necessarily suggesting that Epyx themselves renamed them -- otherwise we'd have games that match that description published by Epyx.

 

However, if they were contracted out to another company for development, it's possible they might have been released by a different publisher at some point in the future if Epyx had dropped them.

[Lost Epyx Titles?]

Is A8preservation.com up right now? I clicked on all those titles and your direct link in your sig, and it acts like it's loading, but never loads and just hangs, not even a failure to load notice of any kind...

It should be. I have occasionally seen the problem you are describing and don't yet know why it is happening. A browser reload usually clears it right up.

[Lost Epyx Titles?]

There were a few Epyx titles that were announced at 1982 C.E.S. but I have never seen released:

• Far Protector
  
• Fishes
  
• Qwerty Bird
  
• Soldiers of Sorcery
  

Does anyone know what happened to these games? Do the descriptions sound familiar to anyone as games that might have been released later under a different name?

[Atari : A Visual History Book is now LIVE on Kickstarter]

Just out of curiosity, is there a reason you chose to use later or European box covers for titles originally released in the U.S. using different artwork (e.g. Eidolon, Jumpman, Zaxxon, Beta Lyrae, Beach-Head, Spy vs. Spy: Island Caper, Rescue on Fractalus, etc.)?

[Atari compatible hardware eclaireXL, in mini form.]

The progress on this has been fantastic!

 

Is anyone in Europe able to print a case and willing to sell it? :-)

 

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6003 using Tapatalk

[Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative]

An update to the online database would be greatly appreciated.

The database that backs the a8preservation.com website is being actively kept up to date. So it should reflect the current state of things minus a few of the more recent contributions that haven't been processed yet.

[XE Telephone Book by Jan Iverson]

Thanks for dumping this title, Allan!

[XE Telephone Book by Jan Iverson]

Does anyone know anything about this title:

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/The-XE-Telephone-Book-Original-disk-Atari-400-800-XL-XE-XEGS-computers/254203205390?hash=item3b2fb1170e:g:vY0AAOSwTIFct5J0

 

Give the author (Jan Iverson), I wonder if it was an EZuse Software, XLEnt Software or just a PD/Shareware title.

[SDrive-ARM preorder]

sdrive max atx and respeqt are good places to look for some answers.

Just please respect the open source licenses of those projects. The code is not "free as in beer" :-)

[Question on disk flux transitions]

Hi all,

 

As a learning exercise, I've been looking at the flux values stored in SuperCard Pro files and it raised some questions about how this data is interpreted. I'm hoping someone here can help answer them. Here is a quick diagram:

 

 

My understanding based on looking through websites and PDFs on the Internet is that 8-bit SD disks use FM encoding which means flux transitions are interpreted as I've tried to show in the diagram. The values in the SCP file indicate the duration of each flux transition. I'm converting those values into microseconds using:

num * 25 * (driveRpm / 288.0) / 1000.0

I assume here that I need to account for the fact that my drive captured the data at 360 rpm but the data is intended to be read at 288 rpm.

 

1. I'm unclear what is considered a "bit cell". I had thought that the term referred to the 8 microsecond interval as shown in the diagram during which no transition means a 0 and a single transition means a 1. However, the SCP format documentation seems to indicate "bit cell" and "flux transition" are synonymous.

 

2. I can't seem to find any information on how to determine byte demarcations in the stream of bits.

 

3. In the flux output of a track with no copy protection, I see some transitions that are higher than the ~4 or ~8 us that I would expect (e.g. 11 us). What does that represent? Perhaps related to question #2?

 

I have looked at the a8rawconv source code to see how the FM decoding is done but it is not entirely clear why the code is doing what it is doing :-)

 

Thanks for any insight anyone can share.

[A8Pres Possible Additions?]

Is there a database or something I can check to see if we still need a dump. If we have 2 identical, Im thinking it might not be worth the risk to the drive.

 

Yes, the a8preservation.com website records all titles we have dumps for. Just look up the title, find the release (based on publisher, date and country) and then look to see if there are dumps flagged as "preserved" for that release. If there are, no need to risk dumping it.

 

I hope you can get your drive working again!

[A8Pres Possible Additions?]

I've finished the remaining dumps that have been uploaded so far:

 

The Factory - disk has a lot of corruption. The parts that were readable matched with a dump contributed by ClayCowgill.

MicroSailing - had some bad sector reads that appeared to be compensated for by the 4 other reads of the same sector that were present in the Kryoflux dump. This version doesn't require BASIC and we have no other dumps to compare it to yet.

Paint - Identical to two other Paint dumps that we have.

Action Adventures - had some read errors but the areas that were good were identical to the Atarimania dump. We will need one more good, original dump to consider this release preserved.

Arcade II - Differs from Atarimania dump by one byte in empty area of the disk.

Video Math Flashcards - Identical to Atarimania dump so we can consider this title preserved.

My First Alphabet - Identical to two other dumps of this title that we have.

Thanks again for taking the time to do these and look forward to seeing the rest!

[A8Pres Possible Additions?]

I've started processing your uploads. So far:

• Keyboard Organ is identical to our existing dump except yours is missing sector 14 so might be a bad disk.
• Space Shuttle is identical to our verified dump.
• Freaky Factory appears to be blank?

[Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative]

Too, others might choose to weigh in on how the torrent did last month to offer additional insight on reach/popularity.

 

Thanks for reporting the metrics. While it is interesting, I tend to view the level of contribution and participation as the gauge of reach/popularity rather than the number of downloads Without contributions, the project will die (or at least reach a state where no one cares about it anymore).

 

On that note, we have been seeing an uptick in contributions in the past couple of months so it's quite positive!

[A8Pres Possible Additions?]

Okay. I'm up and running!

 

Great work! That trail mix looks like an integral part of the setup