Dumping those cartridges

[ndary]

Another page is up, this time with information on how to dump those ATARI cartridges

 

http://ataripal.googlepages.com/cartdump

 

 

Enjoy

[Rybags]

Cool - but there is always the tried and true hot-swap technique.

 

I've posted my old utility that does them, but it only does the non-banked carts.

 

AFAIK, all the old commercial cart stuff is available for DL anyway.

[Ross PK]

Lol, I thought you ment throwing them out for a second there when I read the title.

[joeventura]

Another page is up, this time with information on how to dump those ATARI cartridges

 

http://ataripal.googlepages.com/cartdump

 

 

Enjoy

 

 

Why do none of the links on

http://ataripal.googlepages.com/

work?

 

You post all these pages but the top page does not link to any of them?

[ndary]

Another page is up, this time with information on how to dump those ATARI cartridges

 

http://ataripal.googlepages.com/cartdump

 

 

Enjoy

 

 

Why do none of the links on

http://ataripal.googlepages.com/

work?

 

You post all these pages but the top page does not link to any of them?

 

ROSS, I consider to change the title,

 

the links does not work becuase i did not finish building my site... more pages to come

 

Ndary

[carmel_andrews]

Apart from the 'AR' to cart project (and gauntlet/summer games), has any other multistage disk game ever been converted (officially or otherwise) to cartridge, games like the zork series and omnitrends universe come to mind as well as winter olympics/winter events

[Wrathchild]

Hi Carmel,

 

I take it you mean titles that access the disk to load levels etc (e.g. Goonies), rather

than those that are simply multi-part loaders that load everthing into memory at the start?

Then you have the multi-disk games that access additional data (e.g. Infocom titles,

Winter Olympiad 88). Some titles do use their own IO routines, but not many. (AR games

and Koronis Rift and The Eidolon.)

 

From what I know of the flashcart using the tools available for making cart images

that contain actual dumps of the ATR, these will work OK so long as the game uses

standard I/O calls as these are remapped to obtain data from the image on the cart.

That is all well and good so long as the game uses 1 side only as no 'standard' way

of providing a safe way of facilitating the disk swap could work for all games.

However some get-around for that is say having 48K only games run on a 64K (or more)

machine and use the memory under the OS to provide the support routines.

Still you can run into issues though because the RAM under the cartridge memory

maybe required at the time you access (swap in) the ROM, e.g. its dlist/screen memory

maybe there or some IRQ handler routines. If they aren't there when expected you

can either see a corrupted screen or the game will crash.

 

So generally the multi-disk titles need more manual work to remap the existing

disk access. This involves such things as investigation to find out where you

can slot these new routines in without affecting the original game. In the case of

the Infocom adventures I reworked to whole interpreter to run from cartridge

rather than RAM, that's about as radical as you can get but does have its benefits,

e.g. I can hook in some 'new' routines to permit saving the game state to cart

rather than disk, similar to how classics did with Summer Games.

 

Universe and Seven Cities are titles I've been requested to look into (and will

get around too soon I think). W.O.88 I have got part way through and would

like to get back to as I know what needs to be done there (it uses a very

clever method of soft-resetting the machine to boot the next part to retain

your previous scores). The Infocom games are all done too but I will get the

cart-save working first before releasing them. Remember that in doing these

game conversions we also try to go a bit further, e.g. also finding the code

that typically asks 'insert disk X and press a key' so that the game experience

is also enhanced. Finally I'm challenging myself to squeeze 12 Scott Adams titles

into a 128KByte (1Mbit) flashcart, similar to what I did with the Brian Howarth

titles, but the Scott Adams games originally worked in >16K and had its own font,

so the goal is also to make the interpreter run in 16K (so on a stock 400 or 600XL)

and access the game data from cart instead. Some debugging still to go on that

but nearly there.

 

If people do have games they'd like to see then:

1) Check the flashcart forums, it may have been done already

2) Check if the game is available in a one-part loader for your machine

as this can most often be easily put on a flash cart menu

3) ask this board - someone's usually willing to have a go

 

Regards,

Mark

[Wrathchild]

Case in point, Shawn Jefferson has today uploaded his

work so far on making a "Temple of Apshai Trilogy" cart

with the ability to save/restore your character to cart.