Could be the oldest ARABIC OS "NAJM"

[Guest]

Which one did I suggest had the Arabic badge retro-fitted (owing to tiny gouges in that area of the case)?

think that was the 130xe board.

[flashjazzcat]

think that was the 130xe board.

Aha... Interesting.

[Madi]

do you think that could be the other war around?

only suggest this, because my single "G" keyboard is with a later 130XE 4-chip mobo

Hi brenski

 

I am not 100% sure of the accuracy of my writing, Only aDawliah management can ascertain that.

I can only speculate that they ran out of the correct (newer) Arabic keyboards during the assembly of the new batch and forced to use the older keyboards of the single letter “G” (ل).

Examine the following picture of the Arabic Typewriter. It hash correct letter arrangement.

This suggests that they made an error while engraving the Arabic key “ل”.

The letter “لـ” is the letter that was supposed to be engraved. This will mach with all the letters in the 2 lines of the next picture:

To correct for this mistake, they made another mistake ( I think).

They took all the key “G” that had the Arabic letter “ل” and engraved the letter “لـ” on top of it, which was supposed to be reversed (see the picture of the typewriter).

If I were you, I will look at the bright side. It is highly possible that you have one of the rarest NAJM65XE that have the a later 130XE 4-chip mobo with the older Keyboard.

madi

 

[Guest]

@Madi thanks for clarifying.

it's certainly weird and surprising - if not entirely shocking - how much Atari "messed about" with things.

 

i suppose the desire to always cut costs results in mistakes. i certainly won't complain at having a "mistake" keyboard/mobo combination

[atari65xenajm]

Dear all,

 

I reached out to our friends in atarionline.pl for their aDawliah cartridges and they have been extremely helpful. During SillyVenture 2k17, two wonderful people (Nosty and Voy) promised to help me obtain the dumps of the aDawliah cartridges NA0021, 0031, and 0033 referenced earlier in this thread.

 

Well, in due time, they have shared the images which they obtained using AtariMax USB cartridge programmer, but seemed to have gone through some problems with banking (expected). I also played with the possible combinations of banking profiles when running Altirra and was able to get one cartridge to map properly and eventually work (NA0021 dictionary). I placed the rom file there for those interested to download it.

 

If you have the experience and desire to help me rescue the Arabic content of Atari, please feel free to contribute to the thread over there.

 

Thanks!

[atari65xenajm]

Hi all,

 

Some help is needed here. This is an image of an aDawliah disk image that is working on my Atari 130XE and XF551 drive. I was able to rescue this from my Atari childhood days. As I had purchased Lotharek's SIO2SD, I created an ATR file of the disk image.

 

When I play this image on my Atari 130XE, it works fine. But, when I attempt to run it on Altirra, it fails.

 

You need to disable BASIC (by pressing Option on Atari 130XE), but disabling it on Altirra through the menu configuration fails (the image just causes the emulator to hang).

 

Can someone please have a look into this?

 

Thank you!

aDawliah Biology.atr

[Guest]

well it runs in Atari800 Windows 4

but i don;t know what to do with it after opening screen

 

 

 

 

 

 

[+DjayBee]

Works also in Altirra 2.90 if I set it to XL or XE (NTSC or PAL does not matter).

It does not work in 400/800 mode.

[atari65xenajm]

well it runs in Atari800 Windows 4

but i don;t know what to do with it after opening screen

 

atari000.gif

 

 

 

 

 

This is great! You should press the Spacebar next for the program to start. Then control the program with the arrow keys and the spacebar to select between several programs.

 

I am using Altirra via Wine on Mac OS. After rerunning Tools | First Time Setup, it worked!

 

Here are a lot of screenshots!

 

 

Edited December 16, 2017 by atari65xenajm

[atari65xenajm]

Dear all,

 

I reached out to our friends in atarionline.pl for their aDawliah cartridges and they have been extremely helpful. During SillyVenture 2k17, two wonderful people (Nosty and Voy) promised to help me obtain the dumps of the aDawliah cartridges NA0021, 0031, and 0033 referenced earlier in this thread.

 

Well, in due time, they have shared the images which they obtained using AtariMax USB cartridge programmer, but seemed to have gone through some problems with banking (expected). I also played with the possible combinations of banking profiles when running Altirra and was able to get one cartridge to map properly and eventually work (NA0021 dictionary). I placed the rom file there for those interested to download it.

 

If you have the experience and desire to help me rescue the Arabic content of Atari, please feel free to contribute to the thread over there.

 

Thanks!

 

Courtesy of Nosty, please find attached my attempt to map NA0021, the Arabic-English and English-Arabic dictionary of aDawliah. This is a snapshot and a ROM image. Please help us with the other two if you know how to.

56 aDawliah NA021_myide2_512k.zip

Edited December 17, 2017 by atari65xenajm

[Guest]

well the ATR definitely works in Atari800win 4.exe

 

beyond this I have no idea - my Arabic is as lacking as my Space Travel.

 

 

 

 

 

[atari65xenajm]

Here is a translation for the snapshots that @brenski has provided, and an attempt to improve their Arabic above their Space Travel experience

 

We start from the third picture as the first two are self explanatory :-)

 

- الذاكرة is an Arabic word, transliterated as "a-th-thakirah", meaning Memory.

- الدماغ means "The [Human] Brain". لعبة الأشكال means "Shapes Game". لعبة المطابقة means "Matching game". These are three programs in this image all with the theme of the brain.

- The fourth and fifth snapshots are an overall explanation of what the brain is, its components, and then a menu that allows you to select one of these components for further elaboration.

 

Have fun!

[Kr0tki]

I reached out to our friends in atarionline.pl for their aDawliah cartridges and they have been extremely helpful. During SillyVenture 2k17, two wonderful people (Nosty and Voy) promised to help me obtain the dumps of the aDawliah cartridges NA0021, 0031, and 0033 referenced earlier in this thread.

 

Well, in due time, they have shared the images which they obtained using AtariMax USB cartridge programmer, but seemed to have gone through some problems with banking (expected).

Already posted this at AtariOnline a few days ago: I've managed to reverse-engineer the mapping used by Nosty's aDawliah cartridges, and added support for them to Atari800. The description of the new mapping is at the end of DOC/cart.txt.

 

The ROM images of all three cartridges are here at AtariOnline. You can run them in the fresh test build of Atari800.

 

I'd like to ask our Arabic-speaking fellows to test whether these ROM images work correctly, and to provide information about them if available:

a) the original titles of programs, as on the title screens, in Arabic (hopefully the forum supports displaying left-to-right Arabic text);

b) English translations of titles,

c) any information displayed on the title screens: dates of release, company name, programmer's names?

 

It'll be used to fill the gaps in Farb's software preservation database.

[atari65xenajm]

Already posted this at AtariOnline a few days ago: I've managed to reverse-engineer the mapping used by Nosty's aDawliah cartridges, and added support for them to Atari800. The description of the new mapping is at the end of DOC/cart.txt.

 

The ROM images of all three cartridges are here at AtariOnline. You can run them in the fresh test build of Atari800.

 

I'd like to ask our Arabic-speaking fellows to test whether these ROM images work correctly, and to provide information about them if available:

a) the original titles of programs, as on the title screens, in Arabic (hopefully the forum supports displaying left-to-right Arabic text);

b) English translations of titles,

c) any information displayed on the title screens: dates of release, company name, programmer's names?

 

It'll be used to fill the gaps in Farb's software preservation database.

 

Hello Kr0tki,

 

Thanks for sharing this with us. I am not very familiar with Atari800 as I am using Mac.

 

Upon trying to run these images on Altirra (using Mac with Wine), it objected against using image format 69. I tried to run Atari800 with Wine, but it is not allowing me to access the menu (only the Altirra Memopad).

 

I will continue to try out, and if I succeed, I can certainly answer a and b for you.

 

Thank you.

[atari65xenajm]

Already posted this at AtariOnline a few days ago: I've managed to reverse-engineer the mapping used by Nosty's aDawliah cartridges, and added support for them to Atari800. The description of the new mapping is at the end of DOC/cart.txt.

 

The ROM images of all three cartridges are here at AtariOnline. You can run them in the fresh test build of Atari800.

 

I'd like to ask our Arabic-speaking fellows to test whether these ROM images work correctly, and to provide information about them if available:

a) the original titles of programs, as on the title screens, in Arabic (hopefully the forum supports displaying left-to-right Arabic text);

b) English translations of titles,

c) any information displayed on the title screens: dates of release, company name, programmer's names?

 

It'll be used to fill the gaps in Farb's software preservation database.

An update after some diligent attempt.

 

Hello @Kr0tki,

 

Thanks for sharing this with us. I am not familiar with Atari800, so I started with Altirra and it objected against using image format 69 and thus did not work.

 

I was somehow able to access the Atari800 menu, and ran both cartridges NA0031 and NA0033. The images seem to work fine there. Trying to run these cartridges using Ultimate Cartridge on Atari 130XE or Atari 65XE نجم Najm both failed. I think this cartridge does not support format 69 either.

 

Now answering your questions a and b:

 

a) NA0031 is الطاقة transliterated as at-taaqah. This is Arabic for "Energy". NA0033 is كيف يعمل الكمبيوتر which is transliterated as kayfa ya'amalul computer. The word computer was moved to Arabic as is though the proper translation would be Hasub حاسوب. This is translated as "How Does the Computer Work?"

b) Please see (a).

c) Sorry no idea. I wish I had any information. These are definitely by aDawliah company based in Jeddah in KSA.

 

Is there a way to remap these cartridges to mapper 56?

 

Thank you again for your help.

[Kr0tki]

(...) started with Altirra and it objected against using image format 69 and thus did not work. (...) Trying to run these cartridges using Ultimate Cartridge on Atari 130XE or Atari 65XE نجم Najm both failed. I think this cartridge does not support format 69 either.

Of course they do not support mapping no. 69, it was reverse-engineered just a week ago.

 

Thank you for the title translations. What about the cartridge NA021 "Najm Dictionary"?

 

Is there a way to remap these cartridges to mapper 56?

It's not possible to simply remap them to any other mapping. The aDawliah cartridges are different than all other mappings in that they do not allow to select banks randomly, but only to cycle through them in order.

 

However, all three cartridges just copy the cartridge contents to RAM at initialization, and don't appear to do any bank-switching afterwards, so it would be rather easy to hack the initialization routines to support another cartridge mapping.

Edited December 26, 2017 by Kr0tki

[atari65xenajm]

Of course they do not support mapping no. 69, it was reverse-engineered just a week ago.

 

Thank you for the title translations. What about the cartridge NA021 "Najm Dictionary"?

 

It's not possible to simply remap them to any other mapping. The aDawliah cartridges are different than all other mappings in that they do not allow to select banks randomly, but only to cycle through them in order.

 

However, all three cartridges just copy the cartridge contents to RAM at initialization, and don't appear to do any bank-switching afterwards, so it would be rather easy to hack the initialization routines to support another cartridge mapping.

 

Thanks Kr0tki. I am not really into the architecture of the Atari computer. Thanks for sharing about the mapping.

 

As for NA0021, I skipped it thinking it was straightforward in the snapshot posted earlier, but based on request here you go:

 

This dictionary is قاموس نجم which is transliterated as qamusu najm. That is English for Najm Dictionary (surprise!).

 

Best wishes!

[Kr0tki]

Thank you.

[atari65xenajm]

Thank you.

 

Thanks to you Kr0tki, and my thanks extend to Kaz, Voy, and Nosty from your great forum. This would have not been possible if it was not for your support and desire to help. It feels particularly great to see that the Arabic language had presence in the 8-bit world as our friend Madi pointed out when he started this thread.

[Kr0tki]

I have renamed the ROM images at AtariOnline according to the provided transliterations. They are now placed at:

A/At-taaqah

K/Kayfa Ya'amalul Computer

Q/Qamusu Najm

Edited December 27, 2017 by Kr0tki

[Xuel]

This is great! You should press the Spacebar next for the program to start. Then control the program with the arrow keys and the spacebar to select between several programs.

 

I am using Altirra via Wine on Mac OS. After rerunning Tools | First Time Setup, it worked!

 

Here are a lot of screenshots!

 

I found that the .atr works in Altirra when you disable System -> Acceleration -> D: Patch (DIsk SIO).

 

I suspect that when you run First Time Setup it does this which is why it started working for you after you did that.

[Fred_M]

I received a small cassette tape lot today. I bought it from Ebay UK with the help of 8bitbaz of the Atari Sector Forum (everyone should pay a visit to that board )

 

 

 

 

I have loaded some of these cassettes and I am very doubtful if these cassettes are original.

 

The cassette with the "Soccer" cover contains Realsports Soccer by Atari (with the same "fixed" title screen as the dump on Atarionline.pl)

The Pole Position cassette is damaged, the right top blue cassette contains Shooting Arcade by datasoft. The three generic cassettes contain Spy Hunter (US Gold cassette release), Pitstop and Tank Commander (Creative Sparks release).

 

All cassettes have data on only one side of the cassette, the cassette inlays are professionally made and contain loading instructions in English and Arabic. I guess someone in the UK used these cassettes to re-record software on these cassettes, but I am not sure.

 

I have seen some of these tapes before in Ebay, so I am hoping that someone else can confirm what should be on these cassette tapes.

 

I have included 3 working CAS-files of these tapes, on Atari Sector you can find a 4th file . As you can see there is no arabic text on screen

adawliah_3tapes.zip

Edited March 6, 2018 by Fred_M

[Savetz]

I have acquired the cart aDawliah 0032. Has it been dumped yet?

(It specifically says for 65XE. It does not start properly on my 800XL with 256K. I haven't tried another machine yet.)

 

Kevin

[Guest]

does the software check for the presence of the Arabic OS rom?

[Kr0tki]

I have acquired the cart aDawliah 0032. Has it been dumped yet?

No, not yet. Do you have any photos of the item or its PCB?

 

I haven't tried another machine yet.)

Please do so!

 

does the software check for the presence of the Arabic OS rom?

The three dumped cartridges work on all OS revisions, so probably not.