Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative

[Timothy Kline]

1 hour ago, E474 said:

I got nothing trying to download the torrent and gave up after 3 hours.

 

The file download provided by @Timothy Kline closed the connection every 500MB (exactly, so probably a setting in ownCloud), but I used uGet, which allows autoresume. The error listed was:

 

Message: HTTP/2 stream 0 was not closed cleanly: PROTOCOL_ERROR (err 1)

 

Doh!

 

I'm very new with using OwnCloud, so I appreciate your heads-up on the error and I'll check on how to fix it when I get home this evening.

 

--Tim

 

[+Stephen]

3 hours ago, Timothy Kline said:

For anyone who prefers to download apart from torrent, the latest A8Preservation file is available at this link:

 

https://atari-cellar.net/index.php/s/MRjHAoV4W2DP6y3

 

Notes:

* The torrent was 7zipped into a single archive.

* The torrent file is also available at this link.

* I formerly hosted the latest release of a8preservation at atari-owner.com in a subfolder, but have since moved those files to the Atari-Cellar.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, E474 said:

I got nothing trying to download the torrent and gave up after 3 hours.

 

The file download provided by @Timothy Kline closed the connection every 500MB (exactly, so probably a setting in ownCloud), but I used uGet, which allows autoresume. The error listed was:

 

Message: HTTP/2 stream 0 was not closed cleanly: PROTOCOL_ERROR (err 1)

 

Same here - can only grab 500MB from that link.

 

EDIT - didn't see the previous reply from Tim.

[Timothy Kline]

13 minutes ago, Stephen said:

 

Same here - can only grab 500MB from that link.

 

EDIT - didn't see the previous reply from Tim.

Unfortunately, I cannot edit/remove the link until I can correct the issue this evening. If any mods see this, though, would you remove the link for now? I hate thinking of all the fails that happen between now and this evening for people.

 

--Tim

 

[E474]

Hi @Timothy Kline,

 

   Thanks for hosting, thought I should give you a heads up on the problem (and possible workaround, e.g. using a file downloader that supports resume). I used either NextCloud or OpenCloud on a RPi for a while and it worked quite well until they upped the requirements for the type of Pi you could use (if I recall correctly).

[Timothy Kline]

Again, VERY sorry for the snafu with OwnCloud and issue with 500mb limitations.

 

Let's make this MUCH easier:

 

https://atari-cellar.net/Atari 8-Bit Preservation Archives/

 

 

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Timothy Kline
Edited to restore link. Working for me now.

[Farb]

2 minutes ago, Timothy Kline said:

Again, VERY sorry for the snafu with OwnCloud and issue with 500mb limitations.

No worries at all. Thanks to everyone for their distribution efforts!

[ijor]

23 hours ago, DjayBee said:

This is really weird.

I just retried it in Altirra and got reliably lots of NOKs with either 810 or 1050 in standard and full emulation mode.

 

But what I also recognized is that 400s and 800s seem to sometimes match the needed timing whereas XLs and XEs don't (even with OS-B).

I guess that you ran the test on an 800.

 

Both Transylvania ATX images run fine, without problems, on NTSC. This seems to be just an NTSC only game. It is an American published game after all.

 

Now, it is possible that it might run on PAL under some circumstances, like with an 800/400.

 

[DjayBee]

1 minute ago, ijor said:

Both Transylvania ATX images run fine, without problems, on NTSC.

I know. I have flagged the copy protection as NTSC-only due to the timing of the sector skewing.

 

But surprisingly Zarxx' tests with real PAL hardware showed that the copy protection there quite often succeeds, whereas in Altirra it fails more or less consistently. In both cases running on 400/800 has a higher rate uf success than running on an XL or XE (even if these are equipped with an OS-B).

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, Timothy Kline said:

Again, VERY sorry for the snafu with OwnCloud and issue with 500mb limitations.

 

Let's make this MUCH easier:

 

https://atari-cellar.net/Atari 8-Bit Preservation Archives/

 

Great - thanks a ton!

[ijor]

40 minutes ago, DjayBee said:

But surprisingly Zarxx' tests with real PAL hardware showed that the copy protection there quite often succeeds, whereas in Altirra it fails more or less consistently. In both cases running on 400/800 has a higher rate uf success than running on an XL or XE (even if these are equipped with an OS-B).

 

@Zarxxdidn't use an original disk. It might be an issue of a write back inaccuracy.

 

Quote

Atari 800 PAL, ATX to floppy via a8rwaconv (v0.94). Unmodified 1050 & 810

 

@Zarxx, if you have the willing, it might be more accurate to write back the flux level image.

[DjayBee]

1 hour ago, ijor said:

It might be an issue of a write back inaccuracy.

The protection checks on tracks 15, 18 and 22 for skewing between sectors 1 and 2. All three tracks are tested independently of each other.

There is no track alignment involved.

Read sector 1,  set RTCLOK+2=$00, read sector 2, read RTCLOK+2 and compare it against a track-specific threshold.

 

Can this be affected by an inaccuracy?

[ijor]

3 hours ago, DjayBee said:

The protection checks on tracks 15, 18 and 22 for skewing between sectors 1 and 2. All three tracks are tested independently of each other.

There is no track alignment involved.

Read sector 1,  set RTCLOK+2=$00, read sector 2, read RTCLOK+2 and compare it against a track-specific threshold.

 

Can this be affected by an inaccuracy?

It might. If the timing is "borderline", as seems to be here, just a minimum deviation might make the difference. I would need to analyze the flux dumps to get a better idea. If you want to pursue this, then a flux dump of the write back might help. But again, first thing to check is to write back directly from a flux dump and see how that works on a PAL system.

[+DrVenkman]

8 hours ago, Timothy Kline said:

Let's make this MUCH easier

Thank you! Downloaded in less than 2 minutes.

[+HatNJ]

Less than 2 min also but 7zip couldn't open file  Tried 3 times

[+DrVenkman]

11 hours ago, HatNJ said:

Less than 2 min also but 7zip couldn't open file  Tried 3 times

7Zip worked for me to explore the file contents though I did not extract everything - I need to reorganize my Atari files first. That said, I noticed in the list of archived files that a number of them have non-Latin character names. I know that can cause hiccups with some OS’s and system settings. 

[E474]

My version that I had to resume the download of extracted fine with 7z (on Linux) and a test unzip of Zork I - The Great Underground Empire Rel 20 (1981)(Infocom)(US)[disk].zip worked fine with atari800 4.1.0 though I got an error/info message (which didn't cause any problems):

 

Unknown VAPI track type Track:1 Type:256

@HatNJ, what platform/OS/etc. were you trying with, and did you get any error messages, etc?

[+KlasO]

On 6/29/2022 at 5:44 PM, Timothy Kline said:

Let's make this MUCH easier:

https://atari-cellar.net/Atari 8-Bit Preservation Archives/

Thank you so much!

[+MrFish]

On 6/28/2022 at 2:42 PM, DjayBee said:

I withdrew that first one because my qBittorrent client had created it with .pad files. Due to this, it grew a lot in size and also some Bittorrent clients refused to start it.

 

I hope this one works better and also for everyone:

a8preservation-220627v2.torrent 354.33 kB · 53 downloads

 

Worked fine for me (this is the first one I attempted downloading), using qBittorrent. Thanks!

 

[Mclaneinc]

A little tip for qbittorent, if you start seeing the download speed going up and then sharply down and this keeps repeating then drop the upload speed from the default (max) to around 700K, it helps. If you are planning on seeding then maybe not do this so it's an even playfield for all.

[tep392]

On 6/29/2022 at 12:05 PM, DjayBee said:

I know. I have flagged the copy protection as NTSC-only due to the timing of the sector skewing.

 

But surprisingly Zarxx' tests with real PAL hardware showed that the copy protection there quite often succeeds, whereas in Altirra it fails more or less consistently. In both cases running on 400/800 has a higher rate uf success than running on an XL or XE (even if these are equipped with an OS-B).

Just an FYI here,  my results are as expected.  I copied the Transylvania ATX to a real floppy using my 1050 SA.  It works fine on my NTSC 1200XL as long as I use the OS-B translator and I don't use a drive with track buffering.  Never played this before but I'll give it a go.  Seems like it will be fun.

[Zarxx]

On 6/29/2022 at 6:53 PM, ijor said:

 

@Zarxxdidn't use an original disk. It might be an issue of a write back inaccuracy.

 

 

@Zarxx, if you have the willing, it might be more accurate to write back the flux level image.

 

Same hardware/settings as before.

 

800 Flux 810.txt  800 Flux 1050.txt  XL Flux 810.txt  XL Flux 1050.txt

[Savetz]

On 4/18/2022 at 1:56 PM, Savetz said:

Here's a disk of games by Ron Kim, provided to me by him. He wrote a few BASIC games for Dynacomp.

 

Here's another disk of games from Ron Kim. He couldn't get his ATR to work, but I was able to move the files to a fresh ATR file.

 

It includes one commercial game: Tank Attack which was released by Dynacomp, and some unpublished stuff.

 

Notes from Ron:

 

"There are 4 files on this disk

Tank Attack: The game we have been discussing- Dynacomp sold it- basically a one-tank version/predecessor of Super Tank Attack!

 

Marathon: This is one of the first games I made to teach math- I really was just beginning to use learn how to code- it is pretty painful- I submitted it to APX and they (of course) turned it down.  I also later learned the sound volume was so high that I could literally cause permanent damage to the computer.

 

Aspen Ski: I modelled this after Skiing for Intellivision- the playability wasn't quite there, but you could steer, push the joystick "down" to get into a tuck position for more speed, etc.

 

Football:  I believe this was a game I started in 1986 and finally finished (although rough) some 30 years later- this would have been the 1986 partial version I believe.

 

Only Tank Attack was sold commercially."

 

(Attention @www.atarimania.com per http://www.atarimania.com/list_games_atari-400-800-xl-xe-kim-ron_team_3223_8_G.html )

 

-Kay

Ronald Kim Disk 4 fixed.atr

[DjayBee]

@Farb created a new torrent release during Fujiama 2022.

 

Torrent (This time hopefully working on the first try)

a8preservation-220910.torrent

 

Related ClearMame file (also part of the torrent)

Atari 8bit Preserved Software 2022-09-10.zip

[Mclaneinc]

No seeds so far...Gotta have them

 

AH, well done Djaybee...I'll stay on it once it gets here in full.

Edited September 15, 2022 by Mclaneinc

[sup8pdct]

Have it and currently seeding. Will do so for next few hours.