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Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative


Farb

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16 hours ago, DjayBee said:

@Farb created a new torrent release during Fujiama 2022.

 

Torrent (This time hopefully working on the first try)

a8preservation-220910.torrent 361.55 kB · 22 downloads

 

Related ClearMame file (also part of the torrent)

Atari 8bit Preserved Software 2022-09-10.zip 329.5 kB · 9 downloads

 

Now also available in non-torrent format:

 

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

 

NOTE: 7ZIP was used this time to archive the torrent into a single ZIP file. Hopefully this avoids issues that some people experienced last time. No other changes/alterations have been made.

 

Thank you, @Farb for continuing this amazing archival project!

 

--Tim

An Atari owner

 

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9 minutes ago, Stephen said:

What's the problem with 7Zip?

Why, as a software distributor, would you make it necessary to force someone to download a program to get at the files?  7Zip uses a proprietary encryption.  You cannot open a 7Zip file with windows 11 zip.  That is why I hate it.

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48 minutes ago, SoulBuster said:

For those that do not torrent, you get a regular zip file here directly.  (I hate 7Zip).

I don't love or hate 7ZIP myself, as I use ZIP for everything still-- after all these years. However, the previous archive I used ZIP and some people ran into issues with extraction or the checksum didn't match.

 

This morning, when I prepped the archive for hosting I noticed that ZIP warned me about some of the filenames using unusual/foreign ASCII characters. So, rather than run into the same issue this time, I bothered with installing 7ZIP and then used it to compile the torrent into a ZIP. *NOTE* I saved it as a ZIP rather than the (proprietary?) 7ZIP format.

 

Hope that helps.

 

--Tim

An Atari owner

 

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24 minutes ago, Timothy Kline said:

I don't love or hate 7ZIP myself, as I use ZIP for everything still-- after all these years. However, the previous archive I used ZIP and some people ran into issues with extraction or the checksum didn't match.

 

This morning, when I prepped the archive for hosting I noticed that ZIP warned me about some of the filenames using unusual/foreign ASCII characters. So, rather than run into the same issue this time, I bothered with installing 7ZIP and then used it to compile the torrent into a ZIP. *NOTE* I saved it as a ZIP rather than the (proprietary?) 7ZIP format.

 

Hope that helps.

 

--Tim

An Atari owner

 

Zip is and always has been a crappy compression.  But for some unknown reason it became the standard on Windows long before Windows itself included it.  it also is technically proprietary.  7zip format is more open, but MS refuses to implement it themselves.  Rar is much better than zip even.  Amiga land settled on lzh/lha, and it seems to me that the Atari 8bit stuck with ARC.

 

But really all depends on what you want out of your archive files.  zip seems like the mkst 'portable' even though Linux doesn't usually include unzip by default (at least on very minimal installs) though does have zlib.

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11 minutes ago, leech said:

Zip is and always has been a crappy compression.  But for some unknown reason it became the standard on Windows long before Windows itself included it.  it also is technically proprietary.  7zip format is more open, but MS refuses to implement it themselves.  Rar is much better than zip even.  Amiga land settled on lzh/lha, and it seems to me that the Atari 8bit stuck with ARC.

 

But really all depends on what you want out of your archive files.  zip seems like the mkst 'portable' even though Linux doesn't usually include unzip by default (at least on very minimal installs) though does have zlib.

Technically proprietary? But extremely more common than 7Zip, which technically makes it NOT proprietary, but the standard.

 

Out of all those compressions you mentioned, which can I use with windows without downloading something first (I ask about windows because the bulk of the people in the world use windows, not these other OSs)?  Convenience wins over being the best every time.  Just ask those that are casual computers users, like a majority of the people in the world.  Video cassettes are another example of best not the most used: Beta was the best video quality, but Sony did not license the technology to other organization, whereas JVC licensed the VHS technology and it became the standard because of widespread use.  Again Convenience wins.

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With so many compression formats being out there, most notable RAR before, I have absolutely never had a Windows install without an external program for unZIPing stuff and I have had every version from 3.1 on  up through 11 (minus Vista and 8).  Takes literally seconds to install 7Zip and get a context menu (right click) setup with every option I could need.  What happens if you come across a RAR file?  Do you refuse to use it because it takes an external program?  What about TAR, GZ, etc.

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Just out of curiosity, I decompressed everything in the newest archive to individual directories, then recompressed it all with 7zip ( FOR /F "usebackq delims=?" %i IN (`DIR /B /A:D`) DO "\Program Files\7-zip\7z.exe" a -mx "%i.7z" "%i" ). The resulting size summed is 2.08GB. The original archive made of ZIPs is 2.10GB. The reason for this is fairly obvious: a huge portion of the actual data size is from audio, which is already compressed (via ogg) better than either ZIP or 7ZIP could manage on their own, as 7ZIP has never been context aware of data streams.

So I submit we should stop talking about this for two very pertinent reasons: 1) It really makes almost no difference and 2) Its ZIPs because Farb chose it to be, and that's good enough for me.

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2 hours ago, SoulBuster said:

Technically proprietary? But extremely more common than 7Zip, which technically makes it NOT proprietary, but the standard.

 

Out of all those compressions you mentioned, which can I use with windows without downloading something first (I ask about windows because the bulk of the people in the world use windows, not these other OSs)?  Convenience wins over being the best every time.  Just ask those that are casual computers users, like a majority of the people in the world.  Video cassettes are another example of best not the most used: Beta was the best video quality, but Sony did not license the technology to other organization, whereas JVC licensed the VHS technology and it became the standard because of widespread use.  Again Convenience wins.

Oh I agree with you, I was just stating that Zip is kind of crap and is not an open standard (hence proprietary).  It's a licensed compression, much like RAR.  But also, much like WinRAR and WinZip, no individual ever actually paid for it, Microsoft likely just threw some giant chunk of change at PK.  It's only been the last few versions of Windows that had it installed by default, but it was pretty much adopted as default back in the DOS days for whatever reason.  I was just pointing out that 'archiving wars' are kind of interesting, and it isn't just a simple matter of 'one sucks more than the other' or 'this is just there by default'. 

The only reason really to consider other methods of compression is because not everyone has high speed internet, and you could shave off some time to download / share.  But in this particular case, as Gnusto pointed out, that doesn't particularly matter at all in this context :)

 

An open standard that should have been adopted more and is supported on everything but Windows natively, is tar.gz.  So there is that.

But hey, if anyone wants a 7zip / tar.gz / tar.bz, etc.  They can just as easily grab this, recompress it, and pop it onto a hosting site their damn selves.  :)  I may do it for Unix/Mac at some point.

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5 hours ago, leech said:

Zip is and always has been a crappy compression.  But for some unknown reason it became the standard on Windows long before Windows itself included it.  it also is technically proprietary.  7zip format is more open, but MS refuses to implement it themselves.  Rar is much better than zip even.  Amiga land settled on lzh/lha, and it seems to me that the Atari 8bit stuck with ARC.

 

But really all depends on what you want out of your archive files.  zip seems like the mkst 'portable' even though Linux doesn't usually include unzip by default (at least on very minimal installs) though does have zlib.

I use PEAZIP software, it supports most compression protocols/formats.

peazip.thumb.png.b00f0d54605b0372cce0a0f96d6bae33.png

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Well way back in the day in the PC world.  Arc was the king.  But then the owners of the Arc protocol wanted to charge license rights so everyone switched to Zip.  That is the way I remember it.  7zip came along much later.  I'm not convinced that 7zip is better than a RAR solid archive ( which is pretty much what 7zip is ).  But then I'm too lazy to do tests.  My biggest beef with WinRAR is it always seems they change something that forces you to have to update it to be able to decompress more recent archives.  7zip is ok.. but it's interface leaves a lot to desire in functionality.

 

That being said.. I can decompress zip, 7zip, RAR and various other archive types no problems with WinRAR.  Both are integrated into my file explorer right click menu so I can use either one.  Personally I don't like Winzip.. but each to their own.  Either way I'm not fussed to much about it.. :P

 

Edited by Shannon
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2 hours ago, Savetz said:

By the way: all Mac users should have The Unarchiver, a free utility that opens zip, 7zip, RAR, .z, everything.

 

Try Keka, https://www.keka.io/en/ 

It's more frequently updated, has extra functionality and crashes on me less than the unarchiver does.

 

You can pay for it if you like but theres a free download that is the same as the paid version. 

 

Edit: Cute icon too!

 

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3 hours ago, Stephen said:

No - not the BBC.  This is an 8-part documentary titled "BBS - The Documentary".  It's a really good watch, 8 episodes each an hour long.

 

 

Doi.. Don't know why my eyes saw the words BBC.. :lol:  I'm gonna watch it but yeah.. a lot of that tied back into fido-net.. Which I was partially involved in back in the day.

 

I don't follow these kind of things as much as I used to .. but I think a similar situation may have been and / or is occurring with GIF / JPG / PNG.

 

Edited by Shannon
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46 minutes ago, Shannon said:

Doi.. Don't know why my eyes saw the words BBC.. :lol:  I'm gonna watch it but yeah.. a lot of that tied back into fido-net.. Which I was partially involved in back in the day.

 

I don't follow these kind of things as much as I used to .. but I think a similar may have been and / or is occurring with GIF / JPG / PNG.

Nice - when did you get online.  1987 for me, 300bps, 1200XL

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16 minutes ago, Stephen said:

Nice - when did you get online.  1987 for me, 300bps, 1200XL

 

 

Probably 1983.. I believe my first modem was the Atari POS 1030.. :lol:  I remember I could type faster than the thing could send text.  :lol:

 

I eventually updated to a Hayes compatible 1200 and the eventually 2400 modem.  I was a CO SYSOP of various BBS back in the day.  My neighbor had a fairly popular one at the time running on an Atari 130xe.  He owned a MIO so he had it running on some decent sized hard drives .  Another friend of mine who moved to another neighborhood also ran a BBS.  His ran off of a 1050 drive and a dual sided floppy drive.. I forget the name of the drive.

 

I got involved with fidonet stuff around 1987ish.  A guy online helped me setup my PC so that I could dial in and download the fidonet threads I was interested in and it ran all of that software mentioned in the documentary ( including PKXARC ) to decompress all of the message threads so that I could read and reply to them without having to connect to his BBS.  I definitely remember having to dial at certain times of the day to reduce phone call costs.  I eventually setup a BBS on my PC running off of a 30 meg hard drive.  It only lasted 3 months before I accidently killed the hard drive.  :lol:  Oh I was so naive back then in handling my hardware.

 

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On 9/16/2022 at 11:31 AM, Timothy Kline said:

 

Now also available in non-torrent format:

 

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

 

NOTE: 7ZIP was used this time to archive the torrent into a single ZIP file. Hopefully this avoids issues that some people experienced last time. No other changes/alterations have been made.

 

Thank you, @Farb for continuing this amazing archival project!

 

--Tim

An Atari owner

 

Hi,

 

   I grabbed a copy of the ZIP file from this link, but got either errors or warnings when I used unzip (on Debian Bullseye):

 

    testing: a8preservation-220910/[Help] System, The (1985)(Antic Software)(US)[disk].zip   OK
a8preservation-220910/Świat Olkiego (1994)(StanBit)(PL)[disk].zip:  mismatching "local" filename (a8preservation-220910/+�wiat Olkiego (1994)(StanBit)(PL)[disk].zip),
         continuing with "central" filename version
    testing: a8preservation-220910/Świat Olkiego (1994)(StanBit)(PL)[disk].zip   OK
a8preservation-220910/اختبر ذكائك (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip:  mismatching "local" filename (a8preservation-220910/ϺϫϬϿϦ Ϧ+�ϺϪ+� (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip),
         continuing with "central" filename version
    testing: a8preservation-220910/اختبر ذكائك (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip   OK
a8preservation-220910/الطاقة (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip:  mismatching "local" filename (a8preservation-220910/Ϻ+���Ϻ+�Ϯ (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip),
         continuing with "central" filename version
    testing: a8preservation-220910/الطاقة (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip   OK
a8preservation-220910/بنك المعلومات (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip:  mismatching "local" filename (a8preservation-220910/Ͽ+�+� Ϻ+�+�Ϧ+�+�+�ϺϬ (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip),
         continuing with "central" filename version
    testing: a8preservation-220910/بنك المعلومات (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip   OK
a8preservation-220910/سباق السيارات (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cassette].zip:  mismatching "local" filename (a8preservation-220910/ϦϿϺ+� Ϻ+�Ϧ+�ϺϦϺϬ (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cassette].zip),
         continuing with "central" filename version
    testing: a8preservation-220910/سباق السيارات (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cassette].zip   OK
a8preservation-220910/قاموس نجم (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip:  mismatching "local" filename (a8preservation-220910/+�Ϻ+�+�Ϧ +�ϼ+� (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip),
         continuing with "central" filename version
    testing: a8preservation-220910/قاموس نجم (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip   OK
a8preservation-220910/كرة القدم (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cassette].zip:  mismatching "local" filename (a8preservation-220910/+�ϦϮ Ϻ+�+�ϻ+� (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cassette].zip),
         continuing with "central" filename version
    testing: a8preservation-220910/كرة القدم (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cassette].zip   OK
a8preservation-220910/كيف يعمل الكمبيوتر (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip:  mismatching "local" filename (a8preservation-220910/+�+�+� +�Ϧ+�+� Ϻ+�+�+�Ͽ+�+�ϬϦ (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip),
         continuing with "central" filename version
    testing: a8preservation-220910/كيف يعمل الكمبيوتر (198x)(aDawliah)(SA)[cartridge].zip   OK
At least one warning-error was detected in a8preservation-220910.zip.

 

Not sure if this is a problem or not though.

 

Also, no luck with the torrent download (still running from yesterday), but I think my torrent client might be configured for maximum privacy, so probably won't work without a tracker (?) in the torrent file.

 

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