Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative

[Savetz]

Here's TANK.OBJ — a two-player tank game in assembly language. By Pat Kennedy. I believe it is an unreleased, unpublished game.

 

Today I interviewed Nick Kennedy about his ham radio software. Nick sent me this game made by his brother Pat.

 

I've also uploaded it to Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/tank_atari 

tank.atr

[www.atarimania.com]

3 hours ago, Savetz said:

Here's TANK.OBJ — a two-player tank game in assembly language. By Pat Kennedy. I believe it is an unreleased, unpublished game.

Actually, I think it was available with the very first iterations of SIO2PC.

[800_Rocks]

Hi - a newbie question... when I logon to https://www.a8preservation.com/#/home     and find a cart or disk I do not find any button or link to download it.  For example:  https://www.a8preservation.com/#/software/dump/132

I find no where on the Asteroids cartridge dump page to actually download it.  I only just registered on the site.  I have clicked on the email link to verify my email, etc.

TIA

[_The Doctor__]

The preservation site is not a software download site, from time to time if you follow this thread you will see torrents and download links from high bandwidth sites. This is the way to obtain the software, please consider the the preservation site is informational and help to make sure that the software is properly verified and preserved from more than one original source.

Use the paperclip to or other search features of the AA forums to find the magnets, links, and sites.

I no longer provide the ftp: single file server. Perhaps I will again some time in the future after the next release, along with a torrent. Depends on my ISP at the point whenever any of that happens. Someone always puts up a mega download etc anyway.

[BillC]

1 hour ago, 800_Rocks said:

Hi - a newbie question... when I logon to https://www.a8preservation.com/#/home     and find a cart or disk I do not find any button or link to download it.  For example:  https://www.a8preservation.com/#/software/dump/132

I find no where on the Asteroids cartridge dump page to actually download it.  I only just registered on the site.  I have clicked on the email link to verify my email, etc.

TIA

A8SP doesn't distribute software via download from the website, they make periodic public releases as a ZIP file containing all the files that they are releasing publicly.

Mr Robot has many releases available: https://atari8bit.net/dl/index.php?b=Atari+8-Bit+Software+Preservation

[leech]

Is it frequently updated on Archive.org?   I would think that would be the best place for it.

[MVladimir]

On 1/17/2022 at 3:13 AM, rcamp48 said:

I should include the original xfds from the first time I copied the 200 kwest disks #1 as I was anble to recover a few disks from the atrs on the 2nd post that maybe did not copy right, 

 

Basic Program Lister v2.1 (1984-12)(Alpha Systems).atrUnavailable Basic XE Detokenizer v1.11 (1989-06-04)(Psycho).atrUnavailable DOS v2.5f (1983)(Atari)[m L.J. Silver].atrUnavailable dos2.atrUnavailable hardball Team Creator Docs.atrUnavailable       

@rcamp48, some time ago you post this ATR's. Some of them are normal ATR's (91kB), but two first - Basic Program Lister v2.1 (1984-12)(Alpha Systems) and Basic XE Detokenizer v1.11 (1989-06-04)(Psycho) are strange cutted for 65kB and not working. In archive (First 418.zip) posted later, they are the same cutted size length.

Can you check and repost this ATR files if available? Thanks in advance.

[+DjayBee]

1 hour ago, MVladimir said:

 Basic Program Lister v2.1 (1984-12)(Alpha Systems)

Why go for the El-Cheapo replica? Use the original: The lister is part of Scanalyzer.

Boot the Detokenizer in Altirra extract the COM file and copy it to a disk image with a full DOS.

Edited March 24, 2023 by DjayBee

[+CharlieChaplin]

SIO2PC by Nick Kennedy (the software e.g. Version 4.21 which works under MS-DOS) has an option to create 64k ATR images. Back then this had two purposes: a) it was meant for diskettes that did not use the full 90k and most of the time it was enough to hold the program with VTOC and DIR and b) it was meant for ramdisk emulation with standard 130XE ramdisk size.

 

Most of these shortened 64k ATR images still work fine (you can boot them without errors). To copy these 64k ATR images back to standard 90k disks you only need a sector copy program that writes empty sectors to the disk for the non-existing sectors on the ATR, e.g. Mycopier! and several others will do that.

[MVladimir]

2 hours ago, DjayBee said:

Why go for the El-Cheapo replica? Use the original: The lister is part of Scanalyzer.

Boot the Detokenizer in Altirra extract the COM file and copy it to a disk image with a full DOS.

Thank you! I try.

[MVladimir]

1 hour ago, CharlieChaplin said:

SIO2PC by Nick Kennedy (the software e.g. Version 4.21 which works under MS-DOS) has an option to create 64k ATR images. Back then this had two purposes: a) it was meant for diskettes that did not use the full 90k and most of the time it was enough to hold the program with VTOC and DIR and b) it was meant for ramdisk emulation with standard 130XE ramdisk size.

 

Most of these shortened 64k ATR images still work fine (you can boot them without errors). To copy these 64k ATR images back to standard 90k disks you only need a sector copy program that writes empty sectors to the disk for the non-existing sectors on the ATR, e.g. Mycopier! and several others will do that.

Your help, as usual, is very helpful. Until now, I did not know that ATR can be shortened and this file will be working. Thanks for the hint, everything worked out with copying.

[+DjayBee]

13 hours ago, CharlieChaplin said:

Most of these shortened 64k ATR images still work fine (you can boot them without errors). To copy these 64k ATR images back to standard 90k disks you only need a sector copy program that writes empty sectors to the disk for the non-existing sectors on the ATR, e.g. Mycopier! and several others will do that.

With these particularly crappy images this will not work.

 

The Lister is a XEX file converted to a BOOT-disk.

Therefore after starting it, you will not have a DOS to open any file except from C:.

 

The Detokenizer is also a XEX file. This time the disk contains DOS.SYS but no DUP.SYS.

Therefore it either boots to BASIC or crashes unless you rename the XEX to AUTORUN.SYS or move it to a disk with a complete DOS.

[Eric Badger]

Anyone know where I can find CheckProtection111.atx?

[+DjayBee]

2 hours ago, Eric Badger said:

Anyone know where I can find CheckProtection111.atx?

What do you need it for? 

[TZJB]

Page Marshall (1989)(VALAR Software) (UK)[Disk]{TZJB}

 

I see Page Marshall is still wanted. I have a copy and I am still kicking myself at loaning out my original disk together with the documentation some years ago. I never received it back.

 

I used it for small circuit diagrams and Vero board layouts.

 

Written in Turbo Basic, here are both sides of my copy of the disk for verification. The disk was never protected by the publisher.

 

Page Marshall (1989)(VALAR Software) (UK)[Disk]{TZJB} .zip

 

[Eric Badger]

10 hours ago, DjayBee said:

What do you need it for? 

I’d like to test my original Atari drive emulator. Looking to add atx support and would like to validate it. 

[TZJB]

54 minutes ago, Eric Badger said:

I’d like to test my original Atari drive emulator. Looking to add atx support and would like to validate it. 

 

Try Page 99 of this topic.

[ChrisChiesa]

My main concern is -- did you test the images you got at the end of the Kryoflux extraction process?  Hopefully you didn't just assume they were correct, either just because the extraction process completed "successfully" or even just because you were able to list the disk directory; did you actually boot, run, and put-through-its-paces every disk?  Somehow, with the number of items involved, I'm inclined to doubt it.

I ask because the great majority of .atr disk images I've downloaded from the Internet have something wrong with them and will not work properly until I've investigated, debugged, and patched them, in one way or another.  Some were bugged from the beginning in ways that didn't show up for 39 years ("Ask me about my Video-80 bugfix"), some seem mostly intact on a quick perusal but turn out to have been mis-copied in a way that appears to defeat what appears to be a software protection scheme.  A great many, the majority I would say, turn out to have corruption in their higher-numbered sectors, such that the files occupying those sectors are either gibberish, incomplete, or unreadable.  And one or two bear little-to-no resemblance to what the text accompanying the download links claims them to be (one ABBUC disk claiming to be Daisy-Dot fonts, for instance, turns out to exhibit a complete disconnect between the contents of the directory and the layout of file data everywhere else on the medium).  

Even more concerning is that I found the exact same kind of higher-sector corruption problems as in so many downloads, on images of two of my own floppies, made for me by a friend with his Kryoflux setup: considering that he only ever imaged those two disks for me, that's a 100% failure rate!  It almost starts to look like higher-sector corruption could be a sort of "fingerprint" of the whole Kryoflux approach to Atari software "preservation" -- which surely doesn't deserve that name if the "preserved" software isn't actually intact.

Discuss.

Chris

Edited May 17, 2023 by ChrisChiesa
Say more stuff

[Farb]

 

12 hours ago, ChrisChiesa said:

My main concern is -- did you test the images you got at the end of the Kryoflux extraction process?

I'm not sure who "you" refers to in this context? It is probably helpful to differentiate between people posting their flux dumps to this (or other) forum topics and the people doing the actual preservation work for the project. As I see it, the former are providing contributions to the latter. One should never assume that any one dump is 100% good without further information 🙂

 

12 hours ago, ChrisChiesa said:

I ask because the great majority of .atr disk images I've downloaded from the Internet have something wrong with them and will not work properly until I've investigated, debugged, and patched them, in one way or another.

My frustration with this was the very reason I started working on this project.

 

12 hours ago, ChrisChiesa said:

did you actually boot, run, and put-through-its-paces every disk?  Somehow, with the number of items involved, I'm inclined to doubt it.

It is extremely difficult to fully put every title "through its paces" as it requires both a lot of time and detailed knowledge of how the title should perform. You can imagine the time investment needed to fully test an Alternate Reality or Ultima IV release for example. And if you do encounter bugs or problems -- were they there originally or was it the result of a bad dump? Or maybe even emulator settings? Even on real hardware, OS revision, memory, video standard, BASIC revision, etc. can all affect how a program behaves.

 

Any official ATX files that the preservation project releases will have a [!] in its filename if it's considered "verified". This means we have at least two examples (often more) of independently dumped media with completely identical data, media structure, media anomalies (e.g. protection), etc. These are often created on different disk drives and using different hardware (e.g. Kryoflux, SuperCard Pro, Greaseweazle, etc.) You can see full provenance for every dump we release on our website.

 

Also note that ATX files preserve much more of the original disk information than an ATR does so it is our preferred distribution format for disks.

 

At the end of the day, however, we are making a pretty fundamental assumption -- if multiple dumps of a title are identical in every practical way, then they are "good" regardless of how they behave. We've processed several thousand dumps and have seen no evidence that this is a bad approach. Using this process, for example, we have found releases of software that clearly had mastering errors in an early release that were fixed in a later one -- or later releases of titles that subtly altered the type of copy protection employed.

 

Anyway, I hope this helps in understanding what we are doing and how we are trying to tackle the concerns you've expressed.

Edited May 17, 2023 by Farb

[+Fred_M]

On 5/17/2023 at 5:29 AM, ChrisChiesa said:

My main concern is -- did you test the images you got at the end of the Kryoflux extraction process?

I ask because the great majority of .atr disk images I've downloaded from the Internet have something wrong with them and will not work properly until I've investigated, debugged, and patched them, in one way or another.

 

Please do know that the disk-images made by the Preservation Initiative are not the "usual" atr-images you can find anywhere on the internet. I would suggest you download the files made by the initiative and then give your opinion 😉

 

Looking at your post, I think you would be the perfect person to test the files made by the initiative! As everyone participating in this project do this in their spare time as a hobby any help is probably very welcome 🖕

 

Edited May 18, 2023 by Fred_M

[invisible kid]

Thanks again for these!

Also to those who did straight cracks of them, those are awesome for various situations.

[+gnusto]

On 5/16/2023 at 8:29 PM, ChrisChiesa said:

It almost starts to look like higher-sector corruption could be a sort of "fingerprint" of the whole Kryoflux approach to Atari software "preservation" -- which surely doesn't deserve that name if the "preserved" software isn't actually intact.

This is highly improbable. As Farb notes, the a8p society has not had time to go through every single submission exhaustively, no. But various versions of the archive collection have been downloaded many thousands of times by a8 users, and used. I myself use them every week. If a systemic problem existed with Kryoflux dumps it would have manifested long ago. As a further example @DjayBee has very patiently cracked hundreds of these images, starting from a8p originals, including many full disk games like adventures that would surely display corruption as their data covers the entire disk. No problems were seen.

 

Sarcastically framing "preservation" in your post and making speculations on anecdotal use (2 of your dumps versus actual thousands in the collection?) is a fairly graceless way to raise your concern. If you believe there is a problem, sample from the disks in the collection provided for free here and elsewhere all across the internet to establish if your concern has merit. I can assure you if you are on to something and there is a problem, the very people you are addressing so dismissively will be the ones most likely to tackle the issue head on.
 

[_The Doctor__]

If I had a problem re constituting a stream and have it work I'd pass the information on, usually advice is given and I try again and it works. If you want to test all of the images yourself and let A8SPI your results that wouldn't be an issue.

Most of us have been able to use whatever it is we spot checked, If you wish to perform a deliberate sequential test of all of the preserved software that would be great. Every reasonable effort was made to get the project rolling and done without burning everyone out. More help is always welcome following the outlines provided.

 

Whatever folks do to it or with it after it's been processed is not something the A8SP is concerned with and won't be able to answer questions about that no more then asking A8SP about something you downloaded elsewhere off the internet.

[+DjayBee]

On 5/17/2023 at 5:29 AM, ChrisChiesa said:

It almost starts to look like higher-sector corruption could be a sort of "fingerprint" of the whole Kryoflux approach to Atari software "preservation" -- which surely doesn't deserve that name if the "preserved" software isn't actually intact.

You are confusing cause and effect.

Fluxdumping shows the defects caused by sectors that became corrupt over the course of time. That this happens more often on the inner tracks of a disk because of their higher write density is only logical.

But in general we can only dump as good as the original disks are aged.

You will also find many images in the A8SP distribution that have corrupt sectors on the inner tracks; simply because there is no better alternative dump. But these are only images that work, which means that the corrupt sectors are not used by the program. We also try to repair broken sectors where possible, if we have an alternative dump at all.

[_The Doctor__]

The preservation is of the source material, even if there is degradation it can still provide functional images. The degradation does not always destroy the data in it's totality and can still be used. The flux stream capture devices can show spurious information around the data, and that does not negate the data.

The cause of corruption is age and density distribution on the disk.

Preserving multiple copies of non working disks can lead to preserving a title as the corruption can be in different areas of the disks. If 7 disks all agree on information extracted in all other areas of the disk and the dense area is corrupt at differing locations and another disk or two turn up with those areas intact, then the Preservation is not only accomplished but a restoration is also made. The project has had much success and I don't think parsing the verbiage is going to be helpful. The disks are preserved and when no other avenue exists they are restored. If a fully working or better dump turns up it is utilized. The more the merrier and that's certainly better. When enough data is amassed even on disks that are notoriously bad from inception, statistically as enough dumps appear the good data can be discerned over the long haul. Also consider that programming patterns, rules and constraints can also give hints as to what belongs in the code when all of the data is good except for the odd bit or byte that might still be bad even when all else has failed. The dumps are still available for comparison in the future as more dumps become available to verify a disk or verify the restoration of a disk.

Edited May 19, 2023 by _The Doctor__