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Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative


Farb

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historically we specifically haven't posted multi gig files on AA so as not to burden bandwidth and resources of AtariAge, and some other reasons.... please OKAY this with @Albert and see if this policy has changed.

Edited by _The Doctor__
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Can someone post the "Atari 8bit Preserved Software yyyy-mm-dd.dat" file for these releases in addition to the giant archive?  I've given up on downloading these giant archives (too much content I either already have or am not interested in), but I do try to update the names of my existing files to match the preservation project when I have a chance.  Older releases usually had the dat file which contained all the file metadata, so you could validate your files.

 

I tried poking around the website but could only find metadata for individual items.  Perhaps if I had an account it might expose something, but I'm not going to speculatively create an account to find out.

 

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29 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

as in you want the release date from when the original disk was made 40+- years ago?

No, he's talking about a DAT file with a CRCs that you can use to see if anything has changed.

 

https://mamedev.emulab.it/clrmamepro/

 

This is a popular one that other preservation sites use with their torrents and not just MAME.  When they do a release, they update the .dat file along with a new torrent so others can rebuild their collections without having to download the whole thing again.

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Yes, I'm asking for the file metadata rather than the files, which typically was included as .dat file with entries like so:

 

game (
    name "Mr. Do! (1984)(Datasoft)(US)[disk]"
    description "Mr. Do! (1984)(Datasoft)(US)[disk]"
    rom ( name "Mr. Do! (1984)(Datasoft)(US)[!].atx" size 63496 crc 5ca7b209 md5 1407cf37bcfb4fcf4cdf53c578698b48 sha1 343e81cd9f2cbdadea46c3a8edfa755719867146 )
)

 

Perhaps recent releases have dropped that file, but earlier releases had it.

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5 hours ago, Farb said:

Each release is built using ClrMamePro and I have included the DAT file used in each one. If any releases had it missing, it would have been an accident. Attached are the DAT files I have archived.

Thanks Farb, very much appreciated.

 

Here are three additional dat files that aren't in that collection.

a8preservation-extra.zip

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Wow, great, DATs make everything sooo much cleaner and easier! And on that note, I can see a problem with the last release that I caught by looking at the DAT:

 

The Academy on Computers ROM is messed up because it has a "/" in the ROM name. It's changed to a "-" in the zip file name but the structure inside the zip is messed up because the ROM manager translates the "/" into a new directory.

 

For the next build consider changing all those "/" to "-" or some other innocuous character.

 

game (
    name "Academy on Computers - Atari Self-Tests AT1.1.1 (1983)(WNET/THIRTEEN)(US)[cassette]"
    description "Academy on Computers - Atari Self-Tests AT1.1.1 (1983)(WNET/THIRTEEN)(US)[cassette]"
    rom ( name "Academy on Computers - Atari Self-Tests AT1.1.1 (1983)(WNET/THIRTEEN)(US)(Tape 1 of 5 Side A)(Lesson 1)[CLOAD+RUN][BASIC].cas" size 11640 crc 64335414 md5 c8544e07c0618367c9d3c10358cf6aca sha1 aaf8af105c6e0b6d270b835154b6f97f11b05ac6 )
    rom ( name "Academy on Computers - Atari Self-Tests AT1.1.1 (1983)(WNET/THIRTEEN)(US)(Tape 1 of 5 Side B)(Lesson 2)[CLOAD+RUN][BASIC].cas" size 11212 crc 7ff83f79 md5 f4cee5378617d93b966dd40a794834a4 sha1 b3dd02c4278d6db8f797cef121d3df462a963516 )
    rom ( name "Academy on Computers - Atari Self-Tests AT1.1.1 (1983)(WNET/THIRTEEN)(US)(Tape 2 of 5 Side A)(Lesson 3)[CLOAD+RUN][BASIC].cas" size 11503 crc 1f7b3959 md5 dfa08bd20f1ddc6c72e6e3c33674ef47 sha1 c2066d313050148121624a0790d71820f1021963 )
    rom ( name "Academy on Computers - Atari Self-Tests AT1.1.1 (1983)(WNET/THIRTEEN)(US)(Tape 2 of 5 Side B)(Lesson 4)[CLOAD+RUN][BASIC].cas" size 11216 crc d192f7a1 md5 c5ddcb6c876a45c2d40bdce2a85c8fee sha1 dd6356cd3287d8d2f1b196c121d9496aef9c33f4 )
    rom ( name "Academy on Computers - Atari Self-Tests AT1.1.1 (1983)(WNET/THIRTEEN)(US)(Tape 3 of 5 Side A)(Lesson 5)[CLOAD+RUN][BASIC].cas" size 11773 crc cd745548 md5 c4c173e55ff76dd6429de61a50cc94f4 sha1 5e29477a6c990bb4ce5d6b0bf8496895f148029e )
    rom ( name "Academy on Computers - Atari Self-Tests AT1.1.1 (1983)(WNET/THIRTEEN)(US)(Tape 3 of 5 Side B)(Lesson 6)[CLOAD+RUN][BASIC].cas" size 11353 crc 6c780b22 md5 126b6bfdd2dc7d8e72b4e82f30f8d192 sha1 45ddeb17b3573a986a6c90ddf9ff133e44bf80a9 )
    rom ( name "Academy on Computers - Atari Self-Tests AT1.1.1 (1983)(WNET/THIRTEEN)(US)(Tape 4 of 5 Side A)(Lesson 7)[CLOAD+RUN][BASIC].cas" size 11071 crc 1aa7aa29 md5 7cbbbee82dd72a5b90d1c262f19cc988 sha1 eff28ed3c5c563d666c1693ac67d4d90d1f6756f )
    rom ( name "Academy on Computers - Atari Self-Tests AT1.1.1 (1983)(WNET/THIRTEEN)(US)(Tape 4 of 5 Side B)(Lesson 8)[CLOAD+RUN][BASIC].cas" size 11347 crc 12da099f md5 2e4e2614384701e22e8b9485608f0ad7 sha1 9b38abf545769c4cf3ead0a5448bffba292d633d )
    rom ( name "Academy on Computers - Atari Self-Tests AT1.1.1 (1983)(WNET/THIRTEEN)(US)(Tape 5 of 5 Side A)(Lesson 9)[CLOAD+RUN][BASIC].cas" size 11496 crc b9fde969 md5 052159fc7263218717ff99073efe3c38 sha1 b841be5e2a9b7caddb9187bf6dbaf6b78c00c560 )
    rom ( name "Academy on Computers - Atari Self-Tests AT1.1.1 (1983)(WNET/THIRTEEN)(US)(Tape 5 of 5 Side B)(Lesson 10)[CLOAD+RUN][BASIC].cas" size 10929 crc e09c45f8 md5 e3afa7b3532c2ffec23b83c9dc110e69 sha1 ea3381ba14e8faccd37b03db4bf7b45fbfd03002 )
)

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Here is something that is not on the preserved list, it is not protected , but I guess it is homebrew, it was on one of the 150 disks that I got , and is in Spartados 2.3b, the atr file is called Digitize Tune , has 8 radio quality digitized music tunes , and for the 8 Bit Atari it is pretty good. However the disk is in single sided, double density and requires at least a 130 XE to use it or an 800xl with expanded memory (>128 K). You need basic to boot the disk.

 

Here is alist of the 8 tunes on this disk:

 

1) Into the Groove by Madonna

2) Smalltown Boy by Brownski Beat

3) 19 by Paul Hardcastle

4) Axel F. by Arnold Faltermeyer

6) Thing get better by Howard J.

7) Look Mama by Howard Jones

8] Girls by Van Halen

 

 

Each tune is about 10-12 seconds long, fully digitized on the Atari by the people above like I said radio quality tunes, with voice, etc. Enjoy.

 

 

 

Digitize-Tune.atr

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23 hours ago, Mr Robot said:

Any idea when all the contributed scanned artwork, manuals, and media is going to be released?

They have already slowly been making their way onto the website. When it will all be finished, I cannot say. I interleave that work along with all the other things that need to be done.

 

5 hours ago, rcamp48 said:

Here is alist of the 8 tunes on this disk:

We don't catalog homebrews but this is a nice blast from the past. Thanks for posting it!

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On 9/3/2021 at 2:59 PM, luckybuck said:

That is why, we take the 'complete Atari' (2 TB) on a fast SSD, bring them to the meetings and share them. -> 2^x spread: the rest is history.

Vision: archiv accessible through FujiNet for all mankind.

What is this "Complete Atari" 2TB you speak of?

 

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On 7/12/2021 at 2:31 AM, Farb said:

Thanks for pointing this out. In the past, we only included ATRs in the collection for unprotected disks. Now that ATX is a more commonly supported format, I have been slowly replacing the ATRs with ATXs where possible. From the dumps that Pete submitted to us, Kampfgruppe, Panzer Grenadier and Computer Quarterback Teams Disk 1985 still had ATRs. I've updated the first two in the database but we don't have a good ATX for the latter due to disk corruption. I've also updated the database with you as the contributor for Pete's dumps. Thanks again for your contribution!

@Farb What about those who do not have ATX compatible hardware? Many things can only handle .ATR format.

 

Edit: Are you ADDING .ATX to the .ATR archive, or are you REPLACING them?

Please ADD, NOT REPLACE.

Thanks.

Edited by Kyle22
Clarity.
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42 minutes ago, Kyle22 said:

@Farb What about those who do not have ATX compatible hardware? Many things can only handle .ATR format.

 

Edit: Are you ADDING .ATX to the .ATR archive, or are you REPLACING them?

Please ADD, NOT REPLACE.

Thanks.

I agree with you.  It is also better to have ATRs for turning them back into real disks as no special hardware is required

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9 hours ago, Kyle22 said:

What about those who do not have ATX compatible hardware? Many things can only handle .ATR format.

When we started doing the preservation work, there were very few options for ATX so it made sense to do the extra work to also catalog the ATR versions. However, today there is now ATX support in many hardware devices and emulators.

 

A non copy-protected ATX can always be reliably converted into an ATR (but the reverse is not true). For those that want to continue using older hardware or emulators and need ATRs, there are at least two utilities that can very easily perform this conversion: a8rawconv and a8diskutil.

 

Sorry, but given the shortage of time and the many other things that need to be done, spending time on producing, cataloging and distributing ATRs simply doesn't make sense anymore. Wherever possible, the ATRs that we have currently cataloged will eventually be replaced by proper ATXs that preserve the track sector ordering that ATRs do not.

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That's fine, as a majority of the stuff is out there as ATR and a lot of this fantastic collection is ATR based so people can just keep a copy of this in their ATR release and then just collect the newer additions as ATX, who knows, someone may crack any previously missing additions.

 

As someone who has started to realise how precious time and the lack of it is, I support anything that will make the preservation of these titles less time-consuming for the people involved, while also giving us more correct out-of-the-box versions of the titles.

 

Thanks to all..

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Today I am going to go through my set of 250 floppy disks and just see what there is there , who knows there may be a gem in there somewhere. Also I have a 10 MB file full of Atari MUS files , don't know where I got it , I found it somewhere in my browsing and cannot find it again, if it is worth posting I will put a link up for it. These are all of the BBS Music files from the 80s. Here is the link, there are enough Mus files to make it worthwhile:

 

BBS Music Files from the 80s in one zip file

 

Russ

 

 

PS: Farb: I do not know if these are somewhere in the archives , but there are a lot of BBS music file in this zip file.

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