Another A8 disk archive started

[SpicyChronos]

Hello All,

 

I'm following @Tuxon86, in his thread of archiving a collection of 8-bit titles.

 

I started mine back in November 2021, and I've begun to go through what I have imaged. I have a Kryoflux, and will need to re-image the protected titles and convert to ATX, as I only have them as PRO images.

 

This is a start, and will be adding more batches as I can.

 

Here is a Google Drive link to what I have: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Z8SZbqiWKiMXIOikugCsomqvFhG138Au?usp=sharing

 

Regards,

 

Marshall

 

 

[www.atarimania.com]

Can't thank people enough for doing this!

 

Already spotted some interesting titles that I'll be glad to add to our database  

[+DjayBee]

This is great news.

 

May I bother you with the same request I had for the other dumpers?

Please mark dumps of original disks as such and, if possible, take photos of these disks for our database at a8preservation.com.

 

[www.atarimania.com]

I just uploaded your Fundamental Word Focus disk to our site. Very happy to see this one surface at last!

 

Hope you happen to find any of the other nine modules as this was originally on ten disks!

[SpicyChronos]

Hello All,

 

I have uploaded a new batch of images to my Google Drive share.

 

Some disks I have not identified, so they might be labeled unknown or Misc. Games, utilities, etc... I'd appreciate any updates if your able to identify them.

 

Thanks!

 

Marshall

 

 

[TGB1718]

35 minutes ago, SpicyChronos said:

I'd appreciate any updates if your able to identify them.

Had a quick look at some of them, appear to be BASIC programs on them

although there is no .BAS extension on the file names, again most appeared to be "Graphics" programs.

 

There was also a Renumber Program that used LISTED programs on a disk file, read it in and renumbered

the output to another file on the disk.

 

If I get more time, I'll try catalogue what's where

 

[Mclaneinc]

Thanks Marshall, so grateful that more people are sharing their disks. People tend to think that they will only have what most people have so why bother, wrong!  Share them, there's always a chance of a rare undumped item, even if it's just one program it's worth it.

 

Also, it's just nice to see people sharing...Always good

[bfollowell]

31 minutes ago, Mclaneinc said:

Thanks Marshall, so grateful that more people are sharing their disks. People tend to think that they will only have what most people have so why bother, wrong!  Share them, there's always a chance of a rare undumped item, even if it's just one program it's worth it.

 

Also, it's just nice to see people sharing...Always good

 

Yes, I've even said as much recently, and for the most part, it's probably true, but you never really know. Any of us could unknowingly have that rare gem or missing treasure that everyone has been hoping to find for decades. None of us ever really know. When our daughter, son-in-law, and grandson move out in a couple of weeks and into their new home and we get our home and our lives back, maybe I'll have some time to start playing with some of my old disk collection. I really don't expect that I'll have anything earth shattering, but I'm willing to archive what I have and post them, just in case.

 

[Mrshoujo]

One thing I'm curious about. When it comes to copy preventative disks, is anyone patching the boot process to unprotect the software? I feel there are 2 groups on this issue - I'm in the group who would rather see the protection removed than perpetuate the protection as at this point in history it's not necessary anymore. But there's the group who would prefer to see the protection itself intact so perhaps it can be studied as to how it worked. Unprotecting it solves problems for drive emulation, I would think.

[bfollowell]

8 minutes ago, Mrshoujo said:

One thing I'm curious about. When it comes to copy preventative disks, is anyone patching the boot process to unprotect the software? I feel there are 2 groups on this issue - I'm in the group who would rather see the protection removed than perpetuate the protection as at this point in history it's not necessary anymore. But there's the group who would prefer to see the protection itself intact so perhaps it can be studied as to how it worked. Unprotecting it solves problems for drive emulation, I would think.

 

If, once the archiving is complete, an atx is created, I think this solves the issue. atx files have the copy protection embedded in the file and still work with most, if not all emulators and modern floppy replacements. For simplicity's sake though, I can see the benefit of removing the protection entirely, assuming this can be done while keeping the software working correctly. I so no reason we couldn't have an atx version with the copy-protection intact, and atr version where is has been removed and the original software patched to work without it. That's for others with more knowledge than me to decide though.

 

[ijor]

1 hour ago, Mrshoujo said:

One thing I'm curious about. When it comes to copy preventative disks, is anyone patching the boot process to unprotect the software? I feel there are 2 groups on this issue - I'm in the group who would rather see the protection removed than perpetuate the protection as at this point in history it's not necessary anymore. But there's the group who would prefer to see the protection itself intact so perhaps it can be studied as to how it worked. Unprotecting it solves problems for drive emulation, I would think.

There is no contradiction or conflict between both approaches. You can have both "versions", the "original" one with the copy protection intact and a crack. The only difference is that the process is mostly irreversibly. You can always crack any software with the copy protection intact. But you usually cannot reliably restore the full original code and copy protection from a crack.

Edited February 21, 2022 by ijor

[Mclaneinc]

 

I'm happy with the protection intact, we are still finding the odd title where the crack wasn't perfect, thankfully we have people like Djaybee fixing these titles and doing full and proper cracks but I'd rather run the disk as it was meant to be played. Ok you can't speed read some of them in because of said protection but just hit F1 or wait a little on real hardware. I also find it quite fun, seeing the drive stop and then restart or whatever the protection did, takes you back to the first time you got that disk... Nice memories..

 

Not every thing was on a multi boot

[Tuxon86]

3 hours ago, SpicyChronos said:

Hello All,

 

I have uploaded a new batch of images to my Google Drive share.

 

Some disks I have not identified, so they might be labeled unknown or Misc. Games, utilities, etc... I'd appreciate any updates if your able to identify them.

 

Thanks!

 

Marshall

 

 

A trick that I use. I load the ATX into Altira booted with a dos disk image and cut and paste the dir into a text file. I number those disk and name the text file by the same name with _content at the end.

[+DjayBee]

3 hours ago, bfollowell said:

Any of us could unknowingly have that rare gem or missing treasure that everyone has been hoping to find for decades.

This is so true.

Every single one of the recent dumpers (Burkhart87, Tuxon86 and now SpicyChronos) posted several titles which were completely unknown or at least thought missing.

Look at all the happy postings by www.atarimania.com.

 

2 hours ago, Mrshoujo said:

When it comes to copy preventative disks, is anyone patching the boot process to unprotect the software?

That's my job, besides checking and repairing the ATX dumps.
https://archive.org/details/@cs_stuttgart is in need of an update containing all the stuff from the last months.

[Mclaneinc]

Marshall, why the PRO images, I'm finding many of them are not working Penstate, O'Rielly Mine to name just 2, Penstate just sits reading sector 36 forever which I guess means it's looking for a bad or phantom sector and not getting one.

 

Paul..

 

ps I think that atr 89a also has a bad sector on the last file on it..

 

PS More of the PRO's don't work, I'm wondering if you copied them and they didn't work so you tried the PRO was a last resort?

Edited February 21, 2022 by Mclaneinc

[Tuxon86]

24 minutes ago, Mclaneinc said:

Marshall, why the PRO images, I'm finding many of them are not working Penstate, O'Rielly Mine to name just 2, Penstate just sits reading sector 36 forever which I guess means it's looking for a bad or phantom sector and not getting one.

 

Paul..

 

ps I think that atr 89a also has a bad sector on the last file on it..

 

PS More of the PRO's don't work, I'm wondering if you copied them and they didn't work so you tried the PRO was a last resort?

Pro is hit and miss. This is why I restarted with the Kryoflux instead of the SIO2USB. Too many disk that didn't work in atr and pro, works fine in atx once re-archived.

 

[Mclaneinc]

 

To be honest, I've got so many PRO files that do not work that I wondered if people had tried them. Not knocking people, better to have a disk that can almost certainly be patched than no disk at all. The pro system was a nice idea, but you can't beat a proper dumping drive with a greaseweasle or whatever. I never used my Lazer drive (Happy clone) for anything other than a speedy loading system, I've no idea just how far they got with Happy backup, but I seem to remember there were titles even it could not do. I think one was with a hole in the disk.... A bit of utility software if memory serves me..

 

The titles in Marshalls pro dumps are down to protection systems as far as I can see, EA titles are a known "must be copied properly" as I think they time the load as well as look for right types of protection sectors.

 

Edit: I'm finding a lot of the atrs are faulty, not tried all but quite a few so far..Eek....... Not trying to be a misery, just letting Marshall etc know that there are dead un's in there..

Edited February 21, 2022 by Mclaneinc

[www.atarimania.com]

Found something incredibly cool on the disks posted yesterday:

Synapse Software Demo.bas

 

First time I ever see this rolling demo.

[SpicyChronos]

50 minutes ago, Mclaneinc said:

 

To be honest, I've got so many PRO files that do not work that I wondered if people had tried them. Not knocking people, better to have a disk that can almost certainly be patched than no disk at all. The pro system was a nice idea, but you can't beat a proper dumping drive with a greaseweasle or whatever. I never used my Lazer drive (Happy clone) for anything other than a speedy loading system, I've no idea just how far they got with Happy backup, but I seem to remember there were titles even it could not do. I think one was with a hole in the disk.... A bit of utility software if memory serves me..

 

The titles in Marshalls pro dumps are down to protection systems as far as I can see, EA titles are a known "must be copied properly" as I think they time the load as well as look for right types of protection sectors.

 

Edit: I'm finding a lot of the atrs are faulty, not tried all but quite a few so far..Eek....... Not trying to be a misery, just letting Marshall etc know that there are dead un's in there..

Hi All,

 

Thanks for helping me out with finding bad dumps, etc. I plan on using my Kryoflux and a 360K drive I have and re-dumping the protected disks. As for some of the ATRs, I can attempt to re-dump them, or use the Kryoflux.

 

 

Regards,

Marshall

[Tuxon86]

28 minutes ago, SpicyChronos said:

Hi All,

 

Thanks for helping me out with finding bad dumps, etc. I plan on using my Kryoflux and a 360K drive I have and re-dumping the protected disks. As for some of the ATRs, I can attempt to re-dump them, or use the Kryoflux.

 

 

Regards,

Marshall

I made myself a script with Microsoft Power Automate to ask for a name, read the disk with DTC, convert to ATX and zip the kryoflux files with the provided name. The script then copy the files into two working dir and clear the work files. So I just pop the disk in, click the play button, wait a bit, remove the disk & flip the media into the sleve and push play again and enter another name for the second side.

 

When I modify the drive, I'll be able to modify my script to do both side at once.

 

There's two limitation to this though. 1st I can't seem to find a way to share that script and two you do have to cut the floppy sleeve unless your drive is modded.

[bfollowell]

1 hour ago, SpicyChronos said:

As for some of the ATRs, I can attempt to re-dump them, or use the Kryoflux.

 

 

Kryoflux is great for copy-protected disks for obvious reasons. I've read that it's also great even for just regular menu disks, homemade disks, data disks, cracked copies, etc. because it can help you read disks that might not read properly with a straight sector copier, which most would think would be all you would need for those sorts of disks. I look forward to starting to go through my old disks.

 

[+DjayBee]

From today's batch some MECC educational titles:

 

0160B - Basic Arithmetic[cr CSS].ATR

0161A - 609 - Elementary Biology[cr CSS].ATR

0162A - 608 - Expeditions[cr CSS].ATR

 

Your ATRs are still protected and therefore crash.

Perhaps you can redump these disks when you have your Kryoflux running.

Edited February 21, 2022 by DjayBee

[SpicyChronos]

55 minutes ago, DjayBee said:

From today's batch some MECC educational titles:

 

0160B - Basic Arithmetic[cr CSS].ATR 90.02 kB · 2 downloads

0161A - 609 - Elementary Biology[cr CSS].ATR 90.02 kB · 2 downloads

0162A - 608 - Expeditions[cr CSS].ATR 90.02 kB · 2 downloads

 

Your ATRs are still protected and therefore crash.

Perhaps you can redump these disks when you have your Kryoflux running.

@djaybee,

 

Gotcha. I'll find them in one of the boxes I've put away and get them done ASAP.

 

-Marshall

[Tuxon86]

It's really nice to see I'm not the only one doing this... There are dozens of us A8 archivers! DOZENS! ?

[cwilbar]

10 hours ago, Tuxon86 said:

I made myself a script with Microsoft Power Automate to ask for a name, read the disk with DTC, convert to ATX and zip the kryoflux files with the provided name. The script then copy the files into two working dir and clear the work files. So I just pop the disk in, click the play button, wait a bit, remove the disk & flip the media into the sleve and push play again and enter another name for the second side.

 

When I modify the drive, I'll be able to modify my script to do both side at once.

 

There's two limitation to this though. 1st I can't seem to find a way to share that script and two you do have to cut the floppy sleeve unless your drive is modded.

While it might not be the best, with certain drives I can image the back size of the floppy w/o an index hole.  Not all drives will do this (most of my 5.25" drives won't, but some will).

I do this with a Supercard Pro, so I can't say it would work with Kryoflux or Greaseweasel.