Atari Cartridge Documentation Project ep2

[jindroush]

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

there was a project called Atari Cartridge Dumping Project
(mirrored here https://www.atarimax.com/jindroush.atari.org/acartdp.html )
but it had to be closed for personal reasons

but here comes
Episode 2
A New Hope



https://a8.jindrou.sh/acdp.html

It's a compilation of all dumps, cartridge technical information, cartridge and box scans I was able to find floating around. I'm just a curator of the info and without work of all other Atari fans it would not exist. In contrast to previous project, this one is fully 'public' - everything (*) is downloadable in convenient rar archives.
Currently there are 914 cartridges 'mapped' by the project, and I'm still not sure where to draw a line - for example I did not include 'home made menus' if they weren't released in real hardware - but I did include homebrews even if distributed only electronically.
Regarding box scans - I want them all or I need the information, that the cartridge was not distributed in a box
Labels - I'm interested also in variations.
Currently I don't have enough info/expertise to provide any kind of rarity guide.

So, if you want to help to document this part of Atari history, I'd need this
a) do you have any cartridge which is missing in the master list?
b) can you dump anything what is missing?
c) can you verify a dump?
d) can you scan a label/box which is not present, or is scanned in a low quality? Basically, any quality photo will do, I'll rotate/resize/crop it by myself. 800px wide is enough.
e) if you're producer of the cartridges and/or you have technical knowledge about them, can you verify info I have in technical info descriptions ?

I'm also open for any suggestions regarding the data presentation, filtering, predefined filters etc. to make browsing this collection convenient. Your feedback is very welcome as we all have different needs/wishes.

(*) game dumps are mostly not present, but... wink, wink.
 

[jindroush]

This post is reserved for announcements/release notes.

2023.05.30 - added preliminary TOSEC naming support.
2023.06.03 - on request changed archive types from .rar to .zip
2023.06.03 - on individual cartridge pages red borders indicate which pictures need (re)scanning

Edited June 3 by jindroush

[+DrVenkman]

4 hours ago, jindroush said:

This post is reserved for future announcements/release notes etc (if it could be unlocked to edit).

Be sure to ask @Albert or another moderator - with luck they’ll take care of it for you.

[Albert]

1 hour ago, DrVenkman said:

Be sure to ask @Albert or another moderator - with luck they’ll take care of it for you.

Done. The first two posts can now be edited indefinitely. 
 

  ..Al

[+DrVenkman]

29 minutes ago, Albert said:

Done. The first two posts can now be edited indefinitely. 
 

  ..Al

Hey, Al - rather than tagging you individually or trying to remember who else is moderating different parts of the forum, is there an Admin or Moderator alias that will just let whomever happens to be available that someone has a question like this? Don’t know if tagging “Report” is the right thing to do for something like the above. 

[+gnusto]

14 hours ago, jindroush said:

I'm also open for any suggestions regarding the data presentation, filtering, predefined filters etc

Hi - first, thanks for undertaking this effort. I and others in the community really appreciate the work that goes into trying to fully preserve our favorite computer platform.

I do have a suggestion for above, I would suggest that you follow the TOSEC naming convention, as that has been the direction of a8preservation and @Farb's work over the years and related preservation work like @DjayBee's cracks. Many of the cartridges you have here are part of a8preservation archives already, although they are less concerned about increments of homebrew games, for instance.

An example of how this would change your current naming:
 

Basic XL (1.02) (user).car
becomes
BASIC XL v1.02 (1983)(OSS)(US)[!].car

 

or
Atariwriter (reva) (user).car
becomes
AtariWriter Rev. A (1982)(Atari)(US)[!].car

TOSEC has been a resilient format that is used for many other collections for over a decade, and proven itself over time. It may be a bit more verbose but it is quite helpful in keeping track of details that are sometimes important, for instance the same game named software released in different years, or different publishers.

If you would like to try it out for size I would be happy to scan what you have and relabel everything that has an a8preservation equivalent. I don't want to be presumptuous though, this is just a suggestion, let me know if you have an interest.

[jindroush]

1 hour ago, gnusto said:

If you would like to try it out for size I would be happy to scan what you have and relabel everything that has an a8preservation equivalent. I don't want to be presumptuous though, this is just a suggestion, let me know if you have an interest.

Yep, I totally forgot about that. I'll probably go in a way of two rars - one with 'originals', ie. the database generated names and the other one with TOSEC naming. I assume we're talking about .car files only, right? It does not concern scans?

BTW: Do I read it correctly that you mean car->rar into car->zip->rar?

If there is any tool which can auto-rename the carts to TOSEC naming, or machine readable database for that, just send me the links, I'll incorporate it in my release process. The less manual work, the better.

[+gnusto]

3 hours ago, jindroush said:

Do I read it correctly that you mean car->rar into car->zip->rar?

Ah I see, when I first posted as I was cut and pasting I used the archive name instead of the file name, my mistake. I edited the original post.

 

Sorry that was unclear, this has to do with the original filenames, before they are archived (which probably means the archives get named differently too, but that's a different issue). It helps ensure people know what they are getting when working with the source files, since in the wild they will often be unarchived, repackaged, or what ever other random results.

To take an example of a cartridge from the existing a8preservation set:

810 Diagnostic Cartridge (1982)(Atari)(US)[cartridge].zip is the archive name

810 Diagnostic Cartridge (1982)(Atari)(US)[!].car is the file within the archive

In this case there is a special [!] denotation which a8preservation uses to show that there are multiple identical dumps from original, thus the cartridge in this case is considered verified, so you could ignore that in your case. The major difference here is the [cartridge] identifier on the archive name, which helps a user to determine what kind of file it is before they open the archive.
 

3 hours ago, jindroush said:

If there is any tool which can auto-rename the carts to TOSEC naming, or machine readable database for that, just send me the links, I'll incorporate it in my release process.

There are tools for this, called ROM managers, of which the most widely known is probably ClrMamePro. To use one of these to automatically rename you need a .dat file, which is a text database of file CRCs and details to match them. I know Farb is working on a DAT set for a8preservation but I don't believe he's released it yet. In the meantime what I would do (or you could do) is simply CRC everything in your collection, then CRC all the cartridges in the a8preservation collection, then sort those hashes for matches and rename the files. It's the manual form of what a ROM manager does.

I took the liberty of scanning your carts with the last set of a8preservation ones and identifying the duplicates, which are in the attached file. That gives you an idea of what the file names would look like in TOSEC (and you could choose to follow the extra identifiers a8pres uses, or not).

 

dupes.txt

[+DjayBee]

5 hours ago, gnusto said:

I know Farb is working on a DAT set for a8preservation but I don't believe he's released it yet. I

A ClrMame DAT file is actually part of every release. Look inside the archive file which contains all the ZIPs. 

[jindroush]

@gnusto, I added preliminary TOSEC support, you can find the archive in the Downloads section. Only files found in datfile are included in TOSEC archive.
I used Atari 8bit Preserved Software 2022-09-10.dat / md5s for pairing. Haven't had time to cross check with the dupes file you posted.
If there is any newer a8sp datfile, plz message me.

Edited May 30 by jindroush

[+gnusto]

I had completely forgotten that Farb was already including DATs, but that's the best way to verify files you have that are common with a8pres, and then adopt their names. For other carts, you need to know a few pieces of data at a minimum - year made, publisher (in that year), and then any revision info. Thanks for considering going in that direction though, it's great to have a common reference naming convention!

[+DjayBee]

On 5/30/2023 at 10:25 AM, jindroush said:

If there is any newer a8sp datfile, plz message me.

 

Right now I uploaded a torrent release from May together with its DAT file.

 

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/234684-atari-8-bit-software-preservation-initiative/?do=findComment&comment=5263832

 

[+SoulBuster]

Any chance to use the zip format to distribute the archive?

 

Do most platforms have zip?  Windows does not come with RAR. Zip is a more compatible distribution archive.

 

Check here for carts.

 

[+DrVenkman]

5 minutes ago, SoulBuster said:

Windows does not come with RAR

That's finally about to change. 

 

In the meantime, 7-Zip is free and handles .rar files.

 

[jindroush]

I'm not exactly happy with using zip and would refuse if the size differences would be bigger, but, fortunately, the archives are quite small and the diff is also small. So I switched the generator to .zips and pushed it online.

[+SoulBuster]

12 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

That's finally about to change. 

It is about time. I have been tired of installing third party apps just to open the one file I need from somewhere using RAR or 7zip or other.  I do not like having a bunch of software installed that I MAY use once every three or four years.  So I would install third party app, extract the file and uninstall.

[+DrVenkman]

I use 7Zip regularly enough that it was a no-brainer to install. It handles pretty much every archive format I need and is extremely light on resources.