Cart-to-Disk Convertor?

[Clint Thompson]

Just curious if there is a way to transfer the data from a commercially released cassette tape into a disk .bin so you don't have to load up the tape each and every time (minutes after minutes after minutes).

 

Any special device or steps I can take to do such?

Thanks!

[Rybags]

Every cassette game should have an .XEX or .ATR equivalent for the emulators by now.

 

Try Wav2Cas on this site:

 

http://home.planet.nl/~ernest/atarixle.html

 

Then, you can load the .CAS file quickly on the emulator. There are countless utilities to convert single-stage boot cassettes to disk.

Although, it would probably be easier to write out the relevant sections of memory and create a binary load file.

[carmel_andrews]

Every cassette game should have an .XEX or .ATR equivalent for the emulators by now.

 

Try Wav2Cas on this site:

 

http://home.planet.nl/~ernest/atarixle.html

 

Then, you can load the .CAS file quickly on the emulator.  There are countless utilities to convert single-stage boot cassettes to disk.

Although, it would probably be easier to write out the relevant sections of memory and create a binary load file.

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In order to find out where in mem. the cassette program loads into memory you need to look at the loader in some cases, however, in my experience some tape software have built in protection systems which mask out where ther data is loaded into memory, BBSB and several bank-switched programs are examples, alternatively it just scrambles the data, so that the data in memory will not correspond with the data on the cassette/disk software

 

a good tape-disk convertor software is C-Simulator (but only does standard multistage ( it doesn't cope well with funny loaders like EA, English software or novagen) or hi speed loaders like Dimension x

 

Alternatively Howfen tape to boot disk (but suffers from the same probs as per C-Sim and doersn't work well with byte-back tape games

 

A Good all round one is transdisk which deals with all types of loaders, the only one i found it didn't do was the xl/64k side of mercenary, the 48k version no problem

 

Using howfen or C-Sim is good if you going to use the resulant boot disk to find out where in memory the data loads, just make sure you know where the game loader is (which is just passed the howfen boot or CSim loader)

 

Ideally you will have something like a o s rom patch like Qmeg, supermon or omnimon xl/xe (either on a real atari or as rom image for use on emulators

[Wrathchild]

As an aside (not tried it myself) can you take a CAS image

and do the disk conversion via one of those tools to an ATR image

solely under emulation

[Rybags]

In almost all cases, a utility can convert a single stage cassette to disk file.

 

Multi-stage is entirely different, as the loader program can do what it wants so far as encryption, file format, and what addresses it loads into.

 

The upside is that very few programs, once run, will load extra data from cassette, which means that it's easy to just dump out the RAM using a monitor or from an emulator.

 

Assuming the program still works when you press Reset, and that it works on a 48K machine, all you would need to do is use the WRITE command to dump the following memory regions into 2 files:

0002 - 000D (so that the CASINI, DOSINI, DOSVEC and BOOT flags are saved)

480 - BC1F (all program memory)

 

WRITE 02 0D DUMP1.DAT
WRITE 480 BC1F DUMP2.DAT

 

Then write a simple BASIC program which joins the files together, along with the appropriate binary file headers:

 

10 OPEN #1,8,0,"H:MYGAME.XEX":REM FINAL OUTPUT FILE
20 PUT #1,255:PUT #1,255:PUT #1,2:PUT #1,0:PUT #1,13:PUT#1,0:REM LOAD ADDRESS 0002 - 000D
30 OPEN #2,4,0,"H:DUMP1.DAT":REM FILE CONTAINING 0002 - 000D
40 FOR A=1 TO 12:GET #2,D:PUT #1,D:NEXT A:CLOSE #2
50 OPEN #2,4,0,"H:DUMP2.DAT:REM FILE CONTAINING 0480 - BC1F
60 PUT #1,128:PUT #1,4:PUT #1,31:PUT #1,191:REM LOAD ADDRESS 0480 - BC1F
70 TRAP 90
80 GET #2,D:PUT #1,D:GOTO 80
90 CLOSE #2:PUT #1,226:PUT #1,2:PUT #1,227:PUT #1,2:PUT #1,100:PUT #1,228:REM RUN ADDRESS $E474 (WARMSTART)
100 CLOSE #1

 

Just 2 slight disadvantages to this method: The file will be fairly big, and it won't work with most binary loader menus (including DOS).

Edited February 28, 2006 by Rybags