Action Replay cartridges and the A8

[carmel_andrews]

I seem to remember that back in the day's when Atari 8bit, speccies and c64's ruled the roost there was a plethora or hacking cartridges, mostly for the speccy and the c64, like the above and multiface for the speccy

 

Now i remember that nothing like that existed for the A8, is there a liklihood of it doing so now

 

here is what i was thinking

 

There would be 2 versions, one for a pucka a8 system and an emulator version

 

Each version would have each 4 different versions (128k, 256k, 512k and 1meg+...all expandable to 4 meg)

 

Built in Machine code monitor, with ability to read in boot disks, tapes, disk sectors and different types of file and write out in the same formats

 

If you are loading in via the monitor a bin file that has a run/init address, the cart is programmed to disable the running/exec. of the program

 

A built in super archiver/happy 810/1050 type mod with a built in patch for compat. with the various euro 1050/810 u/g's based on speedy/superspeedy and advanced disk compaction and copy utilities, so you don't need to have a modded 8101/1050 (similar in concept to the happy discovery cart for the ST)

 

built in advanced software media convertor (i.e, tape-tape, tape-disk, disk-disk or tape, file to tape or disk, cart to tape or disk) with built in routines to handling the more advanced/unscrupoulous copy protection systems

 

As part of the software media convertor program, it would have built in packing/depacking routines or software, with the option of whether you want the output media to be a packed version or non packed

 

The packing/depack routines will be based on those used in cruncher 5 or superpacker 1 (which seem to be the most pop. or most used)

 

Built in PMG(sprite)/Gfx/sonix editor and viewer ands option so save grabbed PMG(sprite)/Gfx/sonix

 

Built in memory finder (based around the PC utility 'artmoney', best one i've seen thats similar to Pro AR/Xploder etc) enabling you to find your own cheats (lives, energy bars, non collisiom detection etc) and the write a built in 'trainer' for the game in mem. with enable/disable trainer ability

 

In regards to the software media convertor, it would also be capable of converting betw. the various boot/dos menu systems (i.e howfen, rob c, elton, ian k, JW/Multiboot, transdisk and also those ugly looking dos menu's... the files loaded from these menu's can be shoved/placed thru the built in packing/depacking program, so you can have a packed version the other end

 

The cart would also feature a USB port and an atari to pc prgram to that you can access atari images like ATR's/Xfd's etc and binary files (exe/com/xex files) directly from the pc/mac etc without the need for an sio-ide/pc device, and the ability to convert directly between atari-pc files and visa versa

 

Additionally it will also be capable of emulation or simulation of software media loading (tape/disk/cart etc) bypassing any copy protection, however advanced, it will display the disk/cassette sector/block, load point and any init/run addr (it will also do this for programs that load in xtra data, like games that load in extra levels), also abily to do this with pc files like atr/xfd/and dos load file

Also for cartridge software that uses the d5xx cartridge bank switch as well as normal 8/16k carts as well

 

The Cartridge would also have built in hacking/text conversion software for example, if you are playing a polish game that has a lot of polish text (which is integral to the game or instructions) and you want it to be converted into english, german or something, this part of the cartridge program would take care of that problem and feature compatability with most/all mainland european languages) and additional langauge support available through language support disks

 

And lastly going back to the built in packing/depacking program, if you have a piece of software (cassette/disk etc) that have packing/depack routines built in, this built in program will enable you to similate unpacking to the 'original' location of the packed data and allowing you to 'repack it', this would be usefull for those that don't have the original packer/depacker program, that this cassette or disk software was using

 

I think that a hack device for the A8 on this magnitude is feasable and possible, after all speccy and c64 users have being using similar devices for donkey's years leaving us A8 users out in the cold

 

I know that we got the programming talent (Heaven, tmr, emkey, miker, plastron etc), and quiet a few of these programmers, started out by 'hacking into' a8 cassette and disk games (and cart's as well)

 

Let show these c64/speccy users what the A8 is really capable of

 

Anyone want to add to this

[Rybags]

A standard 810/1050 can't do Happy type operations.

 

The 1541 is able to do tricky stuff because the drive can be programmed - but the 810/1050 is limited to the commands contained in it's firmware. There was a thread about 6 weeks ago about half-track stepping and creating sectors on Track (-1) of the 1050 - I wrote a program which could do it, but that technique was never used in any commercial software.

 

It would be entirely feasilble (I think) to create such a project using the AtariMax Flash cartridge. A copier on cart has to be able to swap out the address space from $8000-$BFFF to access the RAM underneath, plus it also has to be able to operate in a "stealth" mode.

 

A problem with copying Atari games while running is that unlike the C-64, almost all of the hardware registers in the Atari perform different functions for reads and writes - which makes life hard since there is no easy way to resume a frozen program becuase you don't know things like the player-missile base address, and their positions.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Errrm,

some freezers for the A8 are able to do some of the functions you described. Software freezers were cheap, but not so good, hardware freezers were more expensive and much better... I do remember the hardware freezers Turbo Freezer (by B.Engl) and QMEG-OS Freezer (by S.Dorndorf). They could freeze almost any game by one keypress and with another keypress you could unfreeze and thus play a difficult situation again and again until you made it...

 

There is a new version of the Turbo Freezer available right now at ABBUC, it features the original freezer, plus 512kbytes RAM onboard, plus Cartridge emulation, OLD-OS mode and many more features. The newest version of the QMEG-OS (version 4.04) also has a freezer and a built-in monitor and many other features, like ultra-speed (happy, speedy, US-doubler, turbo 1050, xf551, etc.), built-in sector copier, automatic XRAM detection, freeze or sectorcopy a whole bootdisk to XRAM (d8:) and start it from there, re-direct drives (e.g. drive 1 being drive 8 and vice versa), etc. etc.

 

greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

[Bryan]

I'd be happy just seeing the debugging features expanded in Atari800Win+.

 

-Bry

[ndary]

It is possible to build such cartridge, i did worked on building such cartridge in the past but never got to finish the project.

 

In east Europe there where few cartridges with the ability to freeze and enter a built in monitor, but there where mainly used for debugging purposes. some also had utilities to convert standard tape file to 'turbo mode files'... such as 'VisCopy cartridge' or 'Phoenix cartridge' etc..

 

another cartridge that was finished was the 'utility cartridge' it contained: Dos, Turbo Basic & Compiler, two different sector copy utilities, File copy utilities, Menu maker for dos & non dos disks, Software Freezer, Translator to run the old Atari 800 software, Disk Sector Editor, Disk drive diagnostic / Joystick Diagnostics / Memory Test utilities, Disk Wizard tool to disassemble data, Tape to Disk tools (for multi-stage tapes), Atari Assembler & Mac 65 plus the Super Packer Utility. (as an extra the cartridge also had the Super Archiver SD & ED utilities that works with a 1050 Super Archvier drive)

 

here is a picture of the cartridge menu

[carmel_andrews]

In addition to the features of the AR cart for the A8, here are some additional features

 

Built in DOS (mydos compatible) but with option of either menu (ataridos) or CLI (spartados compat.) command structure, also built in is Atari dos/mydos and spatados compat. Format from one dos, whicxh means that you can access and manipulate spartados and Sparta compat. Dos’s disks (bw dos/dos xl and various euro. Dos’s) from this dos

 

Also comes with patch for Atari’s own dos’s for accessing and manipulating high cap. Storage devices (hard drives and 5.25/3.5 ‘ 1.4 meg floppies and LS 120meg drives)

 

Built in hard drive and cdrw/dvdrw compatibility, mostly atapi/ide and aspi standards, with option for later date, compat. With SATA standards (as this format’s becomes popular)

 

Additionally the built in dos will break the 48 meg partition for mydos/spartados hard drive partitions, there will still be 9 partition limit, but each partition will have sub partitions (up to 255 levels and each sublevel up to 255 levels) of unlimited size, enabling A8 users to using high end hard drives (20gig plus) as well as high speed cd and dvdrw and also up coming dvdrw technology (16/32 gig format)

 

Built in connection to the PBI/ECI and possibly the fabled a800 expansion port (2 port and 1 port option) allowing daisy chaining to other PBI/eci devices, i.e kpi hard drive, black box etc etc)

 

With regards to the PBi/ECi connection, there will be an additional daughter board attachment, which will use one of the PBI/ECi ports the daughterboard attachment will also feature it’s own 2/1 pbi/eci thru port, the daughter board will interface directly to the Atari CPU and other hardware lines (i.e Pokey, Antic and gtia) enabling A8 users to upgrade the Atari hardware externally, thru this board, initially the board will feature a speedy 65816 proc cap of accessing upto 64 megs mem w/o bankswitching, the board will also be compat with the stereo pokey upgrade/ Atari coinop’s ‘Quad Pokey’ and also the SID u/g for the A8, also compat. With the bob wooley dual antic/gtia upgrades and also the videoboard ‘xe’ presently being worked on by some polish bloke

 

The draughtboard will have internal space for a half height (laptop size) hard drive and also the onboard mem (upgradeable to 256 meg) the daughterboard will have it’s own power supply, allowing the daughterboard to operate indep. From the cartridge, on the back of the daughterboard will have the following connections, 2x ide (will worl the same way as PC, allowing you to attach up to 4 ide dev's), 1x scsi 2 connector, 2 more usb connectors, connectors for connection to stereo speakiers and also a standard centronic connector (no more need for cupid or pr connection)

 

Ability to load in pc or mac industry standard graphics/text/sound/video or music files (i.e jprg, mpg, mp3, avi, QuickTime, etc…etc) and convert them to various Atari formats (incl ST/e/Falcon and lynx etc)

 

Lastly in regards to the way that the cartridge ram and for that matter the extra daughterboard ram will be paged the first 128k of the daughterboard mem. Will be paged like the normal Atari 8bit (to hold the a8 memory map etc) the additional memory (x pages by 64k p/page) will all be zero’d, if you are just using the cartridge only the 1st 64k is paged (to hold the a8 mem. Map) any additional mem. (x pages by 64k p/page) will be zero’d… very ideal to use as disk buffer or finding out in mem. where disk/cassette block/sectors loads and init. In mem., as you will be able to ‘user programme’ the disk and cassette memory analyser to loading the data into these other pages of mem (and not just the default 64k page)

Edited April 24, 2006 by carmel_andrews

[carmel_andrews]

oops, sorry... DP

Edited April 24, 2006 by carmel_andrews