Atarimania Forum

Our A8 database is far from complete and there are still HUNDREDS of entries missing. We are looking for games and game info not listed yet.

If you have undumped games on tape or disk format, we'd be happy to hear from you. Magazine type-ins and pre-83 supplier catalogs also wanted!

Please help us preserve and archive rare games for the community

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Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

The secret link of AtariAge 8-bit section.

http://www.atariage.com/company_list.html?SystemID=800

Enjoy

Welcome BonesCollector

Thanks for the link. I believe all the cartridge titles are covered in our database already but we'll have a closer look... If you have any info or dumps of rare tape and disk releases, please let us know

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Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Yeah I was kinda wondering what the criteria was. Type in Basic programs seem like a probable candidate and I do have at least one I noticed is not here.

I assume you guys are shooting for original versions, but like was pointed out we have no way of knowing what stuff you may have but never got around to posting.

Welcome Shannon,

shannon wrote:Yeah I was kinda wondering what the criteria was. Type in Basic programs seem like a probable candidate and I do have at least one I noticed is not here.

Well, as far as type-ins go, we have about everything from the "big ones" (ANALOG, Antic, SoftSide...), they just need to be uploaded to the database. We're missing some Compute! stuff but that shouldn't be too hard to get in the end. Now if you have programs from rarer publications / newsletters such as Micro, Family Computing or God knows what else, we'd like to hear from you.

I assume you guys are shooting for original versions, but like was pointed out we have no way of knowing what stuff you may have but never got around to posting.

If the game is rare and can't be found as an original anymore, we'll go for whatever we can get our hands on of course. We hope to have some sort of "master list" of MIA games posted in the not too distant future. In the meantime, if you think you have something a bit uncommon, please let us know.

Also, if you do have a listing for your old disk collection yourself (programs that have not been taken from the various FTP sites that is) or know of people with some, this would help us immensely

Thanks for posting!

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Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Well I'm not exactly sure what is considered rare. Unfortunately most of the stuff I have was "acquired" in some form or another. I was a teenager and did not have much income at the time. But I have noticed that my files in some cases have differed from versions that seem readily available.

But anyways I do have a handful of BASIC programs from various magazines (like Antic) that may be useful for your site.

I also may have a handful of documentation files for various games. Those (unfortunately) are in the original atari disc format so it would take a while for me to get around to going thru them.

Looks like you guys got most everything covered though. But if I stumble across something I think is rare I'll let ya know. I'm just glad to see someone make an effort in this area cause after looking at the tosec compilations it is something that really needs to be done. Cause they have ALOT of stuff listed as one format when that really was not the case.

Shannon,

Well I'm not exactly sure what is considered rare. Unfortunately most of the stuff I have was "acquired" in some form or another.

This list is a good place to start: http://www.atarimania.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=498

Copies are not necessarily a problem as a hefty number of (mainly very old) software titles can only be found this way. There's A LOT of rare stuff on people's disks and this is what needs to be dumped before it's too late.

If you can, look out for early commercial stuff from the US written in BASIC. Machine language titles are the most copied but stuff in BASIC is often overlooked.

But I have noticed that my files in some cases have differed from versions that seem readily available.

If you have full (one disk) versions of some titles that we only have as "crippled" files, please let us know and we'll replace them.

But anyways I do have a handful of BASIC programs from various magazines (like Antic) that may be useful for your site.

If you have some time to compile a list of the non-Antic and ANALOG stuff (which can be found online), we'd like to hear from you.

Hopefully, newer versions of Atari800Win PLus will support loading of BASIC files directly (in the same way as executables) which will tremendously expand the database.

I also may have a handful of documentation files for various games. Those (unfortunately) are in the original atari disc format so it would take a while for me to get around to going thru them.

Could be interesting depending on the game.

Looks like you guys got most everything covered though. But if I stumble across something I think is rare I'll let ya know.

Far from everything

Lots and lots of the early stuff from the US is missing but we need help from long-time American users. Educational titles are also very hard to find, mostly because it catered for a different market and was less copied.

I'm just glad to see someone make an effort in this area cause after looking at the tosec compilations it is something that really needs to be done. Cause they have ALOT of stuff listed as one format when that really was not the case.

Don't get me started on TOSEC

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Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Yeah I used to pretty much rely on my own collection of atari stuff that I "acquired" during my atari BBS perusing days. But at some point I decided to see if I could find a more "accurate" collection. Cause most of the stuff was converted to binary files and/or loaders with hacked text.

Anyways to make a long story short the TOSEC collection is purely pitiful and whoever compiled it has no clue to the true "media" of alot of the material.

So my next question is in the database, what do the different smilies under the "dump" field represent?

shannon wrote:So my next question is in the database, what do the different smilies under the "dump" field represent?

First of all, it has to be said that we will always favor an original dump if we can (bar the protection generally because it's easier to handle on the current emulators). That's the reason why we try to have .ROM files for cartridges, .CAS files for tapes...

When we started the database, we just wanted to go for a repository with very detailed and accurate info on what we could find, dumps being something secondary. The project then evolved somewhat and we began interested in the preservation of the titles in their true original form (real tape files, disks...). You'll find release info and rarity on the game pages.

There's still a lot of work to do in the smilies department, mainly because we changed them halfway through and they are not always accurate. You have some highlighted text when you go over them but, basically, the idea is to sort out all dumps using the following designation...

= original dump(s) available
If the game was only available on tape and we have the original converted to .CAS file, we'll use this. Same for Donkey Kong on cartridge (only released on cartridge and we have the .ROM file). Also if the game was sold in two or more different formats and we have ALL the original dumps available.

= original dump(s) available, missing one or two of the released formats though
Means we do have one of the original dumps (ATR disk image for example) but the cartridge or tape dump is missing!

= dump available, missing original version(s) though
Usually cracked, hacked or unverified versions. The dump is available (which is better than nothing) but we need original version(s) of the title.

= missing dump(s)
These games are missing in action either because the crack is too bad to be in the database or we have absolutely no dump whatsoever of the program. These titles are urgently needed (in their original form if possible but we'll take anything as, obviously, it's better to have a crippled version of a very rare game than nothing at all). These programs can generally be found on old disk collections, sometimes even in PD libraries! Sometimes, they apear on eBay but the rarer titles will only pop up once in every five years or so!

A missing smilie means we didn't do our homework

Note that non-commercial BASIC files are placed on auto-booting disks with DOS. Hopefully, there'll be a way to load .BAS programs directly in future versions of emulators.

Really stating the obvious but this detailed info will hopefully get more people involved in the project

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Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Atari Frog wrote: = missing dump(s)
These games are missing in action either because the crack is too bad to be in the database or we have absolutely no dump whatsoever of the program. These titles are urgently needed (in their original form if possible but we'll take anything as, obviously, it's better to have a crippled version of a very rare game than nothing at all). These programs can generally be found on old disk collections, sometimes even in PD libraries! Sometimes, they apear on eBay but the rarer titles will only pop up once in every five years or so!
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Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

The missing dump smiley ( ) is that signified with a blue color in the database?

Oh and thanks for the clarification I just wanted to get a feel for how you guys were operating and what you were looking for. That way when I do peruse my stuff (which I do occasionally). I'll have an idea of what is useful and what is not.

shannon wrote:The missing dump smiley ( ) is that signified with a blue color in the database?

Exactly, it's blue.

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Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Hi Atari Frog.

I have original source disks for assembly language games released through General Masters:


Gorgon
Border Battle
Satelite Wars
Adventure Cruise
Galactic Realms
Space Servo
Gladiator
Infraction Beam


Shamus
Salmon Run
AirStrike
SpaceEggs
Ghost


Wizard's Cavern
LightHouse
Condensation
Coastal Invasion
Octopus
UnderWater Cavern
Castle Command
Concentration
Buffalo Stampede
Top of the Hill



I don't remember if these are our games or what but I have a disk of:
RiverRat
Eliminator
Bulldog

I also have our development library including
Atari Writer (executable not source)
macro assembler
screen generators
character generators
Player Missle Graphics Editor utilities

A disk I don't remember called Math Programs - I think it was stuff I wrote to cheat on matrix manipulation and linear programming when I was a math major at UCLA.

I also have a bunch of disks of intermediate development stages on Elevator Action.

I am sure my old partners have more.

Howard

I still have my old back up disks (mostly transdisk'd or howfendos'd), If you are interested i still have a hand written list


My only problem is though I would need at least 2 modd'd 1050's (to copy the stuff over) and a 2 or 3 in 1 pc-atari interface

It incl. most of the cassette software i offloaded to deathtrap.

Carmel,

Please let us know if you have something from this list: http://www.atarimania.com/MIA_January_2006.zip

Your tapes were helpful, thanks

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Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

that is an extensive list...

i'll have to cross reference that with my hand written list

As i remember it though, you peeps in ML europe didn't think too much of howfen or rob c/ian k/alpha menu's (as you kept sending them back with v. rude messages) and we in GB didn't think too much of dos based menu's

Perhaps that situation has now changed

By the way, do you know if they bought out a version of C sim or Howfen tape to boot disk to handling non standard tape loaders (i.e, high speed, EA, English SW, Novagen etc)