Atari 8-bit Utilities
Binary load file analyzer
This program will tell you all about your binary-load format Atari
files, and even clean them up if there are specific problems. It runs
under DOS and Unix.
Disk image format conversions
Want to convert between DCM and ATR? Want to turn an ATR disk image
into individual files on your native file system (even creating
subdirectories for MyDos images!)? Or convert a directory full of
files back into a disk image? Well, check out these programs:
Binary load menu
Use this as an autorun.sys file, and you'll get a directory of all
your binary-load files. It's designed for use with MyDos, and it
supports subdirectories. File selection is done with the joystick.
It was written in BASIC, and compiled with ABC. It relies on the DOS
XIO command for binary loading, so it should load anything that DOS
will load (though DOS 2.0S doesn't support that XIO).
Read Atari disks in a PC drive
I haven't had much luck with this, but apparently if you happen to
have the right controller and drive, you can use these to read
standard and enhanced-density Atari disks on your PC.
I expect you'll get about the same results under Linux with the following:
- setfdprm /dev/fd1 dd sect=26 head=1 cyl=40 ssize=128 tpi=48 fm=0 dtr=1
- dd if=/dev/fd1 of=disk.image.inverted bs=128
- invert < disk.image.inverted > disk.image (invert.c)
The above example is for 1050 enhanced disks. With my 1.2M drive, it
reads the first 40 bytes of sector 1 correctly, then returns garbage
for the rest of the disk. For true DD disks, change the setfdprm to
sect=18 and ssize=256; also change to bs=256 for the dd command. For
SD disks, change the setfdprm to sect=18 and fm=1; but don't expect it
to work; most PC controlers won't do single density (FM vs MFM).
Write your own SIO2PC programs
Someone gave these to me, and I haven't had time to do much with them.
If you're interested in writing programs that work with SIO2PC, you'll
probably find them quite useful. (I was hoping to write a menu
program that would run on the Atari and let you change disk images on
the PC, but never got around to it.)
Oh, and here's what I believe to be the latest version of SIO2PC: s2pc410.zip
Re-write SIO2PC for Linux
Pavel Machek made an initial attempt at communicating with the Atari through an SIO2PC cable using Linux's serial port drivers. He came up with a remarkable little program:
That worked great, but didn't support many of the features that I wanted, so I started adding them. As of this point, it seems to work fine reading and writing disk images of any size or density. It uses an ugly hack to determine when the Atari is sending a command frame, which may mess things up if it is used at the same time as a real device, and the user interface is, well, not there, but it should do the job, saving us Linux users from booting DOS to use the Atari.
The only technical reference I've found online for programming SIO devices is Chapter 13 of the Atari System Reference Manual.
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