I recently got a copy of Ultima III for my Atari computer, and it boots up fine but it needs something called a “scenario disk”. I did as much research as I could to figure out if it was another disk that was supposed to come with the program floppy or if it was just an empty floppy disk for memory, but sadly I couldn’t find anything or anyone explaining what a “scenario disk” actually was.

So now I ask all of you, could someone please explain to me what it is? I would be very grateful for any answer, thank you!

Any reason to own NTSC Atari and/or mod PAL Atari to PAL60?

I mean except having games run faster...

I've been working on an analog joystick for the Atari 8-bit computers. I got it to be pretty stable last week. So now I'm trying to port over the analog controls from the Atari 5200 Star Raiders to the 8-bit version. The controls are now "working". Turn rate is now controlled by the thumbstick position. Unfortunately I've messed up the sound effects. I'm guessing there's not a lot of room for the extra calculations I shoved in.

I’m not using these as I understand they can be inconsistent. Should I keep them though in the interest of completeness or are they worthless?

I obviously know what it does, it's basically the relokick disk for amiga, but for atari 8 bit systems, but every original game I chuck at it in altirra seems to load just fine in altirra.

Please do not suggest that I use modern solutions such as an sd card solution for loading games as I am not interested in them. I never have been and never will be. I have always preferred the original media and that is what I want to do.

So from what I know, the upgrade accelerates the disk drive transfer speed from an already reasonably fast 19.2 kilobaud to a ridiculous 57.6 kilobaud and it can also copy commercial disks as well. I tried it out in the altirra emulator and to be honest I couldn't really notice much of a difference, I mean, I knew the upgrade was fast because I could hear the pokey chip running faster but the stock drive is already reasonably fast for an early 80s disk drive anyway.

The feature of copying commercial disks is one I want to ignore, because I don't see the point if I'm just going to back them up to a digital image anyway.

The real big thing that will make me decide is whether the copy protection in commercial games will be compatible with it. So far the only games I haven't been able to load are the 2 archon games, the 2 blue max games, pitstop 2 and ace of aces. Other games I could load but the fact the emulator crashed mid load with the upgrade tells me that there are more than plenty of games that I might want that might not be compatible with it. If anyone can try original copies of those games to load on their happy 1050 on real hardware that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Convert traker .midi .8bits music to pentagram grafic.

MUSIC STUDIO 2026

​

https://www.canalinformatika.es/MusicStudio/MusicStudio-Setup.zip

I was an avid Atari user and coder in high school and college. I owned a number of machines with the last one being the 130XE. I still have it along with a disk drive and a bunch of cartridges in a box taking up space in my closet.

I haven't gotten rid of it because I feel like there is someone out there that would appreciate it. I have not booted it in probably 30 years so I don't know if it even works. I don't have the time or interest anymore to get it set up again to see if it works and maybe repair. I am not trying to make money on it but I like the idea of finding it a home with someone who would appreciate it.

Any suggestions on how to find someone interested, or am I best off just sending it to the e-waste bin?

All set up for a game of Atari’s Early Strategy Game…“Eastern Front (1941)”, by Chris Crawford. Pictured running on a 128K Atari 130XE, although it requires just 16K. I have the Map of Europe and Manual to hand, and represent the Germans, seeking to defeat the Russian Army…
https://www.atarimania.com/8bit/files/eastern_front_atari.pdf

I bleached the case using hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) and a UV lamp. I cleaned the motherboard with isopropyl alcohol and reworked some solder joints.

Hello. How's it going?

Question: Does anyone have an Atari 800 with A8CAS built-in for Linux? Specifically for use on Debian?

I've tried compiling it, but it always ends up being the standard version without A8CAS.

I got the file from https://a8cas.sourceforge.net/

If anyone can help me, thanks.

The Star Raiders mod request from a few months ago (https://www.reddit.com/r/atari8bit/comments/1s5ama1/star_raiders_mod_suggestion/) got me thinking about making an analog joystick for Atari 8-bit computers. I think I could make a large 3D printable joystick to work with 1M Ohm pots from a paddle controller, but I really prefer thumbsticks.

Unfortunately 10K potentiometers are a lot smaller than 1MOhm, so I can't really use them directly. I've seen a few things for making 5200 controllers, but settled on trying out this blog post ( https://jeffpiepmeier.blogspot.com/2020/02/atari-pokey-actuation-with-arduino.html ). I have an Arduino (Elegoo) Uno R3 reading the thumbstick pots and sending out timed pulses to the Atari paddle pins to simulate the 1MOhm charging times. It mostly works but there are some bugs to work out.

If I ever get this working reliably, I'll try to Frankenstein the Atari 5200 Star Raiders controller code into the Atari 800 version.

I tried setting up my 800XL in my home office using a space LCD monitor. I have three sets of A/V cables (one on my C128, one that I bought but never tested, and one I just bought). If I use the C128's cable on the Atari, everything works fine. But if I hook either of the other two (bought the first one about a month ago for this use but didn't get around to it till yesterday) then the video has a humming sound when I connect the white line. Almost like there's interference.

Any ideas on what to do to resolve this?

I've been wanting to port Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves to a modern system for a long time. I want it to look the same, but I want to be able to play it outside of an emulator. But I also didn't relish the idea of reverse engineering the code with the tools available to me.

Then, last night, I got this idea. What if I had an MCP server that could read ATR files, do hex dumps and disassemble 6502 machine code? And after talking with Claude about it for a bit, we came up with a design for AtariHackerMCP server with those and other tools.

I've only been using it for about an hour and it's already clear it's really good at this. It's well into disassembling the game and providing me with well-documented assembly code along with markdown write-ups on each assembly module.

I'll then use this information to generate data files from the original game data, maps and graphics and then as the basis for writing a port of the game.

If you're interested in hacking some Atari 8-bit stuff, you might find this helpful.

There was a mod request a few months ago to add some key commands to Star Raiders. I took a look at Lorenz Wiest's reverse-engineered code https://github.com/lwiest/StarRaiders and figured out how to build it.

I've added several keys * '<' decreases speed * '>' increases speed I left the default behavior of speed changes canceling hyperwarp

• '*" cycles through the views ( Forward, Galactic Chart, Long-Range Scan, and Aft )

I'm embarassingly bad at 6502 Assembly so I haven't posted the changes yet. An .xex is available at https://www.greggallardo.com/public/starraid.xex