ATARI 8 bit BOOT CD/DVD page

Go to my ...

Let's start at the beginning. As you might know, I was one of the first Atari 8 bit users that hooked up a ZIPdrive to his BlackBox. For some silly reason, the ZIPdrive started clicking a lot after some years. This usually means the drive is having trouble reading the ZIPdisk. But all of a sudden, the clicking stopped. To my o so big surprise. Then on the 11th of July of 2004, I decided to use my CD Data Reader utility (since then renamed to CD/DVD Data Reader) to check out the ZIPdisk. Everything worked OK, but I had to change the SCSI ID that was to be accessed and also the sector size. You know, ISO 9660 CD's and DVD's use 2048 byte sector, everything else (except for some really old stuff) uses 512 byte sectors. I was able to look at all the stuff that's on the ZIPdisk. You can see the 512 byte sectors, with the Atari sector link bytes and "bytes used in this sector" byte in the middle and at the end of each 512 byte sector.

Matthias Reichl!

So I contacted him, he was interested from the get go.

Then I had to decode the configuration and partition data. Since I live for this kind of thing, that wasn't to hard, although it did take some time. You can find the result of this decoding in this file. Matthias reminded me, that the addresses to most of what I found can be found in the BlackBox manual. Once decoding everything was finished, Matthias could start working on his software. What this software does, is turn ATR-files into a CD image.

If you find another harddrive interface that can handle 16 bit data (and 512 byte sectors), and if somebody is willing and able to decode it's configuration and partition data, it would be possible to change the software in such a manner, that images can be created to support this interface. Unless I am mistaken, IDE CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives can NOT be switched to "512 bytes per sector" mode.

What do you need to use an Atari 8 bit Boot CD?

• One Atari 8 bit computer with a parallel bus interface
• One BlackBox
• One SCSI CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive. Make sure it has a jumper to switch the drive from "2048 bytes per sector" mode to "512 bytes per sector" mode. I'm under the impression that CD burners usually do NOT have this jumper. SCSI DVD burners are only available to professionals and are VERY expansive. Always make sure that the drive you want to use will support the disk you want to use. Older CD drives might not recognise CD-RW's or take there time to do so. CD-R's never seem to create problems. CD-R's and CD-RW's come in all kinds of "speeds". This can cause problems on PC's. But we are NOT using PC's to read them, we are using Atari 8 bit computers to read them. Choose whatever speed you want/can get.

What do you need to create an Atari 8 bit Boot CD?

• One PC with a CD or DVD burner. I've been informed that the Apple Macintosh can emulate the PC. As soon as can confirm this, I'll inform you via this page.
  
• Software that can burn ANY CD or DVD image to CD-R, CD-RW or DVD
  
• AtariCD by Matthias Reichl
  
• lot's of ATR's.
  
• and ..... atleast one CD or DVD that can be written to. Speed is not important!

So how do we use AtariCD?

First we need a list of all the ATR's that are supposed to go on the disk. The easiest way to create such a list, is to go to the DOS prompt (on your PC - Start - Programs - near the bottom of the list). From there you enter:

DIR /B /D /L /N /O:G /S > textfile.txt

textfile.txt is the name of the text file the filenames are stored in. You can choose whatever name you like.
> means store in textfile.txt
replace > with >> to append to an existing text file
/S means use not only the files in this directory, but also the files in the subdirectories in this directory.

With newer versions of Windows (sorry, don't know of Linux has a DOS prompt), you can enter HELP DIR to get a list of all the options that are available for the DIR command.

You can load this list into Notepad (or any simular program) to edit it. If you want AtariCD to start a new partitionlist anywhere in this list, add in a line that only has -- (minus sign, twice) in it, for each new partitionlist you want to start.

After the list is ready, you can start AtariCD from that same DOS prompt.

Type ataricd on it's own to see a list of all the options. Or just type:

ataricd [-v] [-l {see below}] [-L {see below}] [name of ATR-file list] [name of CD/DVD image that will be created] [> log.txt]

Since a CD or DVD can hold a lot of partitions and therefore lots of partitionlists (up to 65535 partitionlists of up to 96 partitions each), a list of all the files and their locations in the partitionlists, and the locations of the partitionlists can be created by using either -l or -L followed by the filename that is to be used for this list. I strongly recommend you use this option.
The difference between -l and -L ist that the first includes all the directories and subdirectories (e.g. "C:\Directory\subdir1\test.atr"), where the latter will only show the file name (in this case "test.atr").

Just to illustrate this:

I created a Compact Disk that contains all the ABBUC magazines (78, most double sided), all the ABBUC special magazins that are not copy protected (34, all double sided, except for the last one which is four sided), all the ABBUC PD disks that can be turned into ATRs (over 650 "disks", going from single to eightteen sided) plus 142 ATR's (some, by accident, got in twice, so there should have been less) AMC disks/disksides. Most of these are single or enhanced density, so you'll need twice as much space on a disk, be it CD, DVD or harddisk. The CD has 330 MB on it. Using 17 partition lists. It took 29 sheets of paper to print all of that out.

-v means "show just about everything you do"
Some CD/DVD burner software requires that the name of the image file ends with ".iso", so it might be wise to use this extender.
"log.txt" is the name of the file in which the log data (what happened during the creation of the image) is stored.

Required commands are:

ataricd atrlist.txt image.iso

A small hint:

If the file and/or directory names you are using in the DOS prompt contain spaces, you have to put them in quotation marks ("C:\directory name\file name").

BTW the first Atari 8 bit boot CD was created, by me, on the 27th of september 2004.

What good is an Atari 8 bit boot CD or DVD?

It's like having a huge removable harddisk. That can be copied as easily and as fast as any other CD or DVD. No longer does a game require one to swap disks forever. Huge amounts of data (graphics, sound, levels, etc.) can be loaded at harddrive speed, but still be carried around like it was on a floppy. You could have lots of drivers on one disk. Or have more then one versions (in English, German, Spanish, etc. or versions for the XEP80 and normal ANTIC/GTIA output, etc.) of your software coexist on one disk. And best of all, these drives have, atleast compared to what we are used to in the Atari 8 bit scene, huge buffers. So after a while the disk stops spinning and data is loaded from the buffer.

Additional information about the Atari 8 bit boot CD/DVD