Atarimania Forum

Test case: Misja / Fred. The cassete images are marked as original dumps. However, they cannot and are not original, simply because the current version of WAV2CAS cannot dump the tapes properly; therefore the "original" dumps lack some missing data (a short "beep" after the second block).

Shouldn't you create another category for titles that cannot be dumped yet? The current solution can, and will, cause problems when a new WAV2CAS appears.

Cheers

Thanks, I didn't know that. We'll have to mark it as non-original then...

Does this apply to all Polish games? How about the other ones (like budget tapes from the UK)?

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

I can only speak about the tapes I own, sorry.
But here's a simple solution: If an image has to be patched to work properly under Atari800 emulator, then it can mean two things:
1. the dump is good, but the emulator can't load it, or
2. the dump is bad; in particular, some data which cannot be dumped, is missing.
Now, Atari800 can load almost all images dumped by WAV2CAS (the only exception is tapes containing blocks recorded with speed other than 600bps - WAV2CAS will do, but Atari800 can't do that yet). So, we could assume that every dump that doesn't work under emulator, is not original.

I don't know about Misja/Fred since I don't own the combo, and I've never tried to dump it.

However, there are some cassettes which, although they can't be converted using the standard wav2cas program, can be dumped using a "tweaked" version, to produce .cas images that work perfectly in the emulator. Unfortunately, it looks as though the "tweaking" has to be done differently for each title.

I hope to have more to say about this later.

Tweaked version? Where is it?

Kr0tki - you have mail.

Kr0tki wrote:If an image has to be patched to work properly under Atari800 emulator, then it can mean two things:
1. the dump is good, but the emulator can't load it, or
2. the dump is bad; in particular, some data which cannot be dumped, is missing.
Now, Atari800 can load almost all images dumped by WAV2CAS (the only exception is tapes containing blocks recorded with speed other than 600bps - WAV2CAS will do, but Atari800 can't do that yet). So, we could assume that every dump that doesn't work under emulator, is not original.

I'm not sure I agree 100% with your logic. A dump might be perfect, but yet not work in the emulator for reasons not strictly related to the CAS format or loading.

There are a fair number of original disks that break Atari800 emulation. And not because of a special or specific on-disk copy protection. I would assume that something similar could perfectly happen with original tapes.

ijor wrote:There are a fair number of original disks that break Atari800 emulation. And not because of a special or specific on-disk copy protection. I would assume that something similar could perfectly happen with original tapes.

This is true.

However, Krotki does have a point about some Polish games with particular copy-protection schemes.

deathtrappomegranate wrote:However, Krotki does have a point about some Polish games with particular copy-protection schemes.

I know, and I agree with that.

My point is that not every dump that doesn't work under Atari800 is not original. And that then, a perfect 100% original dump might need to be patched to work (currently) under emulation.

Yes, and you're also right to say that the same is true of some cassette image files.

ijor wrote:My point is that not every dump that doesn't work under Atari800 is not original. And that then, a perfect 100% original dump might need to be patched to work (currently) under emulation.

I agree with you; However, I was trying to state that since the WAV2CAS dumping features are _almost_ on par with Atari800's tape emulation capabilities, it is better to assume that - just to be sure that we don't wake up in ten years with bad dumps which were marked as original.