Atarimania Forum

I just finished dumping the ROMs from my A8 cart collection and I thought I would share.
There's a few not currently in the database like the AtariLab carts and the XE demo cart. Also, Baseball and Basketball seem to be slightly different than the ROMs floating around the net.
Anyway enjoy. http://www.atari7800.org/a8/A8%20cart%20dumps.zip

Mitch

Hi,

Thanks a lot!

Dumps downloaded

Franck

I've taken the liberty of comparing Mitch's images with the ones hosted at Atarimania. The only differences are:
- Ace of Aces, Barnyard Blaster, Battlezone, Crime Buster, Crossbow, Crystal Castles, David's Midnight Magic, Desert Falcon, Fight Night, Flight Simulator 2, Food Fight, Mario Bros., Thunderfox - the images are identical; however the ones at Atarimania are in CART format (they have an additional 16-byte header). Since most images at Atarimania are in raw format, I would suggest to replace these images with Mitch's.
- Alpha Shield, Atlantis, Computer Chess, Demon Attack, Space Invaders, Super Breakout (all 8KB) - the ROMs at Atarimania contain garbage in the first 4KB, while Mitch's images have FF's there. Additionally, Atlantis is different in a few other places.
- Baseball, Basketball, Cloudburst, Defender, Dig Dug a, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, K-razy Antiks, K-razy Kritters, Miner 2049er, Ms Pac-Man, Nightstrike, Popeye - images are different.
- Boulders and Bombs, Fantastic Voyage, Return of the Jedi (all 8KB) - the Atarimania images are overdumps with first 8KB being garbage.
- Bug Hunt - the Atarimania image is in CART format. Mitch's version however seems to be an overdump with first 64KB being FF's.
- Claim Jumper, River Rescue Submarine Commander (all 16KB) - the Atarimania ROM's contain garbage in the first 4KB, while Mitch's images have FF's there.
- Lode Runner - the ROM at Atarimania is in CART format; additionally, its first 64KB contains garbage, while Mitch's image has FF's there.

The "XE Demo" Flight Simulator image is different than the normal FS ROM. Other "XE Demo" ROMs are identical to their "normal" counterparts.

As for 3D Tic Tac Toe, Alpha Shield, Atlantis, Computer Chess, Demon Attack, Fantastic Voyage, Space Invaders, Super Breakout, Turmoil - all of these are 8KB images with first 4KB being unused. Aren't they overdumps? Do the physical cartridges contain 8KB chips with first 4KB being empty?

The same question goes for Lode Runner.

To sum up, aside from overdump issues, the only different images are: Atlantis, Baseball, Basketball, Cloudburst, Defender, Dig Dug a, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, K-razy Antis, K-razy Kritters, Miner 2049er, Ms Pac-Man, Nightstrike, Popeye, and XE Demo Flight Simulator. Differences range from a few bytes (for example, Night Strike has several instructions replaced by NOPs) to substantial changes (Miner 2049er). Probably some differences are caused by a bad dump, and some are different revisions of a game. Anyway, a detailed analysis would be needed.

Ms Pac-Man is a curious example. Mitch's version differs in only one byte, in the colour table. The result is that when running the game on a PAL computer, the first level's cherry bonus has green colour - the Atarimania version however renders it properly, in red. See also here.

Edit: I've found out the difference between the Defender ROMs. In the Atarimania dump, the number of Humanoids on each level is 8, while in Mitch's version, it's 10. So Mitch's dump more closely follows the arcade version, is more similar to the 5200 version, and conforms to the manual, which states "you begin the game with ten humanoids".

Very nice analysis, I wonder how many of the differences are hacked bin files/bad dumps vs true alternate versions?

Regarding the over-dumps. The 4K and 12K games were dumped as 8K and 16K respectively because 4K and 12K were not available sizes in the dumping software. Whether they actually use 8K and 16K ROM chips with 4K empty is a good question. I noticed on some of the Thorn EMI 12K/16K carts that some had the first 4K doubled and others had the first 4K as FF.
As for Bug Hunt and Lode Runner, I did notice the first 64K being all FFs. The reason I dumped them as 128K is because that is the size they were listed at in the Atari Cartridge Dumping Project. It should not be a problem to re-dump at 64K or even easier just cut the file in half. Again, whether they are truly 128K ROM chips with 64K of blank space I don't know.

Mitch

IMO the dumps' sizes should reflect sizes of original ROM chips. If a chip has the data written twice, then the dumps should reflect that. But if a chip is really 4K/12K in size, the dumps should also have that size. Then the emulators should be modified to support the new "cartridge mappings". If you could verify the chip sizes, I would be able to update the Atari800 emulator. (It would be also nice to verify whether the "empty" areas return random or duplicate data on a real Atari.)

I recall that Kaboom! falls into the same category - a 8KB dump with first 4KB empty.

I think that the Atarimania's feature of marking original dumps with a red letter and other dumps with blue letters, could be used here. Verified dumps should have red letter, and all the others should be blue. Since a lot of cartridge dumps are marked red, they probably should all be reverted to blue at this moment.

EDIT: See here

Thanks!

I believe most of the ROM images on the site are verified so I'm surprised there are so many differences. Even the well-known cartridges were redumped to make sure they were perfect and could be marked in red.

IIRC, the smallest size for chips is 8K, even though some programs only contain 4K. Is that correct?

After a long hiatus, we'll start working on the 8-bit section again in a few weeks so it will be interesting to compare the different versions, particularly the ones for classic games!

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

Kr0tki wrote:IMO the dumps' sizes should reflect sizes of original ROM chips. If a chip has the data written twice, then the dumps should reflect that. But if a chip is really 4K/12K in size, the dumps should also have that size. Then the emulators should be modified to support the new "cartridge mappings".

This is an interesting issue, and I would say it doesn't seem so easy to decide how to handle this.

On one hand, I agree with you that dumps should reflect what was in the hardware. On the other hand, the computer architecture doesn't actually support 4K (or 12K) cart sizes. A cart would take a minimum of 8K address space. And it depends on the cart hardware what you would read when attempting to access the "other 4K".

Does anyone else with a decent sized cart collection own an AtariMax MaxFlash USB Programmer? It makes it very easy to dump the ROMs in your cart collection. That should help resolve some of the variation questions.

Mitch

Just added three more dumps to my zip file for anyone who cares.

Mitch

Mitch,

You have a nice collection of carts!

Regarding Defender, your dump does match my cart. I believe the "dump" in the Atarimania database is actually a crack modified to let it run in RAM. This can be verified by loading it into RAM on a real machine and seeing that it works. A good dump won't run in RAM. I've documented the differences in this post.

http://www.atarimania.com/phpBB3/viewto ... f=1&t=2356

Perry