In the past there was a 16Mb disk compiler for windows... Now there's one for Linux.
- Dump the fandal archive and create 16Mb atr's containing the full binary(!) section of that archive.
Extended goal:
- Dump the rasta conversions and create 16Mb atr's containing the images from that thread.
From HiassofT's Atari 8bit world download the AtariSIO archive and compile it.
Ubuntu users may need to install the libncurses dependencies:
apt install libncurses5 libncurses5-dev
After compiling copy the dir2atr binary to the tools directory of this script.
If needed, modify the supplied config file to suit your needs. The defaults should work fine in most cases:
MAXSIZE needs to leave some room for the loader and the longfiles text files created by dir2atr. The default value of 16360 should be safe.
MYPICO refers to the boot image supported by dir2atr, part of the atari tools programs supplied by AtariSIO. Variants are listed in the README-tools text file that is part of the AtariSIO package.
Create the directory work/16M, if it is not there yet. If it is, make sure the directory is empty to avoid issues at a later stage.
In case you want to dump the binaries from the fandal archive, start with downloading the 'complete ZIP' and extract it into the 'work' directory (preferably use a compatible archiver, like 7zip. As the archive is large and contains long filenames, some with special characters, not all archivers cope with its contents). After extracting the archive, the directory work should contain 2 entries, eg:\
16M
a8_fandal_cz_december_2019
Now modify the supplied config file and use the following value for SRCDIR: work/a8_fandal_cz*/Binaries. Your config file should now look something like:
#!/bin/bash
SRCDIR=work/a8_fandal_cz*/Binaries
ATRDIR=work/16M/
MYPICO=MyPicoDos406S1
MAXSIZE=16360 # Max disk size
FMAX=62 # Max files per directory
In case you want to dump the images from the rasta converter thread, download them individually, or download the archive supplied by stephen. Extract the files to a subdirectory of the 'work' directory, eg: work/rastaconversions/Rasta After extracting the archive, the directory work should contain 2 entries, eg:\
16M
rastaconversions
Now modify the supplied config file and use the following value for SRCDIR: work/rastaconversions. Your config file should now look something like:
#!/bin/bash
SRCDIR=work/rastaconversions
ATRDIR=work/16M/
MYPICO=MyPicoDos406S1
MAXSIZE=16360 # Max disk size
FMAX=62 # Max files per directory
You are now ready to run the script ./generate.sh which will generate 5 (at the moment) disk images (atr) for the Games in the fandal archive and 4 for the Demos. Thus far the rastaconversions fit on 2 disks. Move the .atr files to your storage medium of choice for use with your SIDE2, IDE+, MyIDE, MyIDE][, etc. hardware. The disk images should also work on most Atari 8-bit emulators, like Altirra, Atari800 or XFormer. Remember to erase the work/16M directory, it may lead to issues in the future.
There is plenty of room for improvements, user friendliness being one of those. It works for me and the goal I set has been accomplished, so I don't expect to work on this much more. Feel free to use it, or not use it.