slackbuilds_ponce/games/atari_8bit_utils/README

This is a collection of Atari 8-bit utilities that I've written,
mostly back in the 90s, for managing files for an Atari on a
Linux system.  Whether you're using a real Atari or an emulator,
these can be handy tools.

ATRFS

Want to mount an ATR image as a native file system in Linux?
Now you can!

This uses FUSE to create a user-space file system that allows
reading and writing of Atari file systems in ATR image files.
This requires no special root privileges.

The framework is designed to be modular, making it relatively
simple to add support for new Atari file systems.

BASIC Autorun

There are lots of AUTORUN.SYS files for running BASIC programs,
but what if BASIC isn't available?  Well, this one will enable
BASIC first if it's disabled on an XL/XE system.
If it's a 400/800/1200XL, it will display "BASIC REQUIRED"
and hang.  Also, the command text is stored in ATASCII,
so it's easy to edit the binary.

SIO2Linux

Pavel Machek made an initial attempt at communicating with the
Atari through an SIO2PC cable using Linux's serial port drivers.
He came up with a simple floppy emulator he called "femul.c"

I rewrote that to add a bunch of features:
* No kernel modules.
  Unlike the AtariSIO project, this is just a simple user-space
  program that uses a serial port device.
* Create new dynamically sized images
  Each image starts as a 3-sector image file, but grows to
  accomodate the highest-numbered sector written.
* Mount your native file system as an Atari disk
  It's read-only for now, and it doesn't support subdirectories,
  but each file is mapped to a different starting sector, and
  as that sector is read, it automatically maps in the rest of
  the file.

Binary load file analyzer

This program will tell you all about your binary-load format Atari
files, and even clean them up if there are specific problems.
It runs under DOS and Unix.
It includes the option to dump the 6502 assembly.

BASIC analyzer

This program will parse the structure of a BASIC program.
The most common use would be to check if a file is a valid BASIC
file, in which case, just redirect the output to /dev/null and
it's BASIC if the program returns success.  It will parse down
the the line level. Parsing out the individual tokens could be
done in the future.

Disk image format conversions

Want to convert between DCM and ATR? Want to turn an ATR disk image
into individual files on your native file system (even creating
subdirectories for MyDos images!)? Or convert a directory full of
files back into a disk image? Well, check out these programs:

* atr2unix
* unix2atr
* dcmtoatr

Disk manager (Atari-side sector editor and much more)

Back in the mid 80's, I wrote a sector editor in BASIC.
Over several years, I incorporated additional features and
tools, as well as re-wrote various routines in assembly language
for speed. I should have released it back then, but now I've
gone back through it and added a few extra features.
I also re-worked all of the assembly language code.

MyDOS Binary Load Menu

There are plenty of menu programs that let you select from a
list of programs and execute one, but this one goes a step further.
It supports MyDOS subdirectories and is driven by the joystick,
so it's ideal for a huge disk image of games.
I wrote this in 1994 in BASIC and compiled it with ABC.

-- adapted from original Preston Crow file