Be Excellent To Each Other

I have been wanting to write some of this stuff up for a while but keep running out of time so this is probably much more of a ramble than anything structured.


So while Chinny's Amstrad 8 bit systems turned 30 this year the Atari 8 bit family turned 35 ! (the 400/800 came out in 1979)

And while Chinny's beloved Amstrads were the 3rd best selling system in the UK , the Atari always lagged behind and us Atari users always had to put up with a small area near the bottom shelf for the Atari games which got mixed up with Beeb and other junk :-(

Even for magazines Page 6 and Atari user presented a very American feel to the system , we got some great US arcade type games but very very little home grown items , and we also had to put up with an absolutely terrible version of Jet Set Willy.

I got my Atari (an 800XL) probably Christmas 84 , it would have been my second home computer after the ZX81 and for all those talking about a jump between generations going from a black and white soundless keyboard membrane system to a full colour (256!) computer with 64k of memory and multi channel sound was a big leap.

Box shot : http://moonbeam.free.fr/Forum/Atari800X ... xFront.jpg

It came with a small selection of tapes which rather than give you the original covers for they decided that a red front was the best idea so you had stuff like this

http://www.atarimania.com/8bit/boxes/hi ... _uk_k7.jpg
or
http://i.ebayimg.com/t/The-Lone-Raider- ... ~60_35.JPG


The Atari's had an absolutely amazing keyboard - one of the best i've ever used with a really great feel to it as you typed , but typical for Atari they had to mess something up and for the keyboard it was the fact that it would only accept a single keypress at a time ... okay , okay... multi's with shift or the special keys at the side but you could not use the keys for games particularly well and it made some stuff like Thrust almost impossible (BTW Chinny I would like to see what your 65XE makes of it - they used the special keys at the side of the keyboard and since they are now at the top in a line its probably much worse :-)

The Atari had a top of the range CPU which ran much faster (okay a little faster) than the C64 and it managed to push vectors and polygons around much better than anything else at the time (compare stuff like Mercenary on the Atari to the C64 version) - so to compensate they gave it a terribly limited set of sprites (Player Missile Graphics) which means you could tell straight away if a game was going to be crap on how badly they manged them up

i mean what the f*ck were they thinking of with this :



When they could create characters that looked like this


or


My Atari came with the standard 1010 tape deck which was the *SLOWEST* possible way of loading games , stuff like Bounty Bob Strikes back took 15 minutes to load - you had to start the game going then find something else to do !

However they were happier with copies so all you needed to do was get hold of a game and a twin cassette deck and you were sorted - the problem was no-one else had an Atari so you'd not have many people to swap games with :-(

My way around that was The Barra's market in Glasgow where they would quite happily sell you copies of games on cheap branded c60 tapes (and later disks) - lots with branding swapped over to say it was made by G.A.S.P (Glasgow Atari Software Pirates)

After struggling with cassettes for a while we got a disk drive probably around 2 years later (1050 drive) which loaded stuff up 'almost instantly' and gave us access to all the american disk games which we'd heard of but never got the chance to play - Atari did some really good arcade ports which didnt seem to make it out here like Mario Bros , or Dig Dug.

Oh yeah and the Atari set me up for the weird situations you had with different OS's and revisions , most people used DOS2 and it was great , they released a follow up which was totally incompatible with everything called DOS3 and everyone hated it - so they released another follow up called DOS2.5 which was then compatible with DOS2 stuff - confusing ?

Most of my friends at school had a speccy or a c64 (and in the end i also got a c64) but where they were playing all these weird 'British' games and I got all these mainly American rpg's & adventure games , or some really badly ported British ones which looked like they started off on a spectrum and would play better there

Look its 180 darts ... on a spectrum ? ... nope this is the Atari version



Anyway we did get some great games on the Atari and i'll post a list of some of them below - and we also got some games really early because of the strange way the release dates went.

I had a version of Star Wars Arcade edition years before the domark version came out in the UK for everything else - I also had a great game with was a rambling space combat simulator with you taking down waves of enemies - recharging your shields by flying close to the sun and conquering enemy planets , this game was around for years and I knew it as "The Last Starfighter" and based on the film ,and *two* years later it came to every console as 'Star Raiders II'

Anyway some classic games in the post below this one - list is mainly created by me looking at stuff on Atari Age in alphabetical order and remembering what was special to me at the time - for most I've not gone back to replay them

There are a few titles though that I will always think of when I think of my Atari :

Dropzone



http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... s1747.html



Hey you want some particle physics :



Okay yes Dropzone is a Defender clone , but it runs so smoothly on the hardware and when you get into the zone it just 'feels' right

Bounty Bob Strikes Back



Yes another basic platformer but really well put together and with a character you always feel in control of - he has a weight to him both while moving and jumping

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _6014.html



Rescue on Fractalus / Behind Jaggi Lines



http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... s4353.html

Lucasfilm made some great games at the time but this one stands out - again a great 'shock' moment in video games you were off on a planet with a landscape with mountains and gun turrets and you had to rescue downed pilots - however mixed in were aliens that would take over your ship (or if you didnt let them in quickly enough they would smash your windscreen to kill you






And for the final one here - a black and white game , or multi colour depending on your monitor

Ultima IV



http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _5599.html

This was one which came with the cloth map , the multiple disks giving you a whole world to explore , it occupied my time for months / years before i finished it.

On the Atari it used a special feature of the graphics mode to give subtle colours to stuff - the poison ground was purple , the trees were green , the seas blue , however when you play it now in an emulator it all just shows up in black and white

A's and B's

Various text adventure games - these are basically the same on every system but the Atari did have all the classic Infocom and Level 9 games
+ many many SSI and Origin strategy games - virtually all on disk and virtually all coming with massive manuals

Alley Cat - http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... t_212.html

Not the shoot em up but this game was a multi level platformer where you played as an alley cat - catching birds and avoiding enemies to find your girlfriend
Really just a set of mini games but well put together and a lot of variety for a 30 year old game



Alternative Reality - The City http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... y_238.html
This was another attempt at an RPG on a grand scale that never really worked but it had the D&D feel to things and i spent
a really long time just rolling up characters to play (and then they died) - permadeath on a very early level

Archon & Archon II : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _5973.html http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... t_317.html

"Real Chess" - a great cross between a board game and a fighting game - I prefer the first one and I loved starting it up and using your wizard to drop a high level piece on the back line
of your opponents side of the board and let them run amok




Attack of the Mutant Camels (AMC) : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... s_422.html




Another fun blaster and well put together (like many of the early Llamasoft games were on the Atari)

BallBlazer : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... r_476.html

Another show off for 3d views and speed - a 2 player game of football played in 3d with giant robots



BC's Quest for Tyres - http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... s_565.html

Another multi screen platformer with your caveman riding a unicycle (one of the few games I had on cartridge)


Beer Belly Burts Brew Biz - http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... z_581.html

Okay - this is just for the title - its a basic platformer but there were quite a few of these slightly odd ones that I remember with weird names :-)

Blue Max and Blue Max 2001 -

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... x_699.html
http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... 1_700.html




Isometric shoot em up with planes and landing strips - closest to an update to Zaxxon

Boulder Dash (plus follow ups) http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... h_742.html - I always preferred the atari versions to the C64 just for the speed

Bruce Lee - http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _6087.html

Shows that actually you can do arcade style games on the Atari which work well

C

Capture the flag : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... g_888.html

Yes yes its probably aged terribly but this was from 1983 and basically was a 1 on one FPS CTF game



Caverns of Khafka : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... a_964.html

A game which the Atari and C64 versions are totally different - and although its rather basic I liked the indiana
jones type feel to it where you explore the various areas of the caves to collect treasures then use the invincibility period to flow through the walls




Me completing the first level of the game :



Championship Lode Runner : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... r_998.html

Another 'poor' looking game since they went for high res mono screens but i remember it moving really well


Chimera : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1035.html

As mentioned below the Atari didnt get many of the 3/4's perspective isometric games that were so prevelent on the other 8-bit systems
this was one of the few I remember and I also remember spending a really long time getting near the end of it - this might just have
been because there was nothing else like it , or it may have actually been good - i've never gone back to try and figure it out :-)




Chop Suey : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1042.html

When the fighting craze kicked off with Fist and other games this was all the Atari had (until the excellent IK) , it looks weird and
has basically a move for each direction of the joystick with or without fire (including diagonals so 17 total moves) lots of floaty strangeness with the figures but they were all animated well and it had a certain flow to it including real hair physics ! - another that i'm sure would be terrible now to go back to




Choplifter : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1043.html

Another broderbund arcade game using high res but mono graphics - again I really remember the animation for these being really smooth
and loved just firing randomly as you pinwheeled the chopper around




Colony : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1123.html

Now i've included this because I vaugly remember it as quite a complex 'alien farm building simulator' where you had to build stuff and
plant / harvest seeds - the graphics were pretty crappy at the time but its one i spent a lot of time with i think because it was just that hard




Conan : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1308.html

Originally 'sold' to me as a follow up to Bruce Lee you can see the resemblence at places but its one i dont remember seeing on anything other than the Atari



Crossbow : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1416.html

Another odd but really well done arcade conversion that again I dont remember seeing on anything else - my local arcade had the big machine
which had a crossbow fitted to the front (it was just a basic lightgun game) - but no idea why it did not seem to come out anywhere else




D

Dandy : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1494.html

A very important game as its the inspiration for Gauntlet and still 4 player at this point (both the 400 and the 800 had 4 joystick ports)




Decathlon : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1551.html

No Daily Thompson for us but we did get "The Activision Decathlon" which was not bad just a killer for the 1500 meters




Druid : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1747.html

Another in the "im really glad they converted it to Atari but they probably shouldnt have bothered list" - i loved this on the C64
but the atari one just looked 'cheap'

Look chinny a loading screen : - probably took over 10 minutes to load



E

Eastern Front : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1791.html

One of the games given away when i got my Atari and a solid turn based war game




Eidolon : http://www.atarimania.com/8bit/screens/ ... tari_2.gif

Explore a 3d cave system inhabited by weird monsters and dragons and shoot them with your magic spaceship

This is a difficult one , the C64 version looked nicer but the Atari version moved better - its still a great early 3d release when Lucasfilm could do no wrong




Elektra Glide : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1821.html

Atari didnt get many good 3d racing games but this one really gave that sense of speed and felt much better than anything else on the system



Encounter : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1839.html

A really fast moving 3d battlezone clone by the person who went on to create Mercinary

3

Some extra grabbed posts for more games :-)

Great stuff. Fellow 800XL owner here. I went to it from a Commodore +4. And then to a speccy . My Dad made some odd purchasing choices!

Spy Hunter on the Atari was excellent. So much so that when I got to play the C64 version a few years later, I was heavily disappointed.

True and there are some companies you'd buy the games sight unseen - Epyx / Synapse / First Star

Then there are the arcade conversions that went through Atari themselves look at something like

Mario Bros : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _6046.html




Compared to the C64 version

http://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=http%3A ... FID%3D1599

By happy coincidence look what arrived just a few hours ago:



Have not fired it up yet. It has a few games with it but am waiting on my flash cart to arrive from the USA.

One thing I have deduced so far. The 65XE has a HORRIBLE keyboard. Not even turned it on as yet but it's just nasty. Assume it's been cost reduced for the XE line.

It will have both the earlier versions had a great keyboard - I have used an 800 at some point and it was nice but i really liked the 800XL one that I had- at least you got the model with the built in keyboard (there was one around the same time which was just a 'console only' with a separate keyboard)

Given your recent luck with older systems i'm surprised you've not powered it on just to check it actually works - do you know how to use it ?

Again - Atari making it difficult for people you have multiple ways to do stuff and if you do the wrong thing it wont work

For most disk games - power off / power on while holding down OPTION boots without basic enabled
For some disk games - power off / boot without holding any key - it will either boot the game or boot to a command prompt - type DOS to load DOS and then L to load / type in the name (very confusing)

For most tape games - power off / power on while holding down both OPTION and START - the Atari will beep and then you press return to start the tape loading
For some tape games - power off / power on while holding down START - the Atari will beep and then you press return to start the tape going

For some tape games - power off / power on while doing nothing you get to the command prompt and type CLOAD "" then press return to start the tape going ...

One basic thing - and dozens of ways to do it :-)

Only just got home and have had things to do.

From memory it's Shift Option or something like that to load games. I'll try in a bit.

Machine works. Tape player is whirring but not a lot of happening. No loading screen as yet. Trying The Last V8.

I don't think I ever knew anyone with an Atari between the Woody and ST. They just didn't feature at all, though there were a few on shop shelves for a while.

Apparently Atari's don't give you any indication at all that the game is loading. No flashing border, no "loading" text, no loading screen. Just a blank lifeless screen until the game loads.

Nice design lads!

Hovver Bovver has now loaded. But only because this time I let the tape run to the end on the off chance!

Brilliant post Zaphod. I had an Atari 400 and later on an Atari 800xl. Like you, I didn't get a disk drive straight away but it changed my life when it did.

I loved Alley Cat, Star Wars and Blue Max. I had Bounty Bob on a cartridge and have nightmares about the noise he makes when he touches an enemy! It was horrid.

My favourite game on my Atari was Bop N' Wrestle. Obviously a wrestling game, but it was probably the first wrestling game I played at home and also the first game I ever completed! It came on disk and had to load each move every time you did it. It could be slow, but it was still great. I've recently managed to emulate it and I still remember all the moves.

I also had Donkey Kong Jnr on a cartridge. I've just remembered and I think it cost about £30 back in the 80's!

These are better than most retrospectives in some magazines. Well done Zaphod & Chinny! Ace work.

Some do / some dont - it depends on the game - given the slowness of the tape and that it has to 'load' everything a lot just left it at a blank screen which actually worked out best for me because when i got my disk drive i had a program that would load stuff from tape and convert it into an item on the menu (multiboot something or other) however it didnt work on stuff with loading screens that you then had to hack out in other ways :-)

This is your typical atari loading screen :



It would of course have taken about 2 minutes to load that *and* the counter just ran so if you stopped the tape the countdown still just went to the end and nothing else happened !

The Atari did also control the tape deck so it would stop / start when the system wanted it to (unlike the C64 or the speccy which relied on you)



And probably took 10 minutes to do so :-)

No invadaload or turboload for the atari - its all painfully slow on tape - however things switched around with the disk drive - the C64's disk drive was terrible until you used custom loaders and basically a cartridge with 'disk tools' enabled (i had a freeze frame IV i think) - but the atari was lightning fast with the disk drive

Alley Cat was something really special - and I had the prequel to Bounty Bob on Cart - Miner 2049er

Donkey Kong (and Jr) were some of those specially converted Atari ones - and again if you can overlook the slightly odd colourscheme at times they player really close to the Arcade originals and much better than what was around on other computers but they were just not that common to see over here

They also had 'all' the levels on the game and some of the cut scenes where a lot of the conversions skipped the sparks level on Jr and the Pie factory on Donkey Kong - but they did use the American order of the screens which just seems weird to me

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1675.html





http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1673.html

Can't wait for the flash cart to arrive. Only have 8 budget games with the system on tape and the loading times are shocking. Clearly no speed loaders for the system.

Only a few weeks ago I was admiring how amazingly fast the CPC was loading using the loader on the new Bubble Bobble!

No loading screens on any of the games I have tried as yet.

Ah... It was the prequel to Bounty Bob that I had. My mistake.

I've just remembered a game. The Whistler Bros. If I remember rightly, you controlled a guy who was leading a doctor to your ill brother. The doctor ran about in an erratic manner and only changed direction when you whistled by pressing fire. It was really hard if I recall correctly.

I also had Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Dig Dug and Star Raiders on cartridge. All brilliant... I will always remember the music to Dig Dug as being nothing short of genius.

I think they also cut them off some of the budget re-releases since it would then use less tape (for at least some of them the loading screens were just to load the screen and you could actually just fast forward past them and load the game as usual)

What have you got then :

Hovver Bovver - not a bad conversion - I had a hacked one with extra swearing ("Shit i've hit the fucking dog") http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _6165.html
The Last V8 - Dont think it had the speech or the great music from the C64 version (silent?) - it was good to play it on the Atari but not a great conversion http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _2929.html
Amaurote - I have vaugue memories of this being quite good in a strategy type way but I cant remember http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... e_247.html

I can see Chicken Chase which i've never played but looks terrible : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _1030.html

Trying to load Amourote as I type (blue screen is now changing colours which may be either good or bad). Also have BMX Sim, Molecule Man (sucked on the CPC), Fensis and Las Vegas.

Roll on the Flashcart arriving! This is entirely why I have dispensed with original media for anything other than display purposes. Slow, unreliable and frustrating. Although not quite as slow as this.

There's now jumbled dancing characters on the screen which suggests its crashed. Sigh.

Never heard of it before - but its Broderbund so i'd have bought it on their reputation alone

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _5760.html







Probably all in those big silver boxes

It's loaded! Just looked like it had crashed!

Cracking David Whittaker soundtrack.

I remember liking BMX Sim as good early codeies game http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... r_704.html



Molecule man was really slow and all monocrome : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _3463.html again the Atari didnt really get any 3/4's perspective games like this (Chimera is the only other one I can remember) so i probably played it just because there was nothing else like it but dont have very fond memories of it

If Las Vegas is the Zepplin one then its basically a betting sim and pretty crap : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _2891.html

Cant find 'fensis' - typo ?

Frenenis

Atari Amaurote is crap. Even on the Speccy it was a 600 Banana game at best. On the Atari, 250 tops. Slow and laggy.

BMX Sim! I had that as well.

Good work on those boxes Zaphod and they bring back plenty of good memories. Also, I didn't realise it was Whistler's brother and made by Broderbund. Wow!

Just as awful on the XL as the other versions. Computer player knocks you off your bike by running into you from behind. You remount and will be facing the wrong way. You lose.

Rinse and repeat. Hit reset.

Atari is going away now. Don't have the patience for the worlds longest tape loading times combined with 8 mediocre games.

Some extra games added - Chinny while you wait for your flash cart you could probably 'record' some of the tape games to cassettes and load up something decent rather than the dross you seem to have received - although its a terribly slow tape system its very forgiving and I bet as long as you got the stuff onto a tape it would load.

Flash Cart was dispatched today from the USA. So unlikely to see it until next week I guess.

Don't want to piss around with cassettes. Can I load direct from PC like the TZX players for the Speccy and CPC? I have a spare car cassette adaptor. Surely I can whack that in the cassette recorder and off I go? Just like I do with my 464.

Your right and i forgot you had that - definitely worth a try although your still stuck with 'tape' versions of things and really slow loads but you can get something better than the few budget things you've got right now.

Thwarted, The Cas2wav software doesn't appear to work on any version of Windows made in the last 10 years! Dammit.

Yeah reading up it looks like it was made in 2003 and never updated - many posts do comment that it doesnt handle filenames > 8 chars so make sure your doing that

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/105944 ... e-cas2wav/

and its command line so a win whatever CMD window open with 'compatability' enabled for XP possibly ?

Have you seen this page : http://a8cas.sourceforge.net/

Similar type program but it does look much more up to date

And actually you'll probably just want to go here : http://www.atari.org.pl/tape_preservation_project

Chuck it through chrome to get it to convert from Polish but it has the .CAS and .WAV files for many Atari cassettes so you dont need to mess with the conversion stuff !

Someone on Atari Age just sent me that link so I'm going to try it later.

It wasn't the 8 char thing. It was a Windows dialogue box basically saying "Abandon hope! Your app is years out of date".

Great thread, Zaph. I enjoy reading about the American home computers which were niche products over here - Atari 400/800, Apple II, early Mac, etc.* Also, for me it's interesting to see the Atari 8-bits as something more than "the expensive cash register computer with Star Raiders" or the pastel-colour-buttoned XEGS.

I've just spotted Alleycat in your games list, and realised that's a game I'd seen about 1987, 1988 and had been wondering for years what it was called! However, I most likely saw an IBM PC version of the game as it was, as far as I can recall, in monochrome rather than having brightly coloured graphics.

* possibly the C64 counts amongst that. Or doesn't, actually.

Every CGA PC seemed to have it for some reason.

Just succeeded in loading in Attack of The Mutant Camels via a wav file played from a PC into a cassette adaptor. Getting the lead out of the deck was tricky. Bit hit and miss. If I was doing it permanently I'd sort something out like I have for the CPC so the lead can exit easily.

Also found out why the Atari is so slow at loading.

All the analogue to digital conversion is done in the tape player and then the data is squirted digitally to the computer. This is quite unusual.

Most other machines (CPC, C64, Speccy, Beeb, etc) send the analogue audio to the computer which then does the conversion. The decoding is then done either by the firmware or specialist loading routines (e.g. speed loaders).

And there is the beef. Because all the hard work is being done in the tape recorder, you are stuck with Atari's own loading routines. Other computers can use faster routines. The loader on the new CPC Bubble Bobble is astonishingly fast for example.

I find these Atari loading tones a bit repetitive. With the CPC and Speccy I can generally tell what's going on.

STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!

Practice - i could tell how happy the Atari was at loading stuff just by the tone (and the C64 as well) - the Atari also had a 'beep beep beep' type tone for loading off the disk as well (which i assume it may also do with your cart depending on how and what it emulates)

Loading experiments were mixed. Cable really needs to be run through the insides like I have with the 464 otherwise it puts pressure on the tape door and the entire thing goes out of alignment.

Camels and Action Biker loaded. Nothing else did. Still frustrated. Looking forward to the flash cart!

So SpecAtarichums my MyIde2 turned up from Ohio yesterday. It's an Atari cartridge that you plug a Compact Flash card into.

To prep your CF card you need to partition it using the software built into the cartridge. Instead of the instructions being included in the box or on a standard webpage, I had to dig around on the devices forums for the worksheet on how to do this. Perhaps I've been spoiled by the 1541 Ultimate which came with a 4 page set of instructions but digging around on a forum to find what I needed was quite annoying.

Once I found the instructions I followed the sequences described and prepped the card. Then I had to pop it into the Mac to format it to FAT32 (you must do it this way around).



Then I tried loading some images onto the card to try. Mixed success. Many games didn't load.

I then looked up online what file formats were best and the advice was to go to a Polish site that had .XEX files on it. Success, the XEX files mainly worked.

Helpfully the Polish site lets you download the entire archive in one go (take note World Of Spectrum and other sites). However this presents a problem as I dumped it to the CF card and then realised the Atari would only read up to 255 entries in each directory. I need to weed through the games anyway as if you have the entire archive it's basically 90% rubbish you will never touch.

It is still a bit hit and miss but there are usually multiple versions of a game to try. Caverns Of Mars also had some corruption when you reached the bottom of the level.





I need to experiment further. This certainly isn't a solid gold solution like the 1541 Ultimate for the C64 but the Atari is a different computer and the MyIDE2 is only $65 including postage from the USA.

Strange that you hit the limit but on the video you posted you can see they have basically the TOSEC dumps in a folder for each letter and it looks like its just a single executable - possibly compressed or converted it some other way.

For a lot of the 'single load' games you will probably find a .BIN / .COM which were the files you could load up directly from Atari DOS - no idea how the system will handle multi disk games or how you would get back to the menus to 'swap disks' over

These things amaze me. I can't imagine there's a massive market for these cartridges so how they can get produced is beyond me.

I'd love an everdrive for my SNES but at £150, I think I'll pass for now.

The guy selling the 1541 Ultimate has just done his latest production run and shipped out 133 units last week and has about 100 left. So he's probably doing production runs of about 250 a time I'd imagine. He seems to do a production run every 9 to 12 months so that might give you an idea about the size of market for such products.

Something like the HxC floppy emulator can be used on any device with a standard floppy interface from Amstrad CPC's to musical instruments that loaded sounds in via floppy disks and even CNC machines. Probably quite a big market.

For the MyIDE2 on the Atari, the website says he's limited the initial production run to 100 units.

As I understand it, with many of these devices getting the boards made is the easier bit, getting the plastic casings done is expensive. The guy behind the 1541 Ultimate went to huge effort to get high quality cases made that felt and looked like a proper 1980's hardware device.

This is why many expansion cards are bare boarded and why I had to pay a considerable premium to get an HxC that was cased.