FujiNet exposes several devices to your ATARI computer. One of them is the network device, which can access local or Internet network resources. While we provide a handler that adds an N: device, certain programs (such as the DUP.SYS in ATARI DOS 2.0) write over the handler when they load into memory, making the N: device unusable within DUP.
To work around this, a series of tools exist which access the FujiNet network device directly via SIO, thus do not require the presence of the N: handler (also called NDEV.COM).
Each tool has been tested in every possible DOS, and have been made to adapt accordingly. Since SpartaDOS, OS/A+ / DOS XL, and XDOS all support command line parameters, the tools automatically fetch parameters if they are present. The tools fall back to interactive mode if no parameters are given on the command line.
Each tool (with the exception of NCOPY) has been written to assume that no use of N: means to refer to N1:. There are 8 such N[x]: devices, numbered N1: to N8:. Both the N: handler (NDEV.COM) and the N tools refer to the network devices in this same way.
Furthermore, the companion disk, fnc-tools-doc.atr contains documentation for each tool mentioned below.
The Tools
The tools themselves are not only present on the fnc-tools.atr disk on the apps.irata.online TNFS server, they are also present on each and every disk in the DOS folder on the same server. They are called the N tools, because they all begin with the letter ‘N‘:
NCD. Changes the directory pointed to by the selected N[x]: device. It’s useful so you don’t have to type the full path to a URL, each and every time you refer to an N[x]: device. So you can type N:FROG.EXE instead of N:FTP://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/holmes cd/Holmes 2/Atari Archives/Antic Files/88/FROG.EXE each time! In other words, this tool affects all of the other N tools, as well as the N: device.
NCOPY. Copies files. Takes a source, and a destination. Either source or destination can be a local device (D:, E:, P:, whatever.), or the network (N[x]:). It supports wildcards.
NDEL. Deletes a file from the network.
NDEV. Loads the N: handler into memory. Can be AUTORUN.
NDIR. Lists the directory of a network location. It asks the FujiNet for a long directory listing, which preserves case, spacing, and wraps the output every 31 characters. File size is shown approximated to bytes, kilobytes, or megabytes, as needed.
NLOAD. Loads and runs any standard ATARI binary load file, directly from any network endpoint.
NLOGIN. Sets login and password credentials for network protocols that need them, such as SMB.
NMKDIR. Tells a supported network protocol to create a new directory at the given path.
NPWD. Prints the current directory pointed to by the N[x]: device.
NREN. Renames an existing file, to a new name, separated by a comma. This is analogous to a move on some protocols.
NRMDIR. Removes a directory pointed to by the N[x]: device. Depending on the protocol, the directory may need to be empty beforehand.
NTRANS. Sets the translation mode for a given N[x]:, allowing you to convert text files to and from ATASCII into a compatible ASCII format, and back again. Setting a value of 0 turns off translation.
Relationship to NDEV.COM and the N: Handler
Both NDEV.COM and the N tools use the same network device on the FujiNet, in exactly the same way.
The N tools do not require NDEV.COM to be loaded, but the N tools help navigate network file systems, because the DOS you may be using may not know how to do so. NDEV.COM and the N tools work hand-in-hand to provide a transparent way to access network resources.
But the N: handler has some shortcomings:
ATARI DOS 2, and DOS 2.5’s Disk Utility Package (DUP.SYS) is loaded into a fixed location in memory, which happens to overwrite where NDEV.COM loads, obliterating the N: handler. In addition, MEM.SAV must be enabled if you want to go back and forth between the DUP and another program, so that the handler can be restored on exit from the DUP. The N tools provide a sensible alternative to access the same network resources even though the handler can’t be used.
MyDOS does not obliterate NDEV.COM in memory, so it can be used in its Disk Utility Package, so you can list directories and manipulate files using the usual commands. However, since the BINARY LOAD command has been moved to DOS.SYS, it is only accessible via the “D:” device, and calls it via CIO call #39, which NDEV.COM does not implement yet. The N tools provide NLOAD.COM, which can BINARY LOAD from the network.
SpartaDOS (disk and X) has the same BINARY LOAD issue as MyDOS. In addition, SpartaDOS X’s command processor thinks of N: as “DN:” instead of device N:. While there will be a SpartaDOS driver for FujiNet’s network device in the future, the N tools can be used to access the network device from the SpartaDOS X command processor. (Disk based SpartaDOS can actually use N: directly, with some quirks.)
NDEV.COM does not yet implement burst mode (anyone want to help implement it?)
Demo Video
Here is a demo video showing why the N tools are important. Chapter Index below.
https://youtu.be/BUR_KRTRWk0
Demo video showing Why the N tools are important.
Chapter Index for Video
00:00 The DOS folder 01:10 What happens when you try to use N: in DOS 2.0 DUP? 04:40 DOS 2.0…What happens when you try to go back to BASIC without MEM.SAV? 05:20 Creating MEM.SAV so we can preserve the handler for BASIC and other applications. 07:45 The N tools 10:20 using NCOPY to copy from the network, to a floppy. 12:00 using NCOPY to copy from a floppy, to the network. 14:30 using NLOAD to load Cyclod on DOS 2. 15:30 Comparing to MYDOS 4.53 16:40 comparing Viewing directory via the N: device 16:58 comparing Copying via the N: device 17:55 Whoops! can’t load a binary file in MYDOS via the N: device. 19:08 Loading binary file with NLOAD. 19:55 Using N tools in SpartaDOS X
Hi guys, reaching out for anyone who may be able to help implement a feature missing from the N: handler, “burst mode”
Specifically, when more than 1 byte is requested by an IOCB, set up a read for that many bytes directly into the buffer specified by the IOCB.
The nice thing is, that an intermediate buffer will no longer be required (it’s only required for disk because of the fact that you must read at least a whole sector’s worth of data at a time), however on the N: device, you use DAUX1/DAUX2 in tandem with DBYT to specify how many bytes to read at a time, with DBUF pointing to a target buffer.
I did implement this in an early draft of the NDEV handler 5 years ago, but was unable to fully debug it.
The following YouTube video shows how to create your own SpartaDOS X cartridge with the FujiNet tools, from scratch, using the SpartaDOS X Imager (SDXImager) tool.
For this video, I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu Linux Desktop using default options, and added the following packages via a terminal:
sudo apt install build-essential git wine
Once everything is built, you can transfer it to the nearest FujiNet via WebDAV, by selecting Network in Files, and Connecting to the address of your FujiNet:
The FNCTOOLS-U1MB-ROM.ATR disk image on apps.irata.online, which provides a ROM of SpartaDOS X for Ultimate 1MB users, that includes the FujiNet tools, has been updated to SpartaDOS 4.50, and is available on the apps.irata.online server. The UFLASH tool is also provided on the disk.
Three versions of the ROM are provided:
192K, which contains most of the tools.
256K, which contains all of the tools.
320K, which contains all of the tools, as well as their corresponding MAN pages.
FujiNet has a virtual printer that is exposed to the host computer. This printer simulates a variety of vintage printers, accepting the commands specific to the desired printer and rendering the result as a PDF file that you can download from the web interface and print on a modern printer.
The following example PDFs were printed from various applications, showing the type of output you can expect from FujiNet’s virtual printer. For each of these emulations, Jeff Piepmeier emulated not only the behavior of the printer, but also painstakingly recreated the character set and rendering characteristics of each printer.
ATARI 820
The Atari 820 was the first announced printer for the 400 and 800 series computers in 1979. It was based on an Eaton 7000 printer mechanism used in field logging printers, and its carriage had a 40 character width. It was very unusual in that it could also print on the horizontal axis of the paper, which limited its potential width to 28 characters. It was also designed to be the same width as the Atari 810 and 815 disk drives, allowing it to be stacked on top.
The ATARI 822 was a silent thermal printer that ATARI licensed from Trendcom, a variation of their model 100. It too had a carriage that could print 40 columns across. It required specially treated thermal paper to operate, which you can still purchase, as the type and size of paper are still used in some fax machines today.
The 80 column variant of this unit, the Trendcom 200 was used as the mechanism for the Apple Silentype printer.
These printers could not only print text, but they also could emit bitmapped graphics. The Atari 822 has a horizontal line resolution of 480 pixels.
For the 825, ATARI licensed the Centronics 737 as their high-end printer for the 400 and 800 series computers. It had a carriage capable of printing 80 column text, and had advanced features such as multiple fonts, and the ability to handle vertical tabs, which moved the printer page upward and allowed for multi column printing. Its 80 column width also made it usable for printing program listings. (picture courtesy of AtariMania.com)
All of the dot-matrix printers shown here worked with either friction fed roll paper, or with tractor-fed paper. The FujiNet will seperate each page on the PDF, so that it can be printed on modern printers.
Because Centronics did not license the bare mechanism to ATARI, and insisted that it be sold as is, the 825 required the use of the Atari 850 interface module’s parallel port. The FujiNet implementation has no such requirement.
The Atari 1020 was a very small pen plotter licensed from Alps Microelectronics. Its pen holder could select between four colored pens, and the firmware on the printer could accept both text (which it would render caligraphically, and the graphics commands to move the pen across the paper to draw lines and shapes.
The 1020 emulation is unique in that it renders directly to SVG.
ATARI 1025
For the 1025, Atari licensed the Oki Microline 80. It was intended to replace the ATARI 825 printer in the line-up as the 80 column dot matrix printer option, and also had a connection for an automatic sheet feeder, which ATARI never licensed. Like the 825, the 1025 had multiple fonts for different character widths, but lacked the proportional font that was present on the 825. It did, however, have support for the European character set additions that were present on the ATARI XL and XE systems.
The Mannesmann-Tally Riteman LQ was used as the basis for the ATARI 1027, a letter quality printer that accepted single sheets of paper. Because the rubber in this printer mechanism is guaranteed to decompose over time, the FujiNet is now one of the only ways to experience how this printer actually functioned.
The typeface used by this printer is Prestige Elite 12.
The ATARI 1029 was a printer which saw limited release, mostly in Europe, at the end of the XL series line. It was licensed from Seikosha, and the same mechanism was licensed to other companies such as Commodore. It too is an 80 column printer, with international character set support.
With the XE series, ATARI opted to license printer mechanisms from Citizen. This 80 column printer matches the XE series in industrial design, and is compatible with the Epson MX-80 control codes, and can also do graphics.
To complement the XMM801 dot-matrix printer, ATARI released the XDM121 daisy-wheel printer, again using a printer mechanism licensed from Citizen. The typeface used here in this simulation is Pica 10.
The EPSON MX-80 was an inexpensive; ubiquitous 80-column printer that was available for any microcomputer with a suitable parallel port. The MX-80 was also available with a graphics printing option called GrafTrax, which is also present in FujiNet’s emulation, allowing programs like Print Shop to print as-is. Traditionally, ATARI users needed a parallel port interface such as the Atari 850, P:R: Connection, or MPP-1150 to provide the necessary connection; this is not needed for FujiNet. The extended commands brought by the EPSON FX-80 are also supported.
Because the MX-80 emulation in FujiNet supports GrafTrax, it will work with programs that print graphics, such as Print Shop.
The OKIMATE 10 was a novel color thermal wax printer produced by Okidata starting in 1984. It was also unique in that the printer had interface modules for Atari, Commodore, Apple ][, and IBM PC systems that plugged into the printer, and exposed the appropriate port.
Note: There seems to have been a regression that crept into the color output mode.
The HTML Printer outputs an HTML document for anything fed to it.
HTML ATASCII Printer
The ATASCII printer is a variant of the HTML printer that can emit the entire ATASCII character set, by using a specific ATASCII font embedded into the document. This can be useful for emitting listings that need to preserve their special characters, such as BASIC listings.
Other Platforms
Other platforms can choose to provide these printers to their host systems. For example, the COLECO ADAM version of FujiNet provides a complete emulation of the SmartWriter printer, complete with bi-directional printing support, needed in programs such as SmartWriter and AdamCalc.
Platforms such as Apple ][ need to find a way to interface the virtual printer in the firmware to the outside world. If you’d like to help, please engage us on the Discord.
Special Thanks
A special thanks to Jeff Piepmeier, who implemented the majority of the printer emulations and designed their fonts. Without his work, none of this would exist.
Also a special thanks to Oscar Fowler, who implemented the HTML printers.
FujiNet is more than hardware. I see it as a way to bring people together via a WiFi network adapter. The FujiNet community not only do this by providing ways for people to load software, and make new networkable programs that we all can use, but we provide ways to do things together like competing for high scores in games.
To this end, FujiNet implements a feature called “High Score Enabled” which is a simple way to allow for games to specify where on a disk their high score tables are stored, and to allow for those areas to be written to, even with the game being mounted as read only. When a game marked as High Score Enabled, any writes to the high score sectors cause the FujiNet to temporarily re-mount the disk as read-write, write the resulting sectors, and then close the temporary write, re-mounting again as read-only. The apps.irata.online TNFS server contains a growing number of games which have been adapted to work in this manner.
In addition to allowing the read-write of high score tables in these specially marked disk images, there are web pages which get automatically updated with small “scraper” programs, running on the same server and disk as the high-score enabled disk image, which detect the changes in the ATR disk image, and generate a new web page for public viewing, you can see the scores from apps.irata.online‘s High Score Enabled games via scores.irata.online.
How can I make my game High Score Enabled?
Making your game High Score Enabled can be as simple as:
Store your high scores on the disk image.
Alter the ATR header to mark the sectors occupied by high score as writable.
Implement a scraper if you want to make a web page (optional).
Storing High Scores
This is entirely up to you, as to how you implement it, FujiNet does not care. In the four dozen games that I’ve ported thus far, I have put their implementation in three categories:
Games that already have a high score table, and save them to disk. Not much to do here but to find where the high score table is, and mark it in the ATR header. Examples of this are Jumpman, Gorf, and Spelunker.
Games that have a High Score table, but do not save it to disk. We just needed to add routines to write the high score to a disk sector, and to read it back again. An example of this is Baja Buggies.
Games that do not have a high score table at all. Examples of this are PAC-MAN, Defender, Dig-Dug, and Pengo.
Altering the ATR Header
The initial 16-byte ATR header has a few unused bytes which we are using to hold the High Score Enabled information. They are very simple:
Offset
Size
Description
+12
1
The number of sectors of the high score table.
+13
2
The starting sector number (0-65535) of the high score table.
The changed bytes of the ATR header to add High Score Enabled data.
In fact, the following C program can easily adapt any ATR file:
Baja Buggies already had a functional high score routine, but it did not write it to disk. The solution to this was to patch Baja Buggies to add two routines to read the high score sectors to and from disk.
The most straightforward way to do this, is to find the location where the high scores are being displayed from main memory, and to use the operating system SIOV routines to write them to disk. Dumping the display list of the high score screen using Altirra, we see the following:
We see the High Score data starting rather cleanly at $3780, and continuing on a bit past $3880. This means that we need three 128 byte sectors to hold the high score data.
But where do we store it?
Tracing how Baja Buggies loads, we can see that the high score data gets loaded in as part of the boot process:
Altirra> .tracesio on SIO call tracing is now on. ... SIO: Device $31[1], command $52, buffer $3780, length $0080, aux $0088 timeout 7.5s | Disk: Read sector SIO: Device $31[1], command $52, buffer $3800, length $0080, aux $0089 timeout 7.5s | Disk: Read sector SIO: Device $31[1], command $52, buffer $3880, length $0080, aux $008A timeout 7.5s | Disk: Read sector ...
Tracing the read, we see that the three areas in memory that are occupied by the high score are on sectors $88, $89, and $8A. We just need to write a set of routines which can read and write those sectors, and patch them into the game ATR.
As it turns out, there is some space below the scratch area that Baja Buggies uses at $0489 which is large enough to hold a read and write routine. The following bit of assembler is all that is needed to read and write the high scores to and from disk:
;; ;; Write high scores to disk ;;
OPT h-
DDEVIC = $0300 ;peripheral bus ID number DUNIT = $0301 ;unit number DCOMND = $0302 ;bus command ordinal DSTATS = $0303 ;command type/status return DBUFLO = $0304 ;data buffer pointer DBUFHI = $0305 DTIMLO = $0306 ;device timeout in seconds DBYTLO = $0308 ;number of bytes transferred DBYTHI = $0309 DAUX1 = $030A ;command auxiliary bytes DAUX2 = $030B
SIOV = $E459 ; SIO Vector
ORG $0489
LDA #$00 ; We need to put the bottom of the display back to blank STA $37D2 ; because we are writing it back to disk. STA $37D3 ; otherwise all hell breaks loose.
LDA #$31 ; Drive 1 STA DDEVIC LDA #$01 ; Unit 1 (D1:) STA DUNIT LDA #'W' ; Write STA DCOMND LDA #$80 ; ->Drive STA DSTATS LDA #$80 ; $3780 STA DBUFLO LDA #$37 STA DBUFHI LDA #$80 ; 128 bytes STA DBYTLO LDA #$00 STA DBYTHI LDA #$88 ; Sector $88 STA DAUX1 LDA #$00 JSR SIOV ; Do it
LDA #$80 STA DSTATS LDA #$00 ; $3800 STA DBUFLO LDA #$38 STA DBUFHI LDA #$89 ; Sector $89 STA DAUX1 JSR SIOV ; do it
LDA #$80 STA DSTATS LDA #$80 ; $3880 STA DBUFLO LDA #$38 STA DBUFHI LDA #$8A ; Sector $8A STA DAUX1 JSR SIOV ; do it.
JMP $38DF ; Finish and back to Attract mode.
Spending some time in the debugger, we find the attract mode at $38DF, and we find a jump to location $0506 in sector 1 where we can place our additional code. So we assemble the above routine into a bin file (headerless), and write the following bit of C code to inject the code into the unused portion of the disk sector, where it can be called after the game is loaded:
/** * Patch Baja Buggies to add score code. * @author Thomas Cherryhomes * @email thom dot cherryhomes at gmail dot com * @license gpl v. 3 */
// Patch 0x45EC to jump to our new routine fseek(afp,JUMP_POS,SEEK_SET); fwrite(&jump[0],sizeof(const char),sizeof(jump),afp);
fclose(afp);
// Done. return 0; }
Implementing a High Score Table: Kid Grid
Games like Kid Grid, PAC-MAN, Defender, Donkey Kong, and many others do not have any high score capability in them, and need to be patched. Using everything we’ve covered thus far, we’ll add a routine to deal with entering high scores to add this to Kid Grid.
We start by getting the initial game in XEX format, putting it into a form which can be disassembled, disassemble the game, add the high score routine, and assemble the result into a form which can be booted on an ATR disk, with the high score taking up the last two sectors of the disk, 719 and 720.
To get the initial game, we use the Homesoft version of Kid Grid, which can be retrieved from apps.irata.online/Atari_8-bit/Games/Homesoft/K/Kid Grid.xex, and run it directly in Altirra. This has the effect of showing the individual binary segments:
EXE: Loading program 0006-0020 to 2020-203A EXE: Loading program 0025-0025 to 0244-0244 EXE: Loading program 002A-003B to 2300-2311 EXE: Loading program 0040-0041 to 02E2-02E3 EXE: Jumping to 2300 EXE: Loading program 0046-0270 to 2300-252A EXE: Loading program 0275-052F to 2533-27ED EXE: Loading program 0534-0540 to 27F3-27FF EXE: Loading program 0545-095D to 2827-2C3F EXE: Loading program 0962-097D to 2C46-2C61 EXE: Loading program 0982-099D to 2C6E-2C89 EXE: Loading program 09A2-09BB to 2C97-2CB0 EXE: Loading program 09C0-09DA to 2CBF-2CD9 EXE: Loading program 09DF-09F9 to 2CE7-2D01 EXE: Loading program 09FE-0A05 to 2D18-2D1F EXE: Loading program 0A0A-0A18 to 2D64-2D72 EXE: Loading program 0A1D-0A2B to 2D8C-2D9A EXE: Loading program 0A30-0A3F to 2DB4-2DC3 EXE: Loading program 0A44-0A53 to 2DDC-2DEB EXE: Loading program 0A58-0A67 to 2E04-2E13 EXE: Loading program 0A6C-0A81 to 2E51-2E66 EXE: Loading program 0A86-0A87 to 2E79-2E7A EXE: Loading program 0A8C-0A9A to 2E80-2E8E EXE: Loading program 0A9F-0AB5 to 2EA1-2EB7 EXE: Loading program 0ABA-0AD0 to 2EC9-2EDF EXE: Loading program 0AD5-0AEB to 2EF1-2F07 EXE: Loading program 0AF0-0B02 to 2F43-2F55 EXE: Loading program 0B07-0B15 to 2F6D-2F7B EXE: Loading program 0B1A-0B3A to 2FB3-2FD3 EXE: Loading program 0B3F-0B95 to 3000-3056 EXE: Loading program 0B9A-0C00 to 305D-30C3 EXE: Loading program 0C05-0C6A to 30CC-3131 EXE: Loading program 0C6F-0CD6 to 3137-319E EXE: Loading program 0CDB-1B2E to 31A4-3FF7 EXE: Loading program 1B33-1B34 to 02E2-02E3 EXE: Jumping to 2B00
The Homesoft version does a lot of small loads (as part of its compressed format), which will get in the way of us actually patching the program, so we need to let the loader do its thing, and save the resulting memory image. Again, I use Altirra to do this:
Altirra> .writemem kidgrid.bin 2000 L2000 Wrote 2000-3FFF to kidgrid.bin
The resulting binary can be loaded into the excellent dis6502 tool as a raw binary image loaded at $2000, and the resulting disassembly saved.
We need to make two modifications to the resulting assembly, to add an ORG and a run address:
; ; Start of code ; org $2000 ; ... ; ... at the bottom... ;
icl "hiscore.asm"
org $02E0 .word $2B00
And we add a new assembly file called hiscore.asm, containing our high score routine. I will not post it here, but you can thumb through it at your leisure. It contains the routines to read and write the high score table to disk, as well as calculate if and where to place the score on the board, and read characters from the keyboard.
Note: Many games, will either completely re-vector the various routines for the SIO, vertical blank, and keyboard interrupts. These interrupts need to be restored when this routine is running, and restored back to their game values when the game resumes.
If you read the README.md for kid-grid, you’ll see that the high score was found at location $0480 in memory, stored high nibble for each digit, so the resulting data for 999999 points is:
90 90 90 90 90 90
Other README.md files in the atari-game-ports directory show what needed to be found and changed as part of the reverse engineering process for each game. Some are still a work in progress that could use some help.
For Kid Grid, I opted to place the high score board in the middle of the screen, using mode 6 characters (20 characters per line, 4 possible colors, and one background), and an altered display list is presented to show this:
For the high score screen area, space is reserved, which is filled with the data from the two high score sectors, 719, and 720:
hiscore_txt: .sb ' ' .sb ' high scores ' .sb ' '
HISTR: .ds 128 HISTR2: .ds 128
The actual high score table is assembled separately, without a binary header, and assembles exactly to 256 bytes, so that it can fit within two disk sectors.
;; The High score table. Will be assembled sans header ;; to be written to disk using write-high-score.c
We also need to write a small tool called write-high-score to place the above data onto the last two sectors of the disk:
/** * write-high-score - Takes <binfile> and writes to sector 720 of <atr> * * @author: Thomas Cherryhomes * @email: thom dot cherryhomes at gmail dot com * @license: gpl v. 3 */
To make this a bootable ATR, we use the dir2atr utility that’s part of Hias’ AtariSIO tools. We use this, along with a copy of picoboot.bin to create an ATR which contains the game, and a boot sector to load it. The write-high-score tool is used to then write the two high score sectors to disk, using the following Makefile:
For each of these games, the high score format is determined or created as needed, and because of this, the same data residing in each disk sector can be scraped and reformatted to be displayed as part of an HTML page. Because the scraper and the TNFS server are running on the same machine, each game’s disk image ATR can be monitored independently using the inotify system calls in Linux to detect when the disk image changes, and the resulting HTML page can be re-built.
Kid Grid’s scraper is implemented using the following C code:
/** * Grab high score from Kid Grid, write to HTML * * Linux required. (uses inotify) * * @author Thomas Cherryhomes * @email thom dot cherryhomes at gmail dot com * @license gpl v. 3 */
Since each of these services are written in C, they are not only very small in memory footprint, they have no dependencies other than needing to run on Linux, due to inotify. This can be adjusted to use the notification calls for your favorite operating system:
● kidgrid.service - Atari Kid Grid Hi-scores Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/kidgrid.service; enabled; preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Mon 2024-12-02 00:03:48 UTC; 1 month 8 days ago Main PID: 1152 (kidgrid) Tasks: 1 (limit: 9246) Memory: 192.0K (peak: 1.5M) CPU: 5min 53.763s CGroup: /system.slice/kidgrid.service └─1152 /usr/local/sbin/kidgrid
Some Games still need help to convert.
The following games are in the atari-game-ports directory, and need help to finish their port.
Berzerk – Need to find the best place to inject where High Score Table can be triggered.
moon-patrol-redux – Needs the whole treatment.
gyruss – Needs a disassembly that is stable and can be patched well.
star-trek – Needs the whole treatment
embargo – Can’t get a stable disassembly for #@!(%$
Is there another game that needs to be here? Come help us hack on it!
In addition to simulating existing Atari disk drives, FujiNet opens up a new possibility for Atari 8-bit users: The ability to use files stored on networked file systems directly, without needing to use a disk image file as an intermediary. The NOS is a self booting ATR which can be mounted into device slot 1 and booted in place of a typical DOS. While at version 0.7.1, it is not yet complete, it is already quite usable, thanks to the consistent efforts of Michael Sternberg, who has done a fantastic job, so far.
Booting NOS
A copy of NOS 0.7.1 can be found in the /Atari-8-bit/DOS/ folder of the apps.irata.online TNFS server, and mounted into device slot 1:
Once booted, you will be transferred to a cartridge, if present. The usual DOS statement in BASIC will transfer you to NOS, just like with DOS, if you do not have a cartridge installed, NOS will take control immediately, putting us on device N1 (of which there are 8 such N: devices that you can use independently):
Getting Help
Yes. NOS is a command line DOS, in the same spirit as DOS XL, XDOS, and SpartaDOS. Thankfully, there is a comprehensive HELP system that reads its data from GitHub, just type HELP:
Each of these subsections give not only references for the built-in commands, but are also comprehensive references for software developers:
This will allow all of us as a community to add documentation for things we can add and do with NOS.
Where is the D: device?
There is no D: device. Since NOS does not load a file system of its own into memory, and relies on the FujiNet to do filesystem things, there is no D: device driver, and thus no way to access either physical drives or disk images mounted in FujiNet device slots.
Instead of providing a disk drive oriented file system, NOS provides the same N: device that is provided by NDEV in the FujiNet Network tools that are a part of every DOS disk in the Atari_8-bit/DOS/ folder on apps.irata.online.
What you can access is any individual file, over any protocol that the N: device can use. This means protocols such as:
TNFS
FTP
SMB (Windows File Sharing)
HTTP/S (Web, including WEBDAV)
SD (direct access to individual files on the SD card slot)
As a convenience, the N: device is also mapped to the D: device in HATABS, so that programs that only allow D: devicespecs can still work.
Let’s Load a Game!
In order to demonstrate how NOS works, and what makes it different from e.g. SpartaDOS, or MyDOS, or Atari DOS, let’s load a game directly from the Pigwa FTP server. To do this, we’ll iteratively change the directory using CD, and observing where we are with DIR. Once we get to our destination, we’ll load the game.
Of course, we can indeed type this all in at once, if we wanted, or we can change the path starting at the host name:
N1:CD N:FTP://FTP.PIGWA.NET/
We can see that the path has changed, by using the PWD (aka NPWD) command. This command can be issued to see the current path:
N1:PWD
And we can use the DIR command to get a directory at this location:
N1:DIR
We can continue to traverse the path above, by passing the next part of the path to the CD command, and looking at the resulting directory, which we can double check with the PWD command:
N1:CD stuff
N1:PWD
N1:DIR
You don’t have to put each path component individually, you can concatenate path components together, seperated by a slash:
N1:CD “collections/holmes cd/Holmes 2/”
Note: Since the path contained a space, double-quotes are used to indicate that it’s all part of the path, and are only needed if the desired path contains any spaces.
You can see the result with the PWD command:
Also note: Many modern file systems are case-sensitive, and you must type names exactly as the system expects them.
There we go. A game that was loaded directly from an FTP server, onto the Atari, courtesy of the FujiNet doing all the heavy lifting behind the scenes.
N: Works Everywhere
As a bonus, re-boot your Atari computer with BASIC inserted or enabled. If your FujiNet was powered off during this process, go back to the same path:
As has been alluded to before, there are 8 network devices defined in the FujiNet firmware, and NOS can use them all.
Note: N8: is used by NOS to handle features such as HELP.
You can change network devices in NOS by typing N1: to N8: at the prompt.
N1:N2:
The prompt will change to indicate the new default device:
N2:
This means each N: device can point to a different path:
In this case, N2: points to a local TNFS file server that I use for software development.
And I can easily copy files from one N: device to another, such as transferring the FROG.EXE we loaded earlier from FTP in N1:, onto my local TNFS file server, now in N2:
N2:COPY N1:FROG.EXE,N2:FROG.EXE
File management tasks such as renaming, deleting, as well as making and removing directories are also possible:
N2:REN FROG.EXE,TOAD.EXE
N2:MKDIR WORK
N2:DEL kantiks.xex
Automatic Boot Script
Any text file can be assigned as an automatic boot script using the AUTORUN command, giving the full path to the script:
N1:AUTORUN N:TNFS://TMA-2/AUTO.TXT
To accomplish this, NOS sets an AppKey on your FuijNet, which NOS will read when booted. This feature is useful for setting up a consistent environment with the N: devices pointed to your preferred network locations.
The Road to 1.0
While work on NOS is progressing, part of this post is a call to bring interested people in to help work on NOS and polish it up, and make it better. There are still many weird little bugs that can crop up during use, so we ask that users be patient, and if developers can help, feel free to grab a copy of the source code, and improve upon it.
The source code can be fetched from GitHub in the fujinet-nhandler repository:
And NOS is written in Assembler, using the mads assembler. The resulting build from the makefile generates the bootable ATR disk image automatically.
Thank you all for reading, I hope NOS will at the very least inspire new ways to think about how FujiNet can access networked files, unencumbered by legacy disk drive file systems, and hopefully maybe it can inspire some much needed improvements or totally new ideas in this space. -Thom
If you are not already familiar, YAIL is Yet Another Image Loader for Atari 8 Bit computers that works with FujiNet. Server software running on this website automatically converts and feeds images to the YAIL app on the Atari. All you need to do is set your graphics mode and enter a search term for the server to stream images from the internet to your Atari.
The YAIL app and YEET server were written by Brad Colbert and the source code is available on Github. YAIL can be mounted from the fujinet.online TNFS server located at ATARI/FujiNet-Apps/YAIL.XEX. For users with a VBXE upgraded Atari, you can set the graphics mode to 20 in YAIL (command: gfx 20) which enables the high resolution image streaming. Below is a demo video of the app in action.
