Super Sprint! for Altair-Duino with Dazzler

[John Galt]

I made a little Dazzler game this week based on the driving game Sprint Two and Turbo Sprint! for 2 human Players, 4 tracks, sound effects. you can find it on my github

https://github.com/johngalt01/Cromemco-Dazzler-games-and-demos

[John Kennedy]

haha that's amazing. I'll be trying that out.

[Paul Hatchman]

So Cool!!

[John Galt]

just some quick fun i put it on a diskette like it might have been back in the day.

kids are having fun playing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep5xCBBurWI

[Antonio Tamairón]

Hi.

These are very funny. I'd like to play these in my Altair 8800 simulator. I'm using a Dazzler Windows Client but I don't know how can I put these files into a .DSK, because Altair 8800 simulator only support for MITS Disk, 16 disks called DISKxx.DSK.

How can I create a new .DKS? What format has the DSK filesystem? How can I copy files to insert in DSK file?

Thanks in advance.

Best regards.

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Antonio Tamairón

[Walt Perko]

Hi,  

I made a few DZMBASIC DAZZLER .DSKs and they work on my Altair-Duino Pro as well as my ZAltair Z80c and Oak ZAltair Z80c computers (essentially Z80 CPUs in homebrew Oak cabinets ... hardware is like an Altair 8800c computer)  

https://www.brainless.org/Altair/

Goto the DAZZLER section of this page:  http://www.brainless.org/Altair/Repository.html    to find the .dsk's 

.

[Paul Hatchman]

You can try my software, which will create and copy to/from altair format disks.

https://github.com/phatchman/altair_tools

[John Galt]

I can post a DSK version of the game if people want one, however i have found most people do not like the files setup on a disk format they would rather have them loose.

You can use PCGET to transfer any file from your modern computer to the Altair-duino.

almost all the bootable DSK images come with PCPUT and PCGET tools. 

using PCGET or PCPUT is dependent on your setup, how you have mapped your serial ports.

if your setup to use your 9 pin port on the rear and you want to transfer files from your desktop to Altair

you would use : PCGET XXXX.COM B this tells it your going to Xmodem transfer the file on 2SIO port B

if you want to send a file back you would say PCPUT XXXX.COM B

on your desktop you would use a putty or teraterm program to setup a terminal with XMODEM support you would transfer the file via your terminal client using PCPUT OR PCGET and that would copy the file into your existing Disk volumn

you can use the altair_tools with the new GUI above to transfer files as well. the two methods would be either pull out your micro SD card and copy the new disk on to it and edit your Disk information file."diskdir.txt" files to show the new disk information or you can update the new DSK image via Xmodem file transfer which is similar to using PCPUT/PCGET above, the easiest is simply using the pcget and pcput tools.

[John Galt]

when using the windows dazzler client.. the game requires at least 1 joystick with 4 way joystick and 4 button support. 

some versions of the dazzler client also do not support sound, the game has sound effects. it depends on what your system likes as there is an older dazzler client that seems to work better on most machines but does not support sound.

the newer version people have more issues with and it may not work at all but it does support sound.

the older TRON game (which will be updated in a few weeks) also supports sound.

you can also use my PIANO application which is all sound to test your dazzler clients sound support.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

A couple of other guys and I write our DAZZLER programs so that they can be controlled by keyboard.  Joysticks are cumbersome and everybody even with real DAZZLERs need to build joysticks.  

OTOH, everybody already has a keyboard for their computer.  

.

[Paul Hatchman]

If you are feeling adventurous, I have a low-cost raspberry pi-pico version of the DAZZLER that lets you use most(?) USB joysticks. It only outputs in VGA though.

phatchman/pico_dazzler: Dazzler graphics Altair Duino / Altair Simulator using Raspberry Pi Pico

[Antonio Tamairón]

How do you do those DSK files? And now How do you load this DSK.(Called different to DISKxx.DSK) on Altair simulator?

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/altair-duino/7141c208-1808-4ec4-9127-407bb7292e55n%40googlegroups.com.

[John Galt]

there are many different Altair emulators.

if you are using the Adwaterandstir Altair-duino then you should consult the manual.

you can access mounting and unmounting new Disks from the Configuration menu or through the front panel.

Either you have to copy the new DSK image to the SD card or use the configuration menu File management menu to upload a new DSK image via XMODEM file transfer to the SD card.

you would also need to have Dazzler support enabled in your firmware to be able to access either the hardware dazzler or the software dazzler via the dazzler client.

that would require a recompile of your emulator and upload of new firmware.

[Antonio Tamairón]

Yes.

I have a David Hansel, Altair 8800 simulator version DIY. I set dazzler in config.h and all work fine but my question is. How can I create a MITS Cromemco disk .DSK file? What is the filesystem that .DSK uses? I try it using CPMTOOLS with apple-do filesystem but I don't achieve that disk works.

Regards.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/altair-duino/1744ccf5-c09f-432e-830d-f582c575bf6fn%40googlegroups.com.

[Patrick Linstruth]

The “.DSK” extension means different things to different people. Generally, in the Altair simulator (hardware or software) world, a DSK image contains just the raw data payload and none of the media/format information. This is in contrast to something like an IMD file that contains information about the physical layout of the disk and format information.

For a soft sectored disk, like the 77 tracks with 26 128-byte sectors IBM format, bytes 0-127 of the DSK image contains the 128 bytes of data for Track 0, Sector 1. The next 128 bytes contains the data for Track 0, Sector 2, etc.

Note: Tracks usually start at 0 while sectors often start at 1.

The Altair 88-DCDD disk controller is different because it uses hard sector media. It doesn’t have a “format” in the same sense as soft sector. Those hard sector DSK images have 137-byte sectors that contain all of the track/sector, CRC, and other information in addition to the data payload. It isn’t a “standard” format. It’s a layout that MITS created for their disks. I guess it could be called the MITS hard sector format. This is the reason these DSK images typically don’t work with programs like CPMTOOLS as those tools are designed around soft sector formats and DSK images.

The easiest why to get files to/from an Altair DSK image is to use PCGET/PUT, attach the DSK images to a simulator that supports file transfers between the host and CP/M (AltairZ80, Altair8800, Z80Pack), or some of the new utilities that have been posted here.

I spend a lot of time in the Altair SIMH simulators, so that’s the method I use to copy files to/from Altair DSK images.

It’s what I’m used to and I rarely want to copy files without assembling, testing, or running them, so the simulator makes sense and there isn’t a lot of moving SD cards around.

There are quite a few good options. Try them and use what works best for you.

Here is how the Altair DSK images are laid out (Appendix H):

https://deramp.com/downloads/mfe_archive/010-S100%20Computers%20and%20Boards/00-MITS/40-Software/BASIC/Altair%20BASIC%204.0/Documentation/BASIC%20Manual%2077%20searchable.pdf

https://deramp.com/downloads/mfe_archive/010-S100%20Computers%20and%20Boards/00-MITS/30-Disk%20Storage%20Devices/Disk%20Layout.pdf

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/altair-duino/CANraTR_FRMPKqaD%2Boxhcg0ZrLOgPnWhbXdod6Ch5HzpqEDwfng%40mail.gmail.com.

[Antonio Tamairón]

Thank you so much.

El sáb, 16 may 2026 2:23, John Galt <furba...@gmail.com> escribió:

here is a disk image.

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[John Galt]

i put the SPRINT disk on my github

https://github.com/johngalt01/Cromemco-Dazzler-games-and-demos

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

If you're going to write new programs, can't you include keyboard controls for those that do not have joysticks?  

All the programs I've written for the DAZZLER can use keyboard control.  

.

[Altair Computer]

No, because the Interrupt required for keyboard polling is too slow.

The dazzler joysticks can transfer all 8 positions as a single byte.

Allowing for fast input processing. 

Besides the interrupt for the keyboard being very slow you would have to wait each loop to capture 

A single character from the keyboard. In testing the keyboard caused too many issues and was better to treat it as a game console with joystick input only.

It’s 2mhz and very slow already.