I am undertaking a little project to re-compile a game that Steve and I created in 1989 and 1990 to work on all Atari ST and STE machines. This requires me to find not just the source code, but also the Extension files for both the Interpreter and the and Compiler that don’t appear to be easily found on the Internet anywhere.

These extension files were usedto play sampled sound (Maestro) and to squash 32K pictures into much smaller files on disk (SQUASHER)

STOS Maestro

Maestro was (is) a software and hardware combination that allowed us to sample some real world sounds for our game. It is a really powerful package, but the sampler cart died on us (or the cart port died, I haven’t tested it another machine) way back in 1990.

STOS SQUASHER

Squasher was (is) a file (we used it for images) compression utility for STOS. It was delivered on the Games Galore set of STOS games released to highlight some of the better games made with the development system.

It’s pretty easy to find the STOS Maestro and Games Galore disks on http://www.Atarimania.com, but what isn’t as easy or clear is how to extract the extension files from the program installs. You must have a copy of the STOS Program disk and the STOS Compiler disk handy when you run the install on each extension. The program will only install these extensions to the actual disks images (as far as I can tell) or actual disks. I have those, but I don’t have a floppy drive hooked up to my ST or STE, just Gotek drive emulators and an Ultra Satan Hard Drive SD card reader.

The program WILL install the Interpreter extensions into the onto a floppy image using an emulator, but WILL NOT install the compiler extensions into a folder on a disk image of the of the Compiler. I have no idea why, but it just doesn’t work with the images available online.

Where did I get them?
So, I went into my Garage and fished out the original STFM we purchased in 1988 at Federated Group in Torrance California. It works, but the disk drive was catabolized a month back when I was trying to repair a 1040STE that I purchased without a working drive. The STFM drive didn’t work in the STE (it must be a drive or DMA controller issue, not a drive issue) but I left the drive out of the SFTFM machine when i put them both away to be looked at later.

In any case, I dragged out the STFM, popped in the drive I had pulled from it, and brought up the old compiler and interpreter disks. Just as I thought, the MAESTRO.ECD and SQUASHER.ECE (compiler extensions) and the MAESTRO.EXD and SQUASHER.EXE were right on the old disks, ready to be copied to the Ultra Satan and then back on to my laptop.

Note: Yes, the name SQUASHER.EXE did have me fooled for a couple minutes. It’s not an executable, its just how the extensions are named, with a letter form A-Z at the end.

Just in case anyone is in need of these older extensions for compiler games, I have provided them here.

SQUASHER STOS EXTENSION FILES

MAESTRO STOS EXTENSION FILES