Hi all,
This is mostly curiosity than anything else. I went to run an old game of my youth - we've talked about it here before, "Avventura nel Castello", an Italian text adventure game. The author, Colombini (Erix here), removed the copy protection some years ago and published the game as freeware.
Unfortunately, I can run the game from my Floppy Emu but if I copy the disk on a physical media using Locksmith, it gives an error while loading or manages to load a bit and then gives an error on the main menu.
I've tried many discs, 2 Apple //c and one Apple //e.
The drive makes a weird noise and then there's an error.
I do remember playing that game on my Apple //e when I first got that computer but back then I didn't have a FEMU so I used ATDPro. Am I doing something wrong or is there something with that particular game? Maybe the FEMU doesn't like it for some reasons?
The game can be downloaded here: https://www.erix.it/retro.html
The link is here: https://www.erix.it/retro/cast2001.zip
The image is called C101.dsk in the Zip file.
Thanks!
Tony
I don't think Locksmith is a very reliable tool when working with disk images. It manipulated disk drives directly if I recall.
If you want to transfer it to physical media then ADTPro is a far better tool. Or AppleSauce if you can find one.
Also, given the age of both disk drives and the diskettes themselves, every diskette should be treated with suspicion. There is a pretty good chance that the diskette itself is bad, or has mould growth on it, which will foul the heads on the disk drive and make reading (and writing) impossible.
If there's a problem it is drive emulators' reliability in question, they are built with a lot of compromises and do not fully emulate magnetic drives. I still prefer physical drives and diskettes. Applesauce is quite weak when it comes to writing back diskettes and has of no advantage at all when it comes to writing non-protected disk images back to diskettes.
Thanks
I'd agree that if there is a "problem" is with the emulator. Locksmith does not deal with the image directly, it thinks the image is an actual drive.
This is interesting. I'll see if I can patch ATDPro again, I haven't used it in a while. With the 2/c it's difficult to boot from the FEMU - though someone mentioned a modded ROM to add a menu which would allow that? Though I believe most software would be hardcoded to read from disk 1 and not disk 2.
Yes, I know my floppies are crusty - but I do have ONE which is brand new. I tried several discs and they all produced the same issue in the same point - but they all work with other software. But yes, physical media is just not reliable anymore these days.
I'll try ATDPro and report back :) Thanks
I've managed to write the image via ADTPro - on my //e for semplicity. Same issue. The head makes a weird noise shortly after booting and I am dropped to monitor or to the ] prompt.
Everything else seems to be working, it's just this one! I made it work years ago on this very system... I am puzzled.
I disagree. I've written hundreds of non-copy protected diskettes from disk images on my Mac with Applesauce. Both 5.25 and 3.5 diskettes.
I find it quite robust and repeatable and it's error reporting is better than ADTPro.
There's nothing strange about the .dsk image itself. It's just 140 kB of plain old data, and it can be read and copied by any software. The copies you made with Locksmith are probably fine.
The problem is that the disk has a funky DOS 3.3 variant that uses unusual timing to move the drive head (that's the strange sound you're hearing). It works fine on a floppy emulator like FloppyEmu, but does strange things on real hardware. I suspect it might work with some hardware, and fail with others.
There are two ways to work around the problem.
1. Boot into a standard DOS 3.3 disk (or better yet, a fast DOS like DiversiDOS), then insert the game disk and type RUN CAST
2. Use Copy2Plus to copy a good DOS on to the game disk. (Use the "Copy DOS" command in Copy2Plus).
With a good DOS it's able to boot the main menu.
Thank you Des1.
Yes, I can understand it might be the HW getting old - but I tried three different drives!
I'll try Copy2plus - which I never tried - and report back!
Thanks!
---
Update: It works thanks! How do I tell the system to auto load CAST? My DOS is a bit rusty. I can INIT CAST a new disk but can I do similar thing on an existing disk?
And how can I make a DSK copy of the resulting disk so I can replace my stored version of the game? :)
Thanks again!
Update again: I changed the boot options with copy2plus and made the DSK file with ATDPro :) Thanks!
Use ADTPro to image the physical diskette back to a .dsk image on your modern PC.