ADTPro help - unable to send data

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ADTPro help - unable to send data
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Greetings all,

 

This is my first post here! A few days ago I managed to get an Apple //e and I am very excited as I used to have one when I was a kid.

 

Luckily it comes with the Super Serial card but without 10-pin adaptor. So I made one myself. After recapping the power supply I have powered it up today and it works-ish (drives need TLC and my LCD monitor doesn't seem to like the composite output - or there is an issue on that. The green phosphor Apple monitor is still waiting for some caps which I found exploded!).

 

Anyways I have managed to run ADTPro on my Windows 10 PC. The issue is that the Apple doesn't seem to receive any data. I checked the RS232 connector and I thought I found  a mistake but still nothing.

 

At some point I changed the "bootstrap" option from 9600 baud to 2400baud and with my surprise I could see some garbage scrolling on screen. But unfortunately I do not see anything if I switch back to 9600.

 

What could this be? To be honest I have no idea whether the serial card works but let's assume it does for now.

I have set the dip switches as recommended on the ADTPro website. The card is in slot number 3 for terminal mode and the header is pointing down for straight cable, which it should be.

I am using a USB adaptor which I use for other things and it's always proven quite reliable on old equipment. The signal LED flashes when the image is being sent - but the Apple does not receive.

For the short adaptor I used the attached pinout. I am using ADTPro 2.0.3

Any idea?

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Well, I'd start with making a

Well,

 

I'd start with making a ProDOS 8 2.2 w/ ADTPRO 2.0.3 by using this site: http://asciiexpress.net/diskserver/

You will need an Audio Cable from your PC Line out to the Apple //e casette in.

I guess bootstrapping with ADTPro isn't the simplest thing to start with, in fact I also tried it and gave up. With the disk from the Disk Server i was able to establish a connection.

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aaah, that's interesting

aaah, that's interesting information!

 

I shall follow the link and let you know. Thanks for your help!

 

Edit: It worked!! And once I had ADTPro on a floppy I could immediately communicate with my windows PC! Fantastic thank you a lot!

 

One slightly off topic question - and probably a silly one but you'll forgive me as last time I used an Apple //e was 28 years ago and I was 14! - is that any .dsk image I receive and write does not seem to work? Are those .dsk file I download supposed to be bootable?

 

Thanks again! 

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tony359 wrote:aaah, that's
tony359 wrote:

aaah, that's interesting information!

 

I shall follow the link and let you know. Thanks for your help!

 

Edit: It worked!! And once I had ADTPro on a floppy I could immediately communicate with my windows PC! Fantastic thank you a lot!

 

One slightly off topic question - and probably a silly one but you'll forgive me as last time I used an App

 

There are five primary bootable formats for the //e.

 

The most common two are DOS 3.3 and ProDOS. These are incompatible with one-another, although you can read DOS 3.3 diskettes with some ProDOS utilities, to copy data between formats.

 

Of the two, DOS . was the most often used format, as it was compatible with the older ][, or the ][+, and many games were distributed with that disk order format. As you have a //e,. you have at least a 64K system, so most software will run. Some later or business software reuires 128K, and some later software requires the //e-enhanced chipset (or the //c or later). These requirements are rare outside of business and graphical software.

 

ProDOS was used primarily by business applications, an later-era software.

 

Another is Apple PASCAL (USCD). This is a selom-used format, although some basic Apple guided tour diskettes are based on it and use its format.

 

Beyond this, there are CP/ boot disks for the Apple II series, and the older DOS versions that used 13-sector diskettes.

 

Apple disk images can be any of these formats. The file extension can be a clue, but it isn't an absolute unless it is a .po file (.po is ProDOS Order, and will always be a ProDOS volume).

 

Now that you understand the format options, note that just formatting a disk does not make it bootable. All disks require some kind of DOS on them. Each format is the basis for the DOS used, but you can format a blank diskette without storing the DOS onto it. These are dat diskettes, and are not bootable, but have a higher capacity as they do not need to store the DOS boot sectors. Apple DOS 3.x is a general exception, as the INIT command formats each diskette and puts DOS into its boot sectors. 

 

So, based on this alone, no, you cannot boot any disk image. In general, most software is self-bootstrapping, but multi-disk software, generally has one boot disk and an extended set of additional diskettes. 

 

Beyond this, quite a lot of Apple II software was copy protected, using track length and nybble-based encoding schemes that fell outside the boundaries expected by the DOS being used. This software ay be encoded in a disk image in a way where an emulator can read it, but creating a real diskette may not be an easy task. 

 

If you are looking for software that will (almost) always work, I suggest the '4am Collection' on the US LOC site:

https://archive.org/details/apple_ii_library_4am

 

In this collection, software tht was protected has been cracked to remove the protection scheme (if it is hard protection, not soft protection such as passcodes in user manuals), and you can create diskettes of these using bit copy processes. I would think that ADT Pro can make masters from them.

 

Remember to use SOFT SECTOR 'Double Density' diskettes. High Density 5.25 diskettes will not function properly in an Apple II drive. 

 

Regarding your display, you only ever want to use a CRT with an Apple II. As far as I am aware, LCDs cannot properly display the colour signal, and many have issues with the sync as well. LCDs might work for monochrome, or garbled colour. Work on fixing your Monitor II (or whatever model you own), and if you later want colour, then your best options are a colour composite CRT of soe sort, or an old television with an RF Modulator. 

 

You will probably also want a joystick. My suggestions are the Apple Joystick //e, the Joystick-III by Kraft, and the CH Products Mach II (or Mach III) series sticks. The older Kraft models and the metal box style oysticks are also compatible, however you may want to reserve the internal 16-pin DIP game header for Apple Paddles. It is hard to find paddles for the DE-9 port at an affordable price now, and it is similarly hard to find affordable joysticks for the internal 16p DIP port. 

 

Those thee josticks, IMO, are the most responsive, and comfortable joysticks for the //e (and //c, and //gs). I am not a fan of the buttons on the Kraft KC3, not the stick on the Suncom models. I have some nostalgia for the Suncom, as I used one many years ago, but the suare stick was never all that ergonomic.

 

Analogue PC joysticks are similar to tose used by the Apple, but they are not direct compativle. ReActive Micro also sell an adapter to use analogue PC joysticks (DA-15 port) on the //e, but I do not know how well this works in contrast to using joystics that naturally output the values that the Apple expects.

 

You can construct paddles easily by ordering 150KOhm trimmers, and wiring them, along with a momentary switch for the fire button, to a male DE-9 terminated cable. You can use the housings from Atari paddles for cases if ou want an easy, ready-made case. Making a custom joystic is a much larger ordeal as you need a selt-centring analogue joystick that usess x/y pots. It's better to use off-the-shelf joysticks made for the system, as these are generally available inexpensively. 

 

Many games that sopprot both Joystick and Keyboard, also are designed to be backward-compatible with the ][+, and as that has only two arrow keys, they will often use some sort of key arrangement that is harcoded. They are ultimately more playable with a proper analogue controller. If the game is designed for paddles, then you absolutely need them. 

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Hello Timelord THANK you a

Hello Timelord

 

THANK you a lot, this is golden info for me and I appreciate the time you spent explaining this to me.

I have been playing with the //e this morning and cleaned one of the drives - squeaky noises were not good. Things are coming together now. I believe I was using DOS back in the days because I remember the "CATALOG" command which I see working under DOS. I've just transferred an old game which would not boot (probably not a bootable image as you said) and I managed to run by running DOS 3.3 and then listing the other disk! Fantastic.

I'm just wondering: isn't it possible to just transfer the files required rather than having to write a whole disk, which may or may not be bootable and may be DOS or ProDOS and may or may not fill up the whole disk? :) 

I wasn't aware of the copy protection and indeed the link you gave me is another great piece of information, I managed to run a couple of old games there!

Thanks for the advice about diskette types: I have got a bunch of disks with the system - mainly Appleworks and data - and I will make sure they are Double Density Soft Sector as you say. Silly questions: those disks are double side, right? And the notch on the side was to enable/disable write protection. Can you remind me which is which (notch = NOT write protected?) and which edge is doing which side?

 

Display: gotcha. The green phospor monitor is on my bench - input filter caps had exploded - and I have parts to fix it. Still, using an LCD monitor on my desktop would help the clutter. What I am not sure I understand is that the Monocrome mode simply does not work - picture jumps all the time. Colour mode works intermittently. Yesterday I had red "bloomings" at kind of regular intervals when displaying text (B/W mode?) but today it's fine. When in colours, I have lots of vertical stripes as in the picture attached. My SONY LCD TV does the same so I know it's not my monitor. I wonder if there may be something wrong with the video output? That RCA socket is borderline to be dead: is there an elegant way to replace it? Is there an adaptor that could make the Apple//e signal more "LCD friendly"?

Thanks for your advise about Joysticks, I'll bear that in mind.

One more question: The SCC card must be in slot 3 to work with ADTPro? That way I cannot use the memory expension/80 column card I have. And I noticed that if I move the SCC to another slot, the memory expansion card still doesn't work. I suppose there is no way to have both permanently installed? This thing is almost 40 years old and I appreciate it's not getting stronger every day so I'd like to avoid plugging/unplugging boards.

 

Cheers again for your help!

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tony359 wrote:Hello Timelord
tony359 wrote:

Hello Timelord

 

THANK you a lot, this is golden info for me and I appreciate the time you spent explaining this to me.

I have been playing with the //e this morning and cleaned one of the drives - squeaky noises were not good. Things are coming together now. I believe I was using DOS back in the days because I remember the "CATALOG" command which I see working under DOS.

I will keep this brief, as I a bout to retire for the evening. 1. A disk is write protected when the notch is concealed. The original Disk ][ had a mechanical means of detection for the notch: It physically probed to try to pass the notch with a mechanical device. Later drives used a light beam, to o the same: If the light passed through the open space, then the disk was not protected; if it was blocked (the photo receptor did not detect the light signal), then it was protected. 2. The way that the Apple II generates colour expressly depends on what we call NTSC colour fringing. These are artefacts of analogue NTSC video. If you are in a PAL region, then you need a further PAL Colour Card, to recrive colour on PAL displays. If you are in an NTSC region, then you are still dependent on the methods that NTSC cathode rat tubes work. AN LCD will never properly, or faithfully reproduce this phenomenon. You will ultimately need a color composite monitor. If you system is a PAL system, and a //e, then the hardware is built into it. Either way, if you cannot find an Apple Colour monitor, you can use a Commodore or similar monitor. The other option is TTL RGB, but that is a vastly different can of worms, an reuqires both a TTL RGB card, and a monitor to decode it. 3. Normally the super serial card is in slots 1 or 2. I know not that ADP Pro requires it in slot 3, and that to be honest, makes no sense. Slot is generally dedicated to RAM expansion and video expansion (Videx, or other 80-column card support), and the typical slots for the SSC are 1, and 2. Where did you read that it wants to be in alot 3?! I always have by SSC in slot 2. This is the most common slot for it. 4. The RCA connector is easy to mend. If the central positive pin disconnects, you solder it. If it is bent up slightly, and makes bad contact, gently bend it down a titch until when inserting a cable, you see that it makes good contact. The thin barb of metal in the centre is the video signal, and the rest of the connector is earth.
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The way that the Apple II
The way that the Apple II generates colour expressly depends on what we call NTSC colour fringing. These are artefacts of analogue NTSC video. If you are in a PAL region, then you need a further PAL Colour Card, to recrive colour on PAL displays. If you are in an NTSC region, then you are still dependent on the methods that NTSC cathode rat tubes work. AN LCD will never properly, or faithfully reproduce this phenomenon. You will ultimately need a color composite monitor. If you system is a PAL system, and a //e, then the hardware is built into it. Either way, if you cannot find an Apple Colour monitor, you can use a Commodore or similar monitor. The other option is TTL RGB, but that is a vastly different can of worms, an reuqires both a TTL RGB card, and a monitor to decode it.

 

 

I am in the UK so PAL region and my Apple // is indeed a PAL system. I think I understand why the Apple is not easy for an LCD monitor, it just feels weird that there is no adaptor available? I wouldn't mind keeping it in Black and White to be honest, but right now when in monocrome the picture width keeps jumping. And as I mentioned, since today the picture is much more stable - perfect when in monocrome (with the switch set to colour). 

 

3. Normally the super serial card is in slots 1 or 2. I know not that ADP Pro requires it in slot 3, and that to be honest, makes no sense. Slot is generally dedicated to RAM expansion and video expansion (Videx, or other 80-column card support), and the typical slots for the SSC are 1, and 2. Where did you read that it wants to be in alot 3?! I always have by SSC in slot 2. This is the most common slot for it.

Probably my bad. I thought the SCC had to be in "terminal mode" and that was reserved to slot 3. I moved to slot 2 and it works indeed!

I cleaned the RAM/80 col expansion card connector before plugging it back in and... it now works WITH the SCCS in. Looks like this Apple needs a bit more TLC :)

 

 

The RCA connector is easy to mend. If the central positive pin disconnects, you solder it. If it is bent up slightly, and makes bad contact, gently bend it down a titch until when inserting a cable, you see that it makes good contact. The thin barb of metal in the centre is the video signal, and the rest of the connector is earth.

 

There is very little friction, I think I understand what you mean with bending the pin, I'll give it a go! The central pin is still soldered to the MB. 

 

Thanks and goodnight! :) 

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Timelord wrote:The way that
Timelord wrote:
The way that the Apple II generates colour expressly depends on what we call NTSC colour fringing. These are artefacts of analogue NTSC video. If you are in a PAL region, then you need a further PAL Colour Card, to recrive colour on PAL displays. If you are in an NTSC region, then you are still dependent on the methods that NTSC cathode rat tubes work. AN LCD will never properly, or faithfully reproduce this phenomenon. You will ultimately need a color composite monitor.

 

Not sure, but are you telling Tony that a color LCD display (with composite input) won't work with his IIe? Because it is PAL? I would say that it's not accurate to claim that "the way that the Apple II generates colour expressly depends on what we call  NTSC colour fringing." Color fringing is indeed an artifact of basic NTSC decoding (although a proper comb filter can eliminate it). But it is also incorrect to state that "you are still dependent on the methods that NTSC cathode ray tubes.." Here I presume you are referring to an  NTSC CRT monitor, since the CRT itself does not have any inherent TV encoding. But an LCD monitor can do just the same since both types of monitors rely on a decoder circuit to first convert the composite input into effectively Red, Green, and Blue signals.

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AVVENTURA NEL CASTELLO!

AVVENTURA NEL CASTELLO! :O

Many sleepless nights to advance a littleMy son doesn't want to believe we played with this.A creation of the great Enrico Colombini, like MelopoliWhere are you from ?

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jeffmazur,To be fair my LCD

jeffmazur,

To be fair my LCD monitor seemed to work ok when in Colour mode - it would just bloom red every now and then - and the picture corruption I saw on screen also happens on the Apple CRT monitor so after all the LCD is not doing such a bad job! I have opened another thread on the picture corruption issue.

 

Hey Bit,

I saw your thread on fixing your Apple // the other day! I live in the UK but I am from Florence. "Avventura nel Castello" was something I wanted to revive (on a real Apple //, not on an emulator!) as it it indeed in my good memory drawer! 

Unfortunately when I was a kid I didn't understand what "Salva la situazione su disco" (Save on disk) meant so every time we would just start from the beginning and we never finished it!

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Hi Tony359, I heard Enrico

Hi Tony359, I heard Enrico Colombini yesterday and I told him about his work, here on applefritter.com, overseas and after so many years :)He told me he will come to visit us.Last month I had the Apple emulator installed on Raspberry's RetroPie, to my guys from the CoderDojo (of course with Avventura nel Castello! and Lunar Lander )I'm still fighting with my Apple] [+, I ordered another 6502 to check that too, but I'm sure I'll win.

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I wanted to drop him a line

I wanted to drop him a line to say thank you for removing copy protection and share his work! I am still looking into my Apple and then I think I'll dive into the "Desolata Brughiera" again :) 

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jeffmazur wrote:Not sure, but
jeffmazur wrote:Not sure, but are you telling Tony that a color LCD display (with composite input) won't work with his IIe? Because it is PAL? I would say that it's not accurate to claim that "the way that the Apple II generates colour expressly depends on what we call NTSC colour fringing." Color fringing is indeed an artifact of basic NTSC decoding (although a proper comb filter can eliminate it). But it is also incorrect to state that "you are still dependent on the methods that NTSC cathode ray tubes.." Here I presume you are referring to an NTSC CRT monitor, since the CRT itself does not have any inherent TV encoding. But an LCD monitor can do just the same since both types of monitors rely on a decoder circuit to first convert the composite input into effectively Red, Green, and Blue signals.
 

I stated CRT, as a generic for either a monitor, or an old PAL CRT television.

 

Both should work, and display reasonably correct colours with the PAL //e. The television will require an RF modulator. The C1084 monitor is probably the easiest solution, as I would expect that to work. Note that the 1085 (for composite signals) is specific to PAL/NTSC.

 

While either region monitor can operate at 50/60Hz in RGB mode, its composite signal (and sync) are fixed to its power frequency for composite video. People flipping give away old colour composite monitors and televisions, and while you can get an adequate image on an LCD, its hardware is frankly not designed to handle the Frankenstein signal coming from a PAL //e. Period. It will always suffer from some form or image fidelity, although real NTSC has the same fidelity issues as its colour spectra is not fixed, hence the old Never The Same Colour reference.

 

I'm unsure how much I would need to disambiguate 'CRT', when we are discussing these things. I certainly do not mean a raw tube without an appropriate decoder or support circuity to view the video source. The assumption of a raw tube, contextually, seems outright silly to me. The eube itself doesn't give two pins what your analogue signals are, and can equally be used by a driver to plot x/y lines, as long as it gets the correct information to do it. 

 

I do not claim to be an all-knowing authority on all things analogue video--but I think that the contextual definitions here are clear. 

 

The PAL signal on the //e PAL system decodes the NTSC colour burst and translates them into a format that a PAL monitor can display; but it is imperfect, and you very much are reliant on how that colour burst signal and colour fringing is interpreted both in the PAL circuitry on the //e, and how that output signal is handled by your display device.

 

LCDs may not have the capability to properly decode the output video signal as it falls slightly outside the normal bounds for the PAL specification, as I recall. Likewise, if you have an NTSC machine, the decoder in an LCD may simply not support full NTSC artefact emulation. That is why I deem them unreliable for this purpose, aside from also looking bloody awful, often having the wrong ratio, and clashing in every way possible, they aren't designed to do what the Apple expects an old CRT display can do, be it a composite monitor, and RGB monitor, or a television.

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tony359 wrote:Probably my bad
tony359 wrote:

Probably my bad. I thought the SCC had to be in "terminal mode" and that was reserved to slot 3. I moved to slot 2 and it works indeed!

I cleaned the RAM/80 col expansion card connector before plugging it back in and... it now works WITH the SCCS in. Looks like this Apple needs a bit more TLC :)

 

 

The //e 80-Column+64K RAM card virtually inhabits slot 3, hence why slot 3 is normally not used for anything else. Tobe specific, the 80-column component is mapped onto Slot 3, to emulate how the original Vide card, used in Slot 3 of the ][ and ][+, works, and how software calls to it were designed. This ensures that software for the ][ and the ][+ that worked with the Vide hardware, still worked on the //e (and later). 

 

The special EXP slot on the //e in general replaces Slot 0 on older machines, as well. On the ][/][+, SLot 0 was used for the original ROM Card, for the Apple Language Card, and for general memory expansion cards. On the //e, these are remapped to the EXP slot. When you installed the SSC in Slot 3, and the EXP card into the EXP slot, you created a conflict. 

 

Because the 80-col card inhabits Slot 3 in memory, calling IN#3 or PR#3 is now ambiguous, with any other card also residing in Slot 3 (unless it was designed for this purpose). Cleaning the connector may not have been needed--although it cannot hurt--but rather, I suspect that it did not work properly before because you were trying to set inpout/output to two devices both in Slot 3, and their memory locations overlapped. 

 

Good to see that it all works for you now. 

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Ciao Tony359,I will report

Ciao Tony359,I will report your thanks to Enrico.I hope he comes here to visit us.The protection of the game seems to me to work on increasing the speed of the floppy during boot: one of his inventions.I was following your posts because I have a Super Serial Card coming from France next week to virtualize several floppy disks of a friend of mine who has written many applications in BASIC and I will need a tutorial for Dummies :)

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BIT wrote:Ciao Tony359,I will
BIT wrote:

Ciao Tony359,I will report your thanks to Enrico.I hope he comes here to visit us.The protection of the game seems to me to work on increasing the speed of the floppy during boot: one of his inventions.I was following your posts because I have a Super Serial Card coming from France next week to virtualize several floppy disks of a friend of mine who has written many applica

 

Sorry, but please clarify, so that I might assist: Do you need a tutorial for BASIC, for the Super Serial Card, or for something else?

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Timelord, Thank you! I am

Timelord,

 

Thank you! I am quite confident the 80 column card was not being seen by Appleworks ("This software requires 128kB to work" or similar message) while I moved the SCC on #2 and #1. Later on I re-seated the 80-column card and it magically started working again.

 

That said, Apple //e diagnostic says my 80 column card is faulty - but I'm quite sure it didn't say that yesterday. XPS is happy with it though. But that's for the other thread :) 

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Hi Timelord,thanks for your

Hi Timelord,thanks for your kindness.I have to create .dsk files starting from floppy disks containing BASIC applications.I read that transferring to Windows is not easy using a Sper Serial Card clone (it arrives next week).My Apple] [e, working, has only 48KB and I don't know if it is enough.

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tony359 wrote:I wanted to
tony359 wrote:

I wanted to drop him a line to say thank you for removing copy protection and share his work! I am still looking into my Apple and then I think I'll dive into the "Desolata Brughiera" again :) 

Hi tony359, you're welcome ;-)

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BIT wrote:Ciao Tony359,I will
BIT wrote:

Ciao Tony359,I will report your thanks to Enrico.I hope he comes here to visit us.The protection of the game seems to me to work on increasing the speed of the floppy during boot: one of his inventions.

Hi BIT :-)

Actually, it wasn't only my idea. I was discussing how to protect our games with Roberto Cerruti, author of "Signori della Galassia" (an earlier 4X game) and I said that we should do something 'out of the beaten path', something that had to do with the hardware (we were both hardware designers at the time).

Roberto said "We could change the speed of the disk, possibly using PWM (pulse-width modulation) on the motor" and I said "Good idea, I'll look into it. But it turned out that the Apple II circuit made that infeasible.

So I thought: well, we cannot change the speed but, when the disk starts spinning, it passes through a range of speeds to reach its nominal speed; we could read the protection code while it accelerates. It would require a modified hardware to write a whole track at a different speed and it will not be writable with a normal drive, which will be a significant advantage. For extra security, we could compare a reading perfored during acceleration with a reading performed with exactly the same (encrypted, self-deleting) routine when the disk is aready spinning.

It all worked fine, even though I had to relax the test when the Apple //c came out, because its cheaply-built drive had a much lower disk speed precision compared with the good old indestructible Shugart drives.

You can see a picture of my modified drive circuit here, around half of the page: http://www.erix.it/retro/storia_cast.html

By the way, the program I used to write the protection code on production disks was my first 'real' C program, written with Aztec C.

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Hey Enrico - Never have I

Hey Enrico - Never have I thought I could chat with the author of "Avventura nel Castello"!  I was about 8 back then, the Apple was my mom's, and I remember playing the game over and over again with my brother trying to finish it. Unfortunately back in the days we didn't understand what "Salva la situazione su disco" (Save on disk) meant so every time we would just start from scratch!

The anti-copy feature sounds impressive, I was not aware that back in the day there were copy protection mechanism - makes perfectly sense.

 

Thank you and Chiara for the hours of fun!

 

(Sorry for the OT!)

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BIT wrote:Hi Timelord,thanks
BIT wrote:

Hi Timelord,thanks for your kindness.I have to create .dsk files starting from floppy disks containing BASIC applications.I read that transferring to Windows is not easy using a Sper Serial Card clone (it arrives next week).My Apple] [e, working, has only 48KB and I don't know if it is enough.

 

You should open a new topic with this subject. How do you have a //e with 48K?! The base system RAM for the //e is 64K.

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Old protection systems (was: ADTPro help...)
tony359 wrote:

The anti-copy feature sounds impressive, I was not aware that back in the day there were copy protection mechanism - makes perfectly sense

Oh yes, we are talking about 1983 and protection systems were already quite sophisticated (the Apple II arrived in Italy about 3 years later than in the US). In fact, for the first edition of "Avventura nel Castello" in 1982 I had designed a simpler protection system by tampering with the disk nibbles, markers and timing. Even "Locksmith" could not copy it and I was very proud of it.

A very short time after publication, a new Locksmith version came out... and, as you may guess, it copied the disk flawlessly. That's why we began to thing out of the box.

I'm glad you had fun with our game :-)

 

BIT
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Hi Timelord,a) I ran the

Hi Timelord,

a) I ran the "PRINT FRE (0) command and the result is -18435

 

Now, I finally got the SSC board to create .dsk from my Floppy Disks.

b) What is the simplest system to check if the SSC board is fully functional?

I was thinking of connecting the Apple // and the Hyper Terminal of my Windows.

c) I am preparing the connection cable: DB25 / male on Apple // e and DB9 / F on PC Windows; are these links correct?

Pin DB25 / M - Pin DB9 / F2 <------------> 23 <------------> 34 & 207 <------------> 5

 

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Hey Bit Check this out. I am

Hey Bit

 

Check this out. I am not sure I'm following your schematic as you mention pin 207 - that's a big connector. For the DB9 please follow the pin numbers. I assumed RI is SCTS.

I'm also not sure what you mean with "create .sdk from Floppy"? 

 

I think using ADTPro is an easy way to make sure that all works ok.

 

 

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ciao tony359,I meant this

ciao tony359,

I meant this (Damn formatting!):

pin - DB25/M (Apple)pin - DB9/F (PC)

2

3
32
4 & 20none
75
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I am not a massive expert

I am not a massive expert when it comes to RS232 but why not wiring all the other pins too? Would RS232 work with just RX/TX wired up?

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ciaoi tony,RS-232 doesn't

ciaoi tony,RS-232 doesn't work like that ... :)The type of connection that I am trying to make is called null-modem and some signals are managed in a loop by the computer.Maybe I have found a detailed external link that I will try today and report everything if it works.The first step is to verify that the card is working; when you buy they always tell you: - "the last time I connected it, it worked ..."  20/30 years ago  :(

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I know what a Null Modem

I know what a Null Modem cable is. I am using a straight cable and I wired all the pins as per the pinout schematics I mentioned above. It works for me. 

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Ciao Tony,sorry, but I only

Ciao Tony,

sorry, but I only saw ipinout of the 2 connectors, not the cable connection between the 2 DB9 <-> DB25 connectors.Is the jumper block towards TERMINAL or MODEM?

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the cable... connects the

the cable... connects the pins in between the D-Sub connectors! So TX with TX, RX with TX, RTS with RTS etc. So you need a 9-core + shield cable.

 

Jumper block is on Terminal for straight cable, Modem for Null modem.

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