| Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
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| Date: | Fri, Mar 09th, 2012 @ 21:28 ( . ) |
It works only mounted as read-only. Which makes me think back- I wonder if this is why the UU custom copier didn't work... I probably never tried write protecting the copy. |
 | Author: | jerrykurtz (registered user: 4 posts ) |
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| Date: | Thu, Mar 22nd, 2012 @ 14:56 ( . ) |
I'm sure I didn't try to write protect my UU copy attempts either. Interesting to hear that the G64 works with 1541U. |
| Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
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| Date: | Mon, Apr 09th, 2012 @ 20:38 ( . ) |
The SuperCard copier does in fact work if you write protect the copy. D'oh! It copied my 1.2 fine with an SC+. No index-hole required- it used timers/custom copier. So Jim Drew did have it right back in 1989. :) |
 | Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
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| Date: | Tue, Apr 10th, 2012 @ 20:54 ( . ) |
If Jim Drew could do it with his software in 1989, then it can be done by nibtools in 2012. The old saying "where there's a will there's a way comes to mind |
| Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
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| Date: | Tue, Apr 10th, 2012 @ 21:29 ( . ) |
It's a custom copier, meaning it was created just to write out this one title... which is all it does. It copies a couple of tracks of regular CBM data, then reads in all the halftracks and writes them back out while sweeping the tracks. It would basically take a custom write routine, and there is no "will" on my part. I already have a Super-Card+. :) |
 | Author: | Jim Drew (guest: search) |
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| Date: | Tue, May 15th, 2012 @ 01:01 ( . ) |
Keep in mind that the custom copier just calls routines from the core code. Bounty Bob just requires half tracked writes that are interleaved so that wide head destroys areas not used. There was no real magic to this. Had they used more than 50% of the track (in each half track), it would have not been possible to use a CBM drive to write the data back. |
| Author: | Jim Drew (guest: search) |
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| Date: | Tue, May 15th, 2012 @ 01:04 ( . ) |
Oh, and yes you need to write protect ALL copies where the original never had a write protect notch to begin with. I would say that maybe 80% of the commercials games I saw tried to write to the disk as part of their protection check! |
 | Author: | bluebirdpod (registered user: 28 posts ) |
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| Date: | Wed, May 16th, 2012 @ 09:21 ( . ) |
This is true, you need to WP copies or simply make a WP switch mod to your drive. Legacy of the Ancients will write back to the copy if not WP, and it will only load ONE TIME. I thought the copies were going bad, but after WP them all was good. Remember has released this title on one disk side!, wow modern compression techniques are much better than the old ones. |
| Author: | jerrykurtz (registered user: 4 posts ) |
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| Date: | Wed, May 16th, 2012 @ 12:29 ( . ) |
Shamus formats the disk. I know this from experience as I had a write-protect disable switch on my drive and when I loaded the game, it got formatted. Bye bye original disk. I should have known better... |
| Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
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| Date: | Tue, Apr 10th, 2012 @ 22:28 ( . ) |
Well, I spoke to soon, again... The copy does boot all the way up and plays through the intro/high score screen, but it if you try to start a game it locks up. Mine is V1.2, so maybe it will copy Jerry's earlier original. Who knows... |
| Author: | jerrykurtz (registered user: 4 posts ) |
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| Date: | Tue, Mar 27th, 2012 @ 11:05 ( . ) |
Now, I'm wondering if a disk from NIBWRITE would load if it were write-protected? |
| Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
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| Date: | Tue, Mar 27th, 2012 @ 11:24 ( . ) |
I can promise you that it won't work! Nibwrite has no current way to step the head while writing to do those split halftracks. I would have to rewrite all the send routines to incorporate command bytes to do that sort of thing, and even then the timing would be a nightmare to get perfect. It's possible, and you could do density changes also, but it would likely lose framing unless these operations were done while outputting sync... |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
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| Date: | Wed, Mar 28th, 2012 @ 09:44 ( . ) |
If this isn't possible through nibtools, you might be able to remaster it through kryoflux with your flux stream. Does kryoflux let you write back to disk yet? |
 | Author: | Lord Crass (guest: search) |
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| Date: | Wed, Mar 28th, 2012 @ 21:03 ( . ) |
The timing's pretty loose, actually. The loader simply steps the half-track and waits forever for a sync mark followed by a series of 5 repeating GCR bytes ($75 for normal tracks, $77 for half-tracks), reads $280 GCR bytes and sending them to the host. It does this 4 times, re-finding the sector header (which only appears once on the track) and skipping X bytes each time to pick up the next part of the sector, for a total sector size of about $A10 bytes including sync mark and the $75/$77 header. GCR decode is all done on the host. Tracks in this range (1-17) can hold 7692 bytes under normal circumstances. Writing a 2576 byte sector so that it doesn't overlap the neighbouring tracks shouldn't require any special timing other than stepping the head after the end of the previous track's sector and then writing out the next track's sector. Obviously, this does require 8k RAM or a parallel cable due to the sector length. Of course, it's still quite a bit of work to program and test a completely custom write routine for a single game. I don't think it'd be worth it. |