Question about disk images
magnusfalkirk
I've finally gotten the correct USB to serial adapter for My Mac Mini,
along with the corresponding serial cable hooked up to the SSC in my
IIe, and am starting to transfer disk images back to real disks using
David Schmidt's excellent ADTPro program. My question for anyone out
there who might know is this, why is it that some games that run fine
in a emulator refuse to run when transferred back to disk? At least
four that come immediately to mind are the first Wizardry, the first
Bard's Tale and both Might and Magic games.
I was frustrated enough by this, after downloading the first Might and
Magic and Wizardry 1 from several different sites and never getting
either to run after transferring them back to the IIe, that I finally
went to Ebay and won a copy of Might and Magic. I'm seriously thinking
of trying to find copies of the other games through there as well.
Anyone have any ideas what's up?
William Garber
"magnusfalkirk" <dean....@gmail.com> wrote in message news:1169495718....@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
: Greetings,
It would be nice to know the procedure that
you are following to transfer the disks.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but, your question is
like calling the doctor and saying "I don't
feel well, any ideas?"
It's possible that you are not transferring
them properly.
William Garber
Email Address - will...@garberstreet.com
Alt. Email - will...@comcast.net
Web address - http://www.garberstreet.com
Sean Fahey
> Greetings,
>
> I've finally gotten the correct USB to serial adapter for My Mac Mini,
> along with the corresponding serial cable hooked up to the SSC in my
> IIe, and am starting to transfer disk images back to real disks using
> David Schmidt's excellent ADTPro program. My question for anyone out
> there who might know is this, why is it that some games that run fine
> in a emulator refuse to run when transferred back to disk? At least
> four that come immediately to mind are the first Wizardry, the first
> Bard's Tale and both Might and Magic games.
There are a number of reasons... but let's try the easiest one first. Some
games (I think Wizardry is this way) expect the disk to be write-protected.
If the notch is there, it knows it's a copy and therefore possibly pirated.
--- Synchronet 3.13a-Win32 NewsLink 1.83
A2Central.com - Your total source for Apple II computing.
magnusfalkirk
I've got something similar to the Lindy adapter that you can read about
here: http://www.rm.com/Primary/Products/Product.asp?cref=PD294659
plugged into my Mac. Unfortunately the Lindy driver wouldn't work with
it so, after searching around the Web for a while, I found this driver
http://www.serialgear.com/USB-Serial-adapter-drivers-windows-mac-linux.cfm
that did. On the Apple IIe side I have a DBM25 to DBF9 cable plugged
into my Super Serial card. Then, of course, the DBF9 end of the cable
is plugged into the Adapter. I successfully used this setup to transfer
the Apple II ADTPro program to the IIe and save it to disk.
Once I had ADTPro up and running on the IIe I started transferring disk
images. Project Space Station runs fine, as does Earth Orbit Stations,
Bard's Tale II - Destiny Knight, Sundog, Star Trek:First Contact, Super
Stellar Trek, Star Trek Tactical Operation Simulator, Jungle Hunt and a
few others.
Does that give you a better idea of what I'm dealing with?
Dean
schmidtd
> My question for anyone out
> there who might know is this, why is it that some games that run fine
> in a emulator refuse to run when transferred back to disk?
Any of several reasons, in increasing order of likelihood:
- dirty drive head
- defective media
- IIe/II+ incompatibilities
- bad serial transfer
- OSX rxtx driver trouble
- bugs in ADTPro
Somewhere in the middle there is the possibility of trying to transfer
.nib images. If the disk images you have are in any way copy
protected, it's unlikely that they will work when reconstituted to
diskettes.
I've gotten the old MacADT to work on my iMac by having my Keyspan
adapter pretend to be the "printer" port. (This is that same adapter
that we both have, the one with two round serial connectors.) I can
then do 5-1/4" disk transfers the old fashioned way. I did that
exercise to prove to myself that the rxtx driver isn't working 100% for
OSX for older Keyspan adapters. But you might try that route to see if
the problem is in fact serial and/or ADTPro related.
magnusfalkirk
Sean,
Thanks for that comment, I had completely forgotten about that since
it's been several years since I played Wizardry on a II. I'll have to
put a write protect tab over the notch and check it again. Who knows
maybe that's the problem with all of them (if I'm lucky).
Dean
William Garber
"magnusfalkirk" <dean....@gmail.com> wrote in message news:1169498100.3...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Yes, Sir. Give me links to the ones you have trouble
with and I'll transfer them by 1.44MB disk and convert
them with DiskMaker8 and see if they work that way.
William Garber
"Sean Fahey" <sean....@a2central.com.remove-nuv-this> wrote in message news:45B519A6.323...@a2central.com...
: To: magnusfalkirk
Good point, Sean. I didn't think of that.
magnusfalkirk
Bill,
Here's a link to the disk images for Bard's Tale:
http://www.lampefamily.us/jonathan/ and here's one for Wizardry:
http://www.geocities.com/wizardrygame/frames.html and Might and Magic
Book 1, as far as I know a regular dsk image, is here:
http://www.emuasylum.com/index.php?page=roms&type=list&system=Apple%20II&letter=M
The images of Might and Magic Book 2 might all be nib so that could be
my trouble with it.
Thanks,
Dean
magnusfalkirk
David,
So I guess I probably need to take a look at MacADT. Now my question is
does it run under the Classic environment in OSX? If not then there's
nothing I can do, since my Mac Mini won't boot into OS 9. Over all I'm
really happy with ADTPro and really happy with the amazing response
from the Apple II community when I need help.
Thanks,
Dean
schmidtd
> schmidtd wrote:
> > I've gotten the old MacADT to work on my iMac by having my Keyspan
> > adapter pretend to be the "printer" port. (This is that same adapter
> > that we both have, the one with two round serial connectors.) I can
> > then do 5-1/4" disk transfers the old fashioned way. I did that
> > exercise to prove to myself that the rxtx driver isn't working 100% for
> > OSX for older Keyspan adapters. But you might try that route to see if
> > the problem is in fact serial and/or ADTPro related.
>
> David,
>
> So I guess I probably need to take a look at MacADT. Now my question is
> does it run under the Classic environment in OSX?
Yes. But you only need to go that route if it's serial fidelity you
ultimately suspect. Now that I've done the Wizardry experiment, I'm
less convinced that's what's wrong. :-)
> Over all I'm
> really happy with ADTPro and really happy with the amazing response
> from the Apple II community when I need help.
Glad you're getting the help you need. I did download the Wizardry
disk. When I told AppleWin to allow read/write access to the floppy
image (it was write protected to begin with), it stopped running. Not
sure that could be the problem you face with all the images; Bard's
Tale seems to start up even when write enabled, but you didn't mention
the point at which it starts failing.
magnusfalkirk
David,
Looks like after I get home I'll need to write protect the Wizardry
boot disk and see if that fixes its problem. Who knows that might also
be the trouble with Might and Magic. Sorry I forgot to mention the
exact problem with Bard's Tale. I can boot the program with trouble,
where I run into a problem is when it asks for the Character disk. I
insert the disk I made from the disk image and press return and the
drive will run for a second, then the programs asks again for the
Character disk. Any ideas?
Dean
magnusfalkirk
> Looks like after I get home I'll need to write protect the Wizardry
> boot disk and see if that fixes its problem. Who knows that might also
> be the trouble with Might and Magic. Sorry I forgot to mention the
> exact problem with Bard's Tale. I can boot the program with trouble,
> where I run into a problem is when it asks for the Character disk. I
> insert the disk I made from the disk image and press return and the
> drive will run for a second, then the programs asks again for the
> Character disk. Any ideas?
>
> Dean
I think I need to learn to read a little bit better. I meant I have no
trouble booting the Bard's Tale boot disk, the trouble is with the
Character disk.
Dean
Lyrical Nanoha
> So I guess I probably need to take a look at MacADT. Now my question is
> does it run under the Classic environment in OSX? If not then there's
> nothing I can do, since my Mac Mini won't boot into OS 9. Over all I'm
> really happy with ADTPro and really happy with the amazing response
> from the Apple II community when I need help.
Can Classic even run on a Mini? I thought it required a PPC and Minis had
Intel CPUs?
-uso.
-----------------------------------------------------------
There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty:
Soap, Ballot, Jury, Ammo.
Use in that order, starting now.
-- Attr. to Ed Howdershelt
Knut Roll-Lund
One problem I ran into was the volume number. Some games require the
disks to be numbered 1 2 3 (sierra). The volume number is put on the
disk when formatted before ADT puts data on it. Here is the DOS 3.3
command (I'm not too familiar with ProDOS yet)
INIT HELLO ,V1
volume number defaults to same as the boot disk.
--
Knut
(delete 'nogarbage.' for email)
Michael J. Mahon
> magnusfalkirk wrote:
>
>>My question for anyone out
>>there who might know is this, why is it that some games that run fine
>>in a emulator refuse to run when transferred back to disk?
>
>
> Any of several reasons, in increasing order of likelihood:
> - dirty drive head
> - defective media
> - IIe/II+ incompatibilities
> - bad serial transfer
> - OSX rxtx driver trouble
> - bugs in ADTPro
>
> Somewhere in the middle there is the possibility of trying to transfer
> protected, it's unlikely that they will work when reconstituted to
> diskettes.
Another possibility (and one that I encountered a few years ago) is
that your emulator "adapts" to DOS-order or ProDOS-order disk images,
but the process of converting to a real disk does not.
It would be interesting to look at one of the non-working disks with
a sector editor to see if things are where they are supposed to be.
-michael
NadaNet networking for Apple II computers!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."
BLuRry
> adapter pretend to be the "printer" port. (This is that same adapter
> that we both have, the one with two round serial connectors.) I can
> then do 5-1/4" disk transfers the old fashioned way. I did that
> exercise to prove to myself that the rxtx driver isn't working 100% for
> OSX for older Keyspan adapters. But you might try that route to see if
> the problem is in fact serial and/or ADTPro related.
Does ADTPro use any form of copy verification or data checksum to
validate the serial transfer is working properly?
-B
Rob Greene
news:1169495718....@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
Seems like we have a lot of ideas!
My idea: Did you try to make a SHK of the disk, and use ADT Pro to
transfer a disk with the SHK file? Then unshrink it on the Apple IIe.
Kinda overkill.
Oh yeah, Wiz 1 needs a write-protect. Don't remember that with M&M
though.
I'm wondering if you're running into various disk orderings that the
emulator is handling fine but ADT messes with...
Good luck!
-Rob
sicklittlemonkey
> I'm wondering if you're running into various disk orderings that the
> emulator is handling fine but ADT messes with...
Yeah, I've had cases where I suspected this, but haven't looked into it
yet. Writing DOS DSK images to disk to find that they don't boot, but
if DOS is already loaded then the suspect disk CATALOGs fine, and it's
contents can be run.
I suspect some boots may rely on physical sector ordering.
Cheers,
Nick.
Greg Buchner
Lyrical Nanoha <lyrica...@dosius.ath.cx> wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Jan 2007, magnusfalkirk wrote:
>
> > So I guess I probably need to take a look at MacADT. Now my question is
> > does it run under the Classic environment in OSX? If not then there's
> > nothing I can do, since my Mac Mini won't boot into OS 9. Over all I'm
> > really happy with ADTPro and really happy with the amazing response
> > from the Apple II community when I need help.
>
> Can Classic even run on a Mini? I thought it required a PPC and Minis had
> Intel CPUs?
The Mini came out in January 2005 as a PPC machine, was silently
upgraded with slightly faster processor, more graphics memory and a
couple of other things in September 2005. All PPC Mac Mini's were
discontinued in February 2006 when the Intel Mac Mini was introduced.
Greg B.
--
Actual e-mail address is gregbuchner and I'm located at gmail.com
schmidtd
> I have no
> trouble booting the Bard's Tale boot disk, the trouble is with the
> Character disk.
I transferred Bard's tale boot and character disks tonight. I ventured
out with the 'EPSILON' character in my party. After venturing North
for a couple of turns, I ran into a band of thieves. EPSILON managed
to kill one of them before the other sent my poor character to
'adventurer heaven.' Alas, poor EPSILON. This is all to say... I
don't think it's a sector ordering problem.
magnusfalkirk
David,
So you where able to run Bard's Tale on the II without any trouble
after using ADTPro to transfer the disk image to it? Which disk image
did you use to transfer? So far every one I've downloaded and tried has
rejected the Character disk as not being the Character disk.
Dean
schmidtd
> So you where able to run Bard's Tale on the II without any trouble
> after using ADTPro to transfer the disk image to it? Which disk image
> did you use to transfer?
I used ADTPro 0.1.4 to transfer two disk images to my IIgs from a PC; I
still don't have a working USB adapter for my Macs. I got the images
from the link you posted earlier; here's what it finally resolves to:
http://www.lampefamily.us/jonathan/downloads/Apple2_BardsTale1.zip
I transferred bt1_boot.dsk to boot, and bt1_char.dsk as the character
disk. I had ADTPro transfer them to a couple of random floppies I had
lying around; both were most likely formatted by DOS, but one had
recently housed a ProDOS image. But that's not likely to be relevant.
The character disk was accepted and it let me goof with the characters,
add them to my party, and venture forth. (To their eventual doom, as
it turns out.)
> So far every one I've downloaded and tried has
> rejected the Character disk as not being the Character disk.
Yep, that's pretty strange. My next test would be to get a copy of
MacADT (with standard DOS ADT at the Apple II end) and see if it is any
more successful in creating you a character disk.
magnusfalkirk
I don't know if the problem might have been a bad disk or what but I
downloaded the Bard's Tale, again, from the site I listed and expanded
it. Then I used a new 5.25 disk to copy the Boot side and Character
side to. The Boot side booted up, just like before, and when I turned
it over to the Character side this time it ran like normal. So I'm not
sure what exactly fixed the problem but it is fixed.
Dean
magnusfalkirk
Well I've got both Wizardry 1 and Bard's Tale 1 up and running on my
Apple IIe now. Might and Magic I give up on, I've gotten an original
game coming in the mail that I won on Ebay. It looks like I might have
to try and find an original copy of Might and Magic II, since the only
copies I can find to download are nib images and I guess those have the
copy protection still on them and that doesn't copy over to a the real
disk copy.
Oh well, at least I'm back in business with an Apple IIe and just need
to pick up more blank 5.25 disks to copy disk images to now.
Happy computing,
Dean
schmidtd
> It looks like I might have
> to try and find an original copy of Might and Magic II, since the only
> copies I can find to download are nib images and I guess those have the
> copy protection still on them and that doesn't copy over to a the real
> disk copy.
A minor untruth. :-) You can in fact transfer .NIB images
successfully. It's a much more involved process, but ADTPro and SST
can get you there. Full instructions from Moose O'malley are here, if
this giant link works:
http://www.infocom.cqu.edu.au/Staff/Michael_O_malley/web/download/ADT_SST_Copy_%5D%5B+_DDD_BCopy_Locksmith_Autonum_Renum__Mooses_Disk.txt
Here is a tinyurl to the same place:
http://tinyurl.com/yojkgw
> Oh well, at least I'm back in business with an Apple IIe and just need
> to pick up more blank 5.25 disks to copy disk images to now.
Can't just pop down to the corner store to pick those things up any
more, can we? ;-)
BLuRry
> You can in fact transfer .NIB images
> successfully. It's a much more involved process, but ADTPro and SST
> can get you there. Full instructions from Moose O'malley are here, if
> Here is a tinyurl to the same place:http://tinyurl.com/yojkgw
Here's the instructions in that site, in the event the page ever gets
lost into the abyss:
------ snip --------
ADT can only handle standard Apple ][ floppy disks. i.e. non copy
protected disks and disks that don't have strange formats. If you
have these type of disks, then you need to use SST - Super Saltines
Transcopy.
See "Transferring Copy Protected Disks" below for further details.
****************************************************
Transferring Copy Protected Disks : Apple 2 -> PC
****************************************************
Execute SST - Super Saltines Transcopy on the Apple 2 :
Select Menu Option 1 - Pirate a Disk
Select Menu Option 2 - Pack
Enter the Start Track - 0 is the default
- just hit enter to keep this value.
Enter the End Track - 34 is the default
- just hit enter to keep this value.
Step - 1 is the default
- just hit enter to keep this value.
Synchronize Tracks - NO is the default
- just hit enter to keep this value.
Nibble Count - NO is the default
- just hit enter to keep this value.
Now you are told to insert disks, and press <Return>.
So, place the Copy Protected Disk into Drive 1 on your Apple 2 and a
blank DOS 3.3 formatted disk into Drive 2, and press <Return>.
SST will then read the copy protected disk and write this in packed,
transferrable format onto the standard DOS 3.3 disk in Drive 2.
Only half of the image of the Copy Protected Disk can fit onto the
blank disk in Drive 2, so at the half-way point, SST will ask you to
place another blank formatted disk into Drive 2.
Do, this, and press <Return> and SST will complete the process.
Now, you have a 2 standard DOS 3.3 floppy disks that each contain
half of a complete image of a Copy Protected Disk.
These Disks can then be transferred to the PC for use with emulators
using ADT, in exactly the same as we transferred Standard Floppy
Disks above. (See "Transferring Standard Floppy Disks" above).
On the PC side - where you are running an Apple 2 emulator - you will
need to use SST (running on an Apple 2 Emulator) to stitch the 2
halves of the Copy Protected Disk's disk images back together again.
Let's say you transfer the 2 standard disks as "d1a.dsk" and
"d1b.dsk", we now need to UnPack these disks from within the Apple 2
Emulator on the PC to a special NIB disk image file (you could copy
and overwrite an existing NIB file, or else download and use the
blank.NIB file from Asimov - I'll assume you have called the NIB file
"game.nib" on the PC) :
Select Menu Option 1 - Pirate a Disk
Select Menu Option 3 - UnPack
Select Menu Option 1 - Packed Parms
Enter the Start Track - 0 is the default
- just hit enter to keep this value.
Enter the End Track - 34 is the default
- just hit enter to keep this value.
Step - 1 is the default
- just hit enter to keep this value.
Synchronize Tracks - NO is the default
- just hit enter to keep this value.
Nibble Count - NO is the default
- just hit enter to keep this value.
Place d1a.dsk in drive 1 and game.nib in drive 2, and hit <return> to
make SST proceed.
Then, when prompted to "turn over the disk", place d1b.dsk in drive 1
and leave game.nib in drive 2 and hit <return> and SST will finish
the process of rebuilding a virtual disk image copy of the original
copy protected floppy disk.
You should then have a NIB disk image file that contains the copy
protection / formatting information of the original disk along with
all of the program code / data from this disk, and this disk should
now run under emulation just as the original floppy disk runs on a
real Apple 2, only it will be considerably faster under emulation.
****************************************************
Transferring Copy Protected Disks : PC -> Apple 2
****************************************************
You can reverse the above process to transfer NIB disk images back to
real floppy disks on the Apple 2. To do this, you would use SST on
the Apple 2 emulator to pack the NIB disk onto two .DSK disk image
files, ADT these across onto 2 floppy disks on the real Apple 2, and
then use SST on the real Apple 2 to unpack (stitch) these together
again onto a single floppy disk.
William Garber
"schmidtd" <schm...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:1169662066....@v45g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
:
: Can't just pop down to the corner store to pick
: those things up any more, can we? ;-)
Nope, but, I have a number of boxes of NOS disks
for $5/box of 10, and I also have used formatted
disks for $3/10 disks. When I get time I will get
them on the web site set up with auto-buy through
Paypal. You can also email me to set up a purchase.
Knut Roll-Lund
> On Jan 24, 12:46 pm, "magnusfalkirk" <dean.pha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>It looks like I might have
>>to try and find an original copy of Might and Magic II, since the only
>>copies I can find to download are nib images and I guess those have the
>>copy protection still on them and that doesn't copy over to a the real
>>disk copy.
>
>
> A minor untruth. :-) You can in fact transfer .NIB images
> successfully. It's a much more involved process, but ADTPro and SST
> can get you there. Full instructions from Moose O'malley are here, if
> this giant link works:
> http://www.infocom.cqu.edu.au/Staff/Michael_O_malley/web/download/ADT_SST_Copy_%5D%5B+_DDD_BCopy_Locksmith_Autonum_Renum__Mooses_Disk.txt
> Here is a tinyurl to the same place:
> http://tinyurl.com/yojkgw
>
>
I think you have misread there, NIB can't be transferred to real disks
using SST. The other way is ok, from real disk to NIB, as Moose
describes. It would be nice if people could post SST transfer disks
instead of NIB... Or the emulators would start using a new disk format
that was based on the information on the SST disks...
In my ignorance I tried it. I had a set of NIB that worked in an
emulator (while the DSK didn't). I transferred the NIB to a real disk
using SST and adt and SST again on the two disk. It made disks ok but
they weren't readable. I asked help here and I got the understanding
that this was so because the disks missed sync parts. The sync parts
were left out of the NIB file because they are not needed for the
emulator. Real disks don't work without them.
The actual problem I had (as I described in my other post in this
thread) was that DSK image doesn't contain the volume number so it will
in the emulator be whatever the emulator defaults to and transfered by
adt will make it whatever the boot disk had put on the floppy. The NIB
OTOH does contain the volume number. This is why the DSK fails while the
NIB works... Priming the real floppy with the correct volume number
fixed the problem the DSK worked after all (on real disks).
Linards Ticmanis
> ****************************************************
> Transferring Copy Protected Disks : PC -> Apple 2
> ****************************************************
>
> You can reverse the above process to transfer NIB disk images back to
> real floppy disks on the Apple 2. To do this, you would use SST on
> the Apple 2 emulator to pack the NIB disk onto two .DSK disk image
> files, ADT these across onto 2 floppy disks on the real Apple 2, and
> then use SST on the real Apple 2 to unpack (stitch) these together
> again onto a single floppy disk.
This part won't work. As Knut noted below, the vital sync information is
lost once you go from the two SST .dsk's to the .nib image.
If you can guess where the sync stuff is, it's not really that hard to
transfer the .nib back correctly. I wrote a bit of code (cc65 plus some
assembly stolen from "Beneath Apple ProDOS") to do this and have
successfully transferred the original Ultima game (non-standard 13
sectors) and the Infocom V4/V5 games (one-big-sector-per-track format).
But it's not a fully automatable process.
--
Linards Ticmanis
Linards Ticmanis
> Does ADTPro use any form of copy verification or data checksum to
> validate the serial transfer is working properly?
DOS-based ADT uses CRC checksums, so I assume ADTPro does the same.
--
Linards Ticmanis
schmidtd
Yes, they have that code in common.
magnusfalkirk
David,
No I can't pick them up at the corner store but I did win an auction
on Ebay for 500 for $50 plus shipping. Shipping was $21 and change so
I figure it works out to $0.14 a disk. Not a bad deal. I got an e-mail
for UPS today and the disks are on their way and should be delivered
on the 6th of Feb. Adding that to what I already have I'll have over
600 disks to copy programs onto for the IIe.
Dean