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Mod I/III copy-protected/self-booting games

M

MikeModifed

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Jan 5, 2011
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Portland, Oregon
There are a bunch of game images available that work on emulators but using real hardware is so much more satisfying.

Are there any easy methods of writing copy-protected/self-booting game images back to floppy?

Mike
 
Where are these copy-protected images you mention? I have run across the self-booting images, but didn't think there was copy protection on them...
 
Ah.. The only way I have ever been successful writing TRS-80 floppies is to use the Keil emulator with the special direct-to-floppy files (VHD0_360, etc.) and use CopyCat. Sometimes this works, sometimes not... Probably the ones that don't work are the special ones my drive can't write (single density?)
 
The only copycat I can find, on classiccmp.org, seems to be bad.

SU1 on a Keil emulator thinks it's copying the disk but the resulting floppy written is bad (no surprise).

SU4 on a FreHD-equipped Mod 4 ignores the operating system and works directly on the hardware but does not recognize the FreHD.

Next up, trying SU3 on a FreHD-equipped Mod3.

Mike
 
What kind of controllers are your floppy drives hooked up to? Most if not all on board controllers will not handle Single Density. If that is what you are using it may explain why you are not having any luck making the real disk Images.

I have used SU 4 in the past with success and an Adaptec 1522 SCSI controller. This controller has a floppy controller chip that can handle single density without any problems. Also it's bigger brother the AHA 1542 works just as well.

Both boards are ISA so will need to be using an older system like a Pentium or high end 486. And I guess you all have tweener systems to handle making older disks etc? Like for the TRS-80? If not make one. Kind of a mandatory item in this hobby.
 
Frank:

I'm using a hopped-up Tandy Sensation (486/100 Overdrive w/16m memory). It writes single density disk perfectly 100% of the time.

I can't use it with SU4 because Matthew Reed's 75%-useless Model 4 emulator doesn't admit that .dmk disks exist and all of the self-booters seem to be .dmk.

On a Model 4 with FreHD, SU4 works directly with the hardware and won't look at anything on the card with any setting that I have tried.

Mike
 
No, every one that I've looked at has a non-standard boot track which TRSTools can't read "Unrecognized disk format". Besides, I don't think TRSTools can convert a system disk from one format to another.

Mike
 
Your lucky there that the Tandy sensation works. Very few on board controllers can handle single densit. Also most of these copy protected games will mostly only work on a model 1. I made a couple disk about 2 years ago and they booted fine on a m1 but not on the m3. Even they claimed they were dual bootable.remember the m3 is only about 80% m1 compatible. Thanks to radio shack screwing it up. Should have made it 100% compatible.
 
Chromedome45 said:
Also most of these copy protected games will mostly only work on a model 1. I made a couple disk about 2 years ago and they booted fine on a m1 but not on the m3. Even they claimed they were dual bootable.
Click to expand...

I had pirate copies of several of those dual booters included in the pile of disks that came with my garage sale Model I and they won't boot on my 4 either, but for a good reason: those disks could generally be copied by something like Super Utility but the utilities would only recognize the single-density parts of the disk. The dual-boot-ability depends on the disk having *two* boot sectors, a single-density one and a double-density one on track 0. (I believe this was accomplished by formatting track 0 single-density and then writing only *one sector*, the one immediately after the index hole, with the double density boot code for the Model III. Then the single-density boot was placed in sector 1 instead of sector 0, which the Model I's boot code tolerated.) Copy the disk with a program that doesn't know about this and the double-density boot sector is lost. And since a III/4 won't see a single density boot sector, boom, it's a Model I-compatible only disk now.

Given the need of having two densities on one track it doesn't surprise me that utilities to convert disk images of these sorts of disks back into real floppies get confused by this.
 
rittwage said:
Bummer... Well, what software created those DMK's?
Click to expand...

Tim Mann's Catweasel utilities create DMKs. DMK's are used for this purpose because out of all the formats out there the DMK format is one of the very few that can handle mixed density tracks, which all of the I/III dual-booting disks use. Frogger and Zaxxon are two that I remember; I think I have a Zaxxon 'creator' disk around here somewhere that only exists to write the special dual-boot disk.

Even many programs and controllers that will handle single-density won't properly handle single and double density on the same track, with the same sector numbers. The Catweasel and Tim's cw2dmk/dmk2cw utilities together are one of the few solutions that do it correctly. The Kryoflux should be able to do it, and, of course, a real Model III or 4 (or I with a doubler) will do the job.
 
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