Subject: Re: Bard's Tale II (GS) and CopyII+?
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From: kentd@cup.hp.com (Kent Dickey)
Newsgroups: comp.emulators.apple2
Date: 21 Oct 1999 07:21:54 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Cupertino, CA
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Message-ID: <7umeui$q8r$1@web1.cup.hp.com>
References: <reply-1910990216240001@192.168.0.1> <7uhfnh$cbe$1@news.imp.ch>
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In article <7uhfnh$cbe$1@news.imp.ch>,
Henrik Gudat <emutech@magnet.schweiz> wrote:
>In article <reply-1910990216240001@192.168.0.1> , reply@this.newsgroup 
>(Bucky Theorem) wrote:
>> I'm trying to get Bard's Tale II to work on my Mac running on Bernie II
>> the Rescue, and i'm running into the same problem i had back in '89 or
>> whenever i lasted used my IIGS, when i tried to make another character
>> disk for the game. My original char disk was formatted for me by some guy
>> at Software Etc. who apparently did it with PRODOS 8 and CopyII+. (I know
>> this because my father wrote it on the disk at the time.) Bard's Tale II
>> won't recognize any disk for a character disk unless it has this format. I
>> already tried all the formats Bernie can make - the regular PRODOS 800K
>> format doesn't work.
>>
>> So how would i format a disk with CopyII+?  i downloaded a disk image of
>> it which has the extension .arj, which would appear to be for Windows. i
>> also have a Shrinkwrap image which mounts on my Mac but System 6.0.1 on
>> the IIGS won't recognize it. So now I'm stuck.

A user reported not being able to make a character disk using Bard's
Tale II with my emulator, KEGS, available at
http://www.crosswinds.net/san-jose/~kentd/kegs/.  I investigated, traced
through Bard's Tale using the debug features in KEGS, and it's a bug in
Bard's Tale II.  Here's my original summary:

[Reported by Hard Code]:
> Bard's Tale II - doesn't want to recognize any save disk as a ProDOS disk
        This is a bug in the game.  It's determining if a disk is a
        'ProDOS' disk by looking for the string "LOAD PRODOS" starting
        at byte 0x15e on block 0 of the disk.  This is true for older
        ProDOS versions (like Bard's Tale itself) but not for the ProDOS
        on System 6, which has that string moved to byte 0x162.
        Solution: Create a character disk by copying Bard's Tale to a
        new image, and then erasing all the files and renaming the volume
        name.  This effectively copies this good block 0 to a new disk.
        I was able to play the game after doing this.
        I haven't verified this, but it may also work to copy System 6's
        boot block to Bard's Tale, which will make it match that way.

If you use old programs to format disks (like an older version of Copy II+),
they will have the old-style boot block, and so will work fine.  But GS/OS
has the new boot block which Bard's Tale doesn't like.

We could create a patch for Bard's Tale II, but the workaround is easy
enough to do.

Kent Dickey
kentd@cup.hp.com