The Hobbit: Disk, Erebus,...

[Chema]

Hi everyone!

I am quite sure we talked about this already, but it has come out in the Facebook Oric groups, so...

The Hobbit seems to use non-standard loading routines, so it is not working from EREBUS. It also fails to load on Oricutron, unless you disable turbo-tape. I am also sure that this is well-known, but there exists a patched version ready to load from disk. I have it on my cumulus, and it works under oricutron (Atmos and Oric-1). In any case, I attach it here:

The Hobbit.dsk

(1 MiB) Downloaded 90 times

Because I am sure some SEDORIC expert around may be able to create a tap file from that. I tried LOADing, then CSAVING the block (it seems to load at $4fe), but the resulting tap does not work (if it starts in page 4, it could be that coming back to basic, even if I issued a QUIT before LOADing, corrupted the program). I don't have time now to dig further.

Whoever made this disk version, may also do the same with Defence-Force and convert it into a well-behaving program , something such as a BASIC loader which loads the presentation screen, then the game as one single block or something like that. That could even be patched to work with disk systems by modifying the BASIC loader, I guess.

Just my 2 cents

[Dbug]

Erebus compatible versions of both games would be nice

[iss]

Things started at The hobbit on disc! by @Silicebit.

Attached is the executable - extracted from DSK and converted to TAP (indeed, start address is #4FE).
The game starts "as is" in Oricutron and seams to work, so I expect it will start with Erebus too.

[iss]

... and Defence-Force too .

[Chema]

He he great. I did not remember that thread at all, and that it was Silicebit who brought the disk version on the first place... my memory is failing quickly!

How did you get th tap version? I am curious. And I am also very curious about what you did with Defence-Force... please tell us

[iss]

... please tell us

Well, about 'The Hobbit' - I can say it's fully 'Spanish job' : from @Silicebit's DSK using @overCLK's Oric DSK Manager I extracted the only file HOBBIT.COM and noted the start address (#4FE), then I added a TAP header and .. that's it! Here I don't really recall if I modified Oric DSK Manager to extract plain binaries, I think that by default it extracts directly TAP files.

About 'Defence-Force': I used my custom tool called 'tapsplit' which (obviously) splits multi-tapfiles as result it generates plain binaries and tap files for each part. Here is the output info:

Code: Select all

$ tapsplit defence-force-orig.tap 
0 | 0001 .. 0003 | 24 | type:80 start:6000 end:69FF size:2559   name:
1 | 0A0F .. 0A11 | 24 | type:80 start:04FD end:4DFF size:18690  name:
2 | 5320 .. 5322 | 24 | type:80 start:2980 end:727F size:18687  name:
3 | 9C2E .. 9C30 | 24 | type:80 start:4E00 end:96FF size:18687  name:

The first part is just loader only - when started it loads the other 3 parts. So I tried to load in Oricutron the 3 other parts manually using CLOAD"" and at end using CALL#4E00 ... the game started - pure luck! Here little trick was needed: as you can see the parts are overlapped and to produce working TAP I repeated the CLOADing, noted the lowest and highest addresses (i.e. #4FD...#96FF), then with Oricutron's monitor I put at #4FA simple:

Code: Select all

$4FA: JMP $4E00

and saved the whole memory range (#4FA...#96FF) as binary. At end I added new TAP header .. and that's all folks!

Attached ZIP file contains the dissected DF parts for who's interested.

[ElwOOd]

Hi everybody,

Just to tell you that the 2 tap images are perfectly working with an Erebus. I tested them on an Oric Atmos and an Oric 1 48ko and it perfectly ran .
Great job you did !

Best Regards.

[kenneth]

Nice work! I found the routine who detect the keyboard about the game DefenceForce, I will try to add a code for IJK joystick without settings required.

[soft-bug]

Thank you very much !

I've ordered mine one week ago and impatient to test ...

But i have seen on Youtube videos about Erebus that if you plug it on an Oric 1 machine, it allows you to use Atmos and Oric 1 tap files, right ?

[kenneth]

With Erebus, an Oric-1 computer become an Atmos.

[dizzy33]

Thank you very much for both Defence Force and The Hobbit for the Erebus !

[kenneth]

The Atmos Demo for Erebus:

[kenneth]

I modified the THEM game, the first program that calculated from address #00 does it from #80. It works with Erebus.

[kenneth]

Hello
I tried to load SUPERMETORS with a real Oric, without success.
To do it correctly I made this with Oricutron:

POKE1280,1
CLOAD"
->(error)
CLOAD"
->(error)
POKE1280,0
CSAVE"SMETEORm",AUTO