Andrew Collier wrote:
> It's a bit odd though - the music is messed up and you start 
> the game with only one life.

I remembered the single life limitation, but hadn't noticed the music
difference until you said that.  It does seem that the demo continues to use
the menu music in the game, instead of switching to the slightly more subtle
background music.


> Samdisk had read the floppy perfectly (or so it thought) so 
> there's probably nothing wierd about the formatting of 10 
> sectors per track for 80 tracks.

It's normal format except for one tiny difference, which you can see using:
  SamDisk.exe /scan a: /t:41-41 /s:0

Look carefully and you'll see the final 2 sectors are reversed:
  41:0   10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 8

The game checks this on startup using READ ID, and if the order isn't right
it runs in demo mode.  Cool huh? :-)

Anyway, I've sent you both my SDF image of it.   I don't know who owns the
rights to it, so I'll not spread it any further for now.


> Is there a way to create SimCoupe-compatible images of
> protected disks yet?

If you'd asked this next week it would have been a whole lot easier to
answer!  I've been trying to get a few things tidied up before Christmas, so
some of it is a bit up in the air.

I've got a test version of SamDisk that will image (almost) any SAM title
under W2K/XP.  It's missing some features from SamDisk 2.0, so it's not
quite ready to replace the existing version yet.  I'd be happy to send you a
copy to try, if you're just looking to image some disks.

One problem is that it creates images in EDSK format, which the current
SimCoupe releases can't read.  I've added support for it, but I'm in the
middle of hacking the FDC emulation so I can't check my changes back in yet.
It's likely to be a couple of days before I've put all the pieces back
together though.

Si

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