Ultima III help loading game

[Red 5]

I played Ultima III when I was 14 and fell in love with it.

23 years later, I want to play again.

 

I bought this a few months ago...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=190183043241

 

Of course, lucky me, it doesn't load.

I want to play it on my Atari 800 from the disc drive... I know... but still... I do...

 

Is there any way to do this?

I have access to some old computers with 5 1/4 drives in the storage room where I work.

Is there any way to download the game and make a copy of it?

 

Or is there anyone here with sympathy for a poor Ultima fan who has a working copy of disc they could send me?

 

I'll bake you chocalate chip cookies or something.

[+remowilliams]

I take it that you don't have any of the nifty PC/Atari interface hardware like SIO2PC, etc. It is possible to get old PCs to write DD disk images I believe, but not SD (which Ultima is). Generally, without specialized interface hardware getting disks to/from the A8 is an enormous pain in the ass.

 

You also will be limited to playing a cracked version, as the disk protection cannot currently be written back to a real floppy. I have original protected images that can be played on a real Atari, but you need APE/SIO2PC to get that done.

[Red 5]

Well that just sucks.

 

I figured as much.

[+remowilliams]

Well that just sucks.

Another reason why I tell everyone to check out APE/SIO2PC.

 

Worst case, if you can't get it done I could write out a cracked copy and drop it in the mail for ya.

[potatohead]

If III is the same as II, then there is a nice way to simulate the copy protection.

 

Load the disk, about 19 - 25 beeps in, it goes to read the bad sector, but does not check the exact error given.

 

So, you open the drive door, wait for the fart like sound, indicating a read failure, then close it again. Game runs fine from there.

 

I made backups of my Ultima stuff, and played that way many times.

[Goochman]

If III is the same as II, then there is a nice way to simulate the copy protection.

 

Load the disk, about 19 - 25 beeps in, it goes to read the bad sector, but does not check the exact error given.

 

So, you open the drive door, wait for the fart like sound, indicating a read failure, then close it again. Game runs fine from there.

 

I made backups of my Ultima stuff, and played that way many times.

 

This is true - prior to me buying Ultima III I was able to play by listening to the beeps - count until the drive stops - that is where it is looking for a bad sector. Restart the load process and the sector before it looks I just hit the break key a # of times before it asked for the next disk and it worked

[highendsystems]

This one works great! The two parchments are crispy....

This is all I have left, but this disk DUZz do BOOTy.

 

<pic Ultima III>