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Crypt of the Undead atx images wanted


cwilbar

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1 minute ago, mimo said:

Probably worth less to some collectors if it's been opened and tested. 

That may be... but w/o shrink wrap, one has to presume it has been opened and at tested when new.

I suppose if I can't fix mine, maybe someone would like to pay big bucks for a display piece ?

A game isn't any good to me if it doesn't work....

 

I'd still like to fix this one.

 

 

 

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The game must be run with BASIC Rev. A. Otherwise it will crash after reading sector 619.

 

This way even the Zarxx image works by accidentally reading the expected instances of the duplicate sectors. It will probably crash at a later point when it "runs out of luck". ;)

 

Fixed Zarxx image with removed duplicates:

Crypt of the Undead (Side A)[Zarxx][f].atx

and an ATR made of it:
Crypt of the Undead (Side A) [Zarxx][f].atr


It still has the weird sector interleave 1-8-F-4-B-E-3-I-7-A-H-6-D-2-9-G-5-C.

Side B:
Crypt of the Undead (Side B)[Zarxx].atr

 

I manually repaired the format of @cwilbar's image. Replaced the bad sectors with good ones and inserted the missing sectors while keeping the original interleave and track alignment.

Finally I replaced the content of all bad and missing sectors (and only of these) with the corresponding sectors from Zarxx' dump.

Crypt of the Undead (1982)(Epyx)(US)(Side A)[BASIC Rev.A][f].atx

and also as ATR:

Crypt of the Undead (1982)(Epyx)(US)(Side A)[BASIC Rev.A][f].atr

 

Side B:
Crypt of the Undead (1982)(Epyx)(US)(Side B)[BASIC Rev.A].atr

 

Please play, have fun and give feedback.

 

Edited by DjayBee
added B-sides
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Thanks @DjayBee !

 

If Zarx had duplicate sectors, was the data the same in the duplicates ?  If not, how did you know which one to keep ?

 

I'm sure I speak for more than myself if you could provide a process/tool reference of how this was done.  Looks like I have an issue with my Castle Wolfenstein disk (probably not hard to find an atx of that however).

 

I'll download it and give it a go in Altirra and then on a disk on real hardware.

 

-- Curt

 

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1 hour ago, DjayBee said:

The game must be run with BASIC Rev. A. Otherwise it will crash after reading sector 619.

 

This way even the Zarxx image works by accidentally reading the expected instances of the duplicate sectors. It will probably crash at a later point when it "runs out of luck". ;)

 

Fixed Zarxx image with removed duplicates:

Crypt of the Undead (Side A)[Zarxx][f].atx 97.86 kB · 1 download

and an ATR made of it:
Crypt of the Undead (Side A) [Zarxx][f].atr


It still has the weird sector interleave 1-8-F-4-B-E-3-I-7-A-H-6-D-2-9-G-5-C.

Side B:
Crypt of the Undead (Side B)[Zarxx].atr

 

I manually repaired the format of @cwilbar's image. Replaced the bad sectors with good ones and inserted the missing sectors while keeping the original interleave and track alignment.

Finally I replaced the content of all bad and missing sectors (and only of these) with the corresponding sectors from Zarxx' dump.

Crypt of the Undead (1982)(Epyx)(US)(Side A)[BASIC Rev.A][f].atx 97.86 kB · 1 download

and also as ATR:

Crypt of the Undead (1982)(Epyx)(US)(Side A)[BASIC Rev.A][f].atr 90.02 kB · 1 download

 

Side B:
Crypt of the Undead (1982)(Epyx)(US)(Side B)[BASIC Rev.A].atr

 

Please play, have fun and give feedback.

 

okay, that means we all gotta play the crap out of this and report back if there are any issues mistakes or crashes...

let's have at it....

 

can the Basic Rev A glitch be patched out or is it pervasive... for my 800/1200XL this isn't going to be an issue but for XL/XE it could be.

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For XL/XE (stock), I presume you could insert a Basic Rev A cart or an Ultimate Cart/etc with Basic Rev A installed, correct ?

 

For U1MB you could choose a Basic Rev A ROM I believe.

 

I'll have to try a Basic Rev A ROM in Altirra, then I'll try a few of my Basic carts (my currently setup physical Atari is an 800XL, though I do have others to choose from ? ).

 

-- Curt

 

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Anyone get this running in Altirra ????

 

I've tried 600Xl/800XL with a basic A cart inserted config as well as a 400/800 OSB with Basic A cart inserted.

 

It boots so far, then nothing but a plain blue screen.

 

@DjayBee did you test this virtually or on real hardware (or both) ?

 

I'm new to Altirra, so I might be missing something.

 

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13 hours ago, cwilbar said:

I thought I read somewhere that splice was preferred, as since disks on the Atari and C64 didn't use the index hole to start with that not all disks were aligned with the index hole to start (though I suspect most commercial titles probably are since they would have been done on diskette duplicators ???)

 

Most Atari disks, even those recorded using industrial duplicators are not aligned to the index hole. But for multiple reasons we still want the index skew alignment recorded in the image.

 

Quote

I used splice due to issues with index, as well as this post/thread in the forums:

...

And backsides can only be done with splice (at least not without punching a flippy index hole).

 

Ah, ok. I might be mixing the SCP modes. As long as it stores the index position, if present, then it is fine.

 

Quote

If this is true, then my luck (the Murphy variety ? ) puts most of my half height 5.25 in the unusual category.  Any attempts to read the back side result in a 'blank' rip (they don't fail to rip, they just fail to have any content).

... I did not test any of my 5.25" full height drives, as they are all belt drive, and I want to do my imaging with direct drive for more stable RPMs

 

The older the drive the more likely it can read disks without the index. Newer DD ones it depends many times on the jumper settings. Don't know about the Toshiba ones, but the TEAC ones probably should work. The TEAC drives usually have jumpers to set the "READY" or INDEX condition.

 

Quote

However, I can't recall where I read that some drives won't send data until they've seen the index hole some # of times first.

Yes, that's exactly the problem with newer drives. They don't become ready at all if they can't sense the index hole.

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6 hours ago, DjayBee said:

The game must be run with BASIC Rev. A. Otherwise it will crash after reading sector 619.

This way even the Zarxx image works by accidentally reading the expected instances of the duplicate sectors. It will probably crash at a later point when it "runs out of luck". ;)

Fixed Zarxx image with removed duplicates:

...

 

Great work, as usual. Didn't have much time to look into the SCP image. But I'll wait until getting a dump from "gnusto".

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6 hours ago, cwilbar said:

If Zarx had duplicate sectors, was the data the same in the duplicates ? 

The pair on track 0 was identical, all other duplicates are filled with $00 and therefore clearly distinguishable.

 

5 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

can the Basic Rev A glitch be patched out or is it pervasive...

I have not tried and dug not deeper than the immediate crash.

It might be possible because the reason for the immediate crash is a machine language subroutine which misses the PLA to pull the number of arguments from the stack. For unknown reasons BASIC Rev. A manages to RTS anyway. I found this behaviour in other titles as well.

 

2 hours ago, cwilbar said:

did you test this virtually or on real hardware (or both) ?

Only in Altirra and only for a "new game" until something like a map shows up where I can walk around using the joystick.

 

My Altirra profiles are modeled after a standard 800 (NTSC, OS-B) and 800XL (PAL, XL-OS v2) with no acceleration features activated. I tried the SIO D:-patch and it still worked.

The BASIC cart was inserted through File->Attach Cartridge...->REVA.ROM.

 

1 hour ago, ijor said:

I'll wait until getting a dump from "gnusto"

*keeping-fingers-crossed* for a completely good dump.

Edited by DjayBee
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I've gone looking for this but so far no luck. I did find "The Nightmare" same series sealed in box, along with a bunch of other Epyx games unsealed. Interesting that also there is a known version of The Nightmare that has the same problem (only boots with Basic A).

 

I'll keep looking, it will be a shame if this has gone missing, because I made it a point to gather a bunch of the early Epyx stuff in great condition at one point. And this is a reminder I should get some form of backup solution, as I still have some new in box stuff that is likely uncopied.

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15 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said:

I can't remember whether the copy on our site comes from an original or some other source.

Your image has a completely different distribution of files on side A of the disk. On side B some files even have differing sizes.

Edited by DjayBee
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wonder if my Basic ROM version A isn't really Rev A.  I've tried @DjayBee's fix of my image as both an 800/OSB/BasicA and 800XL/XLOS/BasicA(cart) and I boot to a certain point and have a blank blue screen in both cases.  I found the rom from pigwa...  there are multiple RevA basic roms there though... I'll md5 'em and see... maybe I picked a bad or mislabelled one ?

 

-- Curt

 

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That's best as there are some weird old roms out there, patched by people and released in the wild but not 100% checked or labelled properly, I had an XL V2 rom that just crashed stuff all over the place..

Edited by Mclaneinc
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3 hours ago, cwilbar said:

wonder if my Basic ROM version A isn't really Rev A.  I've tried @DjayBee's fix of my image as both an 800/OSB/BasicA and 800XL/XLOS/BasicA(cart) and I boot to a certain point and have a blank blue screen in both cases.  I found the rom from pigwa...  there are multiple RevA basic roms there though... I'll md5 'em and see... maybe I picked a bad or mislabelled one ?

 

-- Curt

 

Hi. I've been following this thread quietly and had the same issue with the BASIC A ROM I was using.  The REVA.ROM posted above works for me using Altirra with the fixed zarxx image.  @DjayBee  Thanks for your efforts.  :thumbsup:

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6 minutes ago, Mclaneinc said:

Speaking of such things, does anyone know of a verified OS / Device rom list with crc's or the like..I know some are not possible by their working but it would be nice to weed / separate unknowns..

I run all my “questionable” system ROMs through Altirra’s firmware manager - if Altirra can ID it by the CRC, I know it’s good. 

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20 hours ago, cwilbar said:

I'm sure I speak for more than myself if you could provide a process/tool reference of how this was done. 

Besides the before mentioned ATX-analysis using ATRtool and comparison of ATRs using xxd and WinMerge, I used @Farb's a8diskutils.

 

a8diskutils are a Swiss Army knife for analysis and manipulation of ATRs and ATXs. To fix Crypt of the Undead I primarily used the display of sector skew and the JSON-export and -import of the ATX. From there on it was "only" text editing and interpolating the löcations of missing sectors inside tracks.

The latest version 0.1.15 of a8diskutils can be found here: for Windows and for Mac.

 

As a final step I wrote a small BASIC program which read the original (bad) dump (D1:) sector for sector. Everytime it encountered a bad sector, it read the corresponding sector from Zarxx' image (D2:) and wrote it to my repaired disk (D3:).

This way only the bad sectors got replaced and everything else of the dump stayed untouched.

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@DjayBee,

 

Thanks @DjayBee !  Good explanation, and big thanks for the repair !

 

My issue in getting this working in Altirra was indeed the basic rom.  Don't use BASICA.ROM from pigwa.... I don't know what version it is, but it does not have the same md5 as the other basic A ROMs from pigwa.

 

I was able to get the game to boot.  Now to try it on real hardware.  I don't know what versions my basic carts are... I have a few, hopefully one of them is Rev A (I shall label them as I figure it out).  I know to avoid the one that had a bad ROM and I burned a Rev C basic to replace it.  There are EPROMs that will go in place of the ROMs w/o an adapter, but they aren't very common.

 

I'll have to try out some of those tools to determine what is wrong with my Castle Wolfenstein disk.  I have at least one bad sector in the current saved state and I think one more if you try to start a new game.  Digging up a good atx and comparing them I'll get a first hand test of immitating @DjayBee's work.  If there a few bad sectors, will the mentioned tools allow me to replace a sector or two (or three ? ) as needed  (vs having to write a program) ?

 

-- Curt

 

Edited by cwilbar
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1 hour ago, DjayBee said:

As a final step I wrote a small BASIC program which read the original (bad) dump (D1:) sector for sector. Everytime it encountered a bad sector, it read the corresponding sector from Zarxx' image (D2:) and wrote it to my repaired disk (D3:).

This way only the bad sectors got replaced and everything else of the dump stayed untouched.

This should also be achievable with the new "repair-load" and "repair-apply" commands in a8diskutils 0.1.15.

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9 hours ago, Farb said:

This should also be achievable with the new "repair-load" and "repair-apply" commands in a8diskutils 0.1.15.

I had not used it and feared that it might copy over the weird sector skewing for the heavily damaged tracks like track 0.

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