Re: Ultima 5 and 3.5

[dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <1993Jul11.025946.6591@cs.wisc.edu> feiges@picard.cs.wisc.edu (Howard Feiges) writes:
> Hello there people... its Howard Feiges here...
> 
> lately, I have been on an ultima fettish... so I pulled out my old copy
> of ultima 5 and started playing....
> 
> but one of the hardships of playing ultima five on the apple is that
> its spread over four double sided disks...  makikng it inconvient at
> best to do exploring.. 
> 
> what I was wondering was if there is a way to get the ultima five
> files onto a three and a half inch disk (or two)... or maybe even a
> hard drive (it is in prodos....)...  or if there is a 3.5" version of
> ultima five out there that I can get....

Ultima 5 uses the ProDOS file system, but NOT the ProDOS-8 operating
system.  It has its own operating system, called DINKEYDOS.  This only
supports files in the root directory of a 5.25" disk.  Ultima 5 also
places the various maps at absolute disk locations, using direct block
reads to access them.

I have cracked my copy of Ultima 5 (allowing the program disk to be
copied), and have also disassembled and rewritten DINKEYDOS to support
files on a 3.5" version of Ultima 5.  The files are organised as one
subdirectory per 5.25" disk side, and two 3.5" disks are required.  It
might work on a hard drive, but you would have to set up eight
directories immediately off the root directory of the hard drive.  I
could probably modify it to work from a subdirectory.
The maps are placed in a special file in each directory.

What is really annoying is that the game seems to work for a while,
then suddenly hangs for no apparent reason (I don't think it is even
trying to access the disk at the time).  I never got around to finding
out why it does this.  I haven't even played the game for several years.

I've answered a couple of queries about this in the last year or two,
and in that time I never heard of anyone who had a working 3.5" version
of the game.
-- 
David Empson                                                               
dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz                                                
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand