Re: Need replacement disks for Tower of Myraglen

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

"Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:

>Mitchell Spector wrote:
>>>>Just got an interesting gift tonight. One of my friends was at a
>>>>flea market and picked me up an original copy (apparently never
>>>>used!) of PBI's Tower of Myraglen game. Everything came in near
>>>>mint condition, although it seems after some 20 years the floppy
>>>>disks experienced disk rot. :(
>>>>
>>>>    I can see a listing of the files from the Finder but it fails to boot
>>>>(and doing a verification of the disk reveals +90% is unreadable
>>>>with errors; the second disk faired a bit better though).
>
>You might want to try some ProDOS-based tools to see if you can
>recover the contents,

    Ah, did have some luck copying most files off from the Finder!
The generic ProDOS 16 files are corrupt (boot stub and System
folder) as well as two game files named "TITLESCREEN3" and
"THUNDERSOUND". No problem, I have good copies on the 
pirated copy, so I mixed them altogether on a fresh disk...

>though if it is protected, it's not likely
>that you can do this without patching RWTS.

    When booting the new disk, I get a message saying "You must 
BOOT from master!". So it is copy-protected.

    Looks like either the system files or the boot sectors are corrupt, 
with most of the actual game files intact. I could take a gamble and
try copying over just those files though chances are I'll get an I/O
error trying to copy over them.

>It's normal for a protected disk not to verify.

    Yep, that would explain all the holes/errors when trying to image
or duplicate the disk.

>Does the disk boot properly?

    Not at all. Either I get an "UNABLE TO LOAD PRODOS" message
or I/O error. I did once get a ProDOS 16 splash screen before crashing
into Monitor. 

     Interestingly, the more I access the disk, the more data it's starting
to read. Now I'm seeing "Error reading SYSTEM/P16 file $000F" and
if I launch from the Finder, it gives me the copy-protection failure 
message about booting from the master disk. Hmm.

>>     I need a clean copy from an original disk set (I'd be happy to scan
>> the manual and disks if anyone wants proof that I own the original).
>> I tried doing an image copy of the original disk with ZZCopy but it
>> shows the disk completely full of "holes". Amusing that the pirated 
>> version has out lived the legal copy. :)
>
>In general, you won't be able to make a good image copy of a
>protected disk--that's why deprotecting them is preferred.

    There's actually a bitcopy parameter for the game in Copy II Plus 9.1
but it didn't seem to help using it to copy the disk.

>Have you tried a different drive?  (I presume this is a 3.5" disk.)

    Yes, it's an 800K 3.5 floppy. I tried it in both my Apple 3.5 and
SuperDrive.

>Another possibility is to replace the crack screen with the original
>intro screen (if it's readable).
>
>Of course, both strategies require doing a fair amount of the
>deprotection work, but that was usually more fun than the game.  ;-)

    Won't do, when it was deprotected they removed some of the
graphic files (the ones with credits and copyrights) and added a set 
of new files and sound effects.

Mitchell Spector