Re: Looking for directions on how to backup The Bilestoad

[Hot Rod <hotrod.apple2@gmail.com>]

On Tuesday, March 19, 2013 5:47:29 PM UTC-5, roger....@gmail.com wrote:
> Yes I have the single load version of the game, however, the point of backing it up was to back up the original as the programmer had intended it to be. Without the FastLoader bit etc.  Mainly the title screen & the original intro animation that I had never seen.  It's my geeky collector side thing coming through..  
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> Just don't want to ruin it (or have it ruined by one of the kids) especially since there were less than 5000 ever sold.
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> I will try and get sector 0 off the disk and into a DSK file.  Will also try and get RWTS saved (9600<C600.C6FFM reboot then bsave)  
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> Roger
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> -Roger

Excellent - that was part of the problem with many of the 'old' cracks, in that they sacrificed original content.

If you're able to get track 0, sector 0 into a .dsk image, then I'd suggest going the extra step and grabbing a nibble image of track 0.

Another possibility is to use a regular copy program and see if any of the tracks are copyable.  If the protection used a 'normal' DOS format for the most part, then possibly only a few tracks are protected (like with a nibble count).

But I'd suspect it uses an altered format, which is why it will be necessary to either examine a nibble image of a track, or trace it far enough to capture the RWTS.

Doing the boot0 trace (9600<C600.C6FFM; 96F8:4C 59 FF; 9600G; <beep>; C0E8) will only get track 0, sector 0 though.  The RWTS won't load until one or more steps after that.  Usually track 0, sector 0 can be read with a regular sector editor, but sometimes they've messed up the epilogue or checksum bytes, requiring that the old '$B942:18' trick be used in order to read it (which ignores certain errors).

Hmmm, that makes me think to go look at the one file crack and see if the RWTS code from the original is still lurking in there.  I doubt it, since that would consume valuable file space, but if it was a 'Wildcard' crack (or other memory capture), maybe it could be.

Exciting to know that there are elements like intro screens or such that haven't been seen.  If you haven't done so already, if the disk is notched, write protect it.

]HR