Re: Overflow?-- Mystery House

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Sauer writes ...
> 
> I bought "Mystery House" from the "Big Red" fellow years ago when it went
> public domain. I wanted to send a copy of it and in the process I decided
> to look at the game. When I booted it on my Apple II+ I got 
> an "Overflow error #5". The copy had the same error. 
> However when I booted the same disks on my Apple IIGS 
> and Apple IIe this did not happen. The person I am sending
> this to has the Apple II+, will this occur on his machine too or is this
> just my problem?
 ....

     The error message "Overflow error #5" is not one I recall coming across.
In Applesoft BASIC, a calculation in, say, Line 20, which produces a result
bigger than one Applesoft can handle would result in 

OVERFLOW ERROR IN 20

     A pure guess: If your II+ does not have the full 64k RAM installed, this
_might_ result in some odd errors and unusual error reporting when the game
is run.

     Whatever, the game runs fine on our Apple II+ (which has all of the RAM
sockets filled and the 16k Language Card and, so, is a "64k Apple II").
 
     One possibility is that the game disk I tried out is significantly
different from the one you bought. If the disk you boot seems to be running
under a non-standard DOS-- like, you see a number readout during booting--
the oddball DOS could be a problem. You could try copying the game files to a
newly INITed diskette using Copy II PLUS. (INIT HELLO the new diskette with
DOS 3.3, or, better, Prontodos or EsDOS.)

     Something else to try is getting rid of the odd Text stuff in the game's
original HELLO file. You can do this by booting 'DOS 3.3', doing a NEW, and
entering ...

400 TEXT: HOME: PRINT CHR$(4)" RUN MYSTERY.HELLO"

Then, do your INIT HELLO to INIT a new diskette and save the HELLO on it.
Now, use COPY II PLUS to copy all of the game files except HELLO.


     The game disk as modified above is available in the GS WorldView April
2000 issue preview as a .dsk disk image file in MysteryHouseNuDsk.zip at
http://www.grin.net/~cturley/gsezine/GS.WorldView/v2000/Apr/Archives/ .



Rubywand