BBC PD Disc #47: Corrupt On Side 2 - Who Knows How To Fix It

Dave_E · Post by **Dave_E** » Tue May 22, 2007 7:49 am

The title says it all. Chris' old 8BS library included all the BBC PD discs. I recently started trawling through them and BBC PD #47 is corrupt on side 2. It originally had an adventure on it called WINTER WONDERLAND plus several other games and utilities. They are not available anywhere else.

I don't know if the disc is salvageable, or if anyone else has a copy of this disc that they could FDC and forward to me. I know we have some talented programmers on these forums - anyone know anything about rescuing the contents of discs? The catalogue is displayed correctly but attempting even to !BOOT the disc gives errors all over the place.

The disc is in the pool in the BBC PD archive.

sorvad · Post by **sorvad** » Tue May 22, 2007 8:27 am

Dave_E, I'm obviously looking in the wrong place but when looking in the BBC PD section I could only see PD disks 1 to 7 and some music demo stuff ?

I've been looking on your site, should I have looked elsewhere ?

Dave_E · Post by **Dave_E** » Tue May 22, 2007 9:07 am

Sorry, the disc isn't on Acorn Electron World! It's in:

http://www.bbcmicro.net/old-8bs/pool/bbc/

However, if we can get it fixed, then it WILL be put on Acorn Electron World OF COURSE.

I already spruced up a lot of others that just haven't been uploaded to AEW yet!

CMcDougall · Post by **CMcDougall** » Tue May 22, 2007 9:12 am

will have a look 2night, but i bet u its pooped

.

best bet is to omniflop another disc

sorvad · Post by **sorvad** » Tue May 22, 2007 10:24 am

Sorry to bear bad news but a lot of side 2 is goosed. It's not just slight corruption it's whole files blanked out. i.e. the WINTER file is nothing but 0's throughout the entire file. Some files do appear to have data in them and will probably be recoverable - perhaps. Here's a snapshot of the winter wonderland file "WINTER";

As you can see nothing but zero's.

Here's a list of files that contain data (cannot vouch if they are uncorrupted or not though).

$.!BOOT
$.ADV
$.DATA
$.GCODE
$.GDATA
$.LINES
$.savevar
T.!BOOT
T.DATA
T.FINI
T.GAME
T.GCODE
T.INTRO (ALTHOGH THE DATA IN THIS ONE LOOKS VERY SUSPECT)
T.LINKFL1 (AGAIN DATA LOOKS SUSPECT)
T.LOADME (DATA LOOKS SUSPECT)
T.P001 (DATA LOOKS SUSPECT)

Files that are definitely beyond any recovery (i.e. all zero's are)

$.!BOOT2
$.WINTER
$.TRI_NUM
$.WTRload
T.!BOOT2
T.F001
T.GDATA

As the menu program on side 0 calls $.!BOOT2 it's no wonder it doesn't progress further. But you may be able to run the games that appear uncorrupted by calling them directly yourself.

Hope this is of some help, even if not very good news.

CMcDougall · Post by **CMcDougall** » Tue May 22, 2007 1:37 pm

^^ thats the end of that then

some1 else may have originals etc

Dave_E · Post by **Dave_E** » Fri May 25, 2007 5:21 pm

I have sent Chris a LETTER (because his chris@8bs.com address does not work any more) to see if he could forward the original 5.25" floppy to me. If it turns out that one is similarly bad then it looks like we've lost all these games, which is a shame...!

Mind you, I suppose we should thank our lucky stars Dave M thought to download them all way back, else we'd have lost the whole archives of everything!

BeebEm is a bugger for corrupting the files on side 2 of a disc (At least, the early versions of it were). I wonder if that's what happened to this one.

More worrying is that I think some of the Lars Osterballe mega demo discs have got - arrrrggghhhh - the same problem! We might have actually lost games like SUPREME (ELITE clone)! Noooooooooo...! Say it isn't so.

Lorfarius · Post by **Lorfarius** » Fri May 25, 2007 6:10 pm

Flicking back through past threads it seems 8BS was only supposed to be down for a bit of reconstruction. Been over a year from what I can tell and theres no clue as to when it will be back. Has anyone here considering hosting it for the fella who runs it?

Or has anyone been pestering to see whats going on?

sorvad · Post by **sorvad** » Fri May 25, 2007 7:35 pm

Dave_E wrote: BeebEm is a bugger for corrupting the files on side 2 of a disc (At least, the early versions of it were). I wonder if that's what happened to this one.

I would concur that it's become corrupted through non natural causes, something has wiped that data rather than disk surface just oxidising etc. If so if anyone has that disk you should be in business.

Jalov · Post by **Jalov** » Sun Jun 24, 2007 2:52 pm

Dave_E wrote:I have sent Chris a LETTER (because his chris@8bs.com address does not work any more) to see if he could forward the original 5.25" floppy to me. If it turns out that one is similarly bad then it looks like we've lost all these games, which is a shame...!

Hello Dave.

I have the disc #47, it's on an extra large one with some others.

But the wonderland dir is empty too. The files named with T.xxx in a former mail are from the Timeballs adventure which is there.

Greetings, Janny.

Dave_E · Post by **Dave_E** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 11:55 am

No need to worry. Chris sent me an alternative disc image which works a treat. I have put WINTER WONDERLAND up on Acorn Electron World in the BBC PD section. It is on ADVENTURES DISC #2.