MRM Software "archive"

[lurkio]

Recently I was sent a fairly large number of discs, some 5.25-inch and some 3.5-inch, that seem to have originally been the property of Mike Goldberg of MRM Software.

They weren't in great shape. Some of the discs were literally caked in dirt! It took hours just to do a basic brush-down of all the discs so that I could at least store them and look through them without getting covered in mud, cobwebs, dust and general filth — but eventually I did, and I then managed to take a few photos of the collection:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Interesting items include Mike Goldberg's exhibitor's badge for a Micro User show, and a notebook that appears to contain designs for the sprites in some of the original MRM games, including a rather notorious one.

The 5.25-inch discs I'll probably have a go at archiving myself, although some of the disc surfaces look very dirty and/or damaged, so I don't know if I dare put them in my disc drive. Not sure what I'll do with those.

The 3.5-inch discs mainly seem to contain Archimedes and RISC OS stuff, which I have very little knowledge of. If someone who's more familar with the Archie/RISC scene could have a look at the photos and let me know if there's anything worth saving, I'd appreciate it.

(The small stack of discs inside the plastic bag are still too dirty to handle!)

It's all a bit overwhelming...




https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

[davidb]

Some of the 3.5" ones have labels indicating that they might contain some of his articles for The Micro User/Acorn Computing. Others seem to have games and utilities of his that, I suppose, might contain multiple development versions.

The magazine and commercial discs are also interesting in places. The Archimedes BASIC Compiler discs, for example. There's also a demo of Helix BASIC on the Acorn Computing disc with the Zool demo.

I'm sure others can suggest things that stand out to them. I'm not sure if we have a good overview of which cover discs have been archived.

[philpem]

If you need a hand or advice with the archiving - please feel free to get in touch with me or Scarybeasts.

Those Wabash disks will require special care and attention: they're notorious for suffering from 'sticky shed' (where the magnetic coating flakes off onto the disc drive heads). I'm working on a way to recover them, I don't expect it to be 100%, but it's still a work in progress.
Whatever you do, don't put them into a disk drive...

The RISC OS stuff looks like mostly coverdisks - though it was common to reuse those disks for data back in the day, so they may not be. At least one almost certainly has been - note the scribbled-over label.
Commercial stuff for RO is comparatively rare - some more than others. I'd image the lot of them if they were mine... but I'm a bit of a data-hoarder so take that under advisement!

Given where it came from I'd be treating the whole lot as potentially irreplaceable data -- especially as some of the BBC discs look (from the label) like they might contain source code.

Those discs - all of them - are likely going to need to be dismantled, and the media removed, cleaned and put into a clean disc jacket.
Any less and you're risking your drive and the data.

Feel free to drop me a PM or grab me on the Stardot Discord if you want to ask questions - I'm happy to advise on the best route forward, or help out with cleaning or imaging if needed.

Cheers
Phil.

[Arcadian]

Wow brilliant work Lurkio! Let me flag this for Phil P's attention!

[Diminished]

Those Wabash disks will require special care and attention: they're notorious for suffering from 'sticky shed' (where the magnetic coating flakes off onto the disc drive heads). I'm working on a way to recover them, I don't expect it to be 100%, but it's still a work in progress.

I'm probably miles out of my league here, but has anyone ever tried spraying a disc with some sort of adhesive or binder or varnish, to try to fix loose oxide in place before the disc is spun up?

Yes, I realise this idea seems utterly ridiculous. You'd undoubtedly have to do a ton of experiments on sacrificial discs before even having a hope of finding a suitable agent, and you might ruin a drive or two along the way.

I'm definitely not suggesting this is a good idea in this case.

But it might be a future research project for someone.

[MyJumpersFullOfFears]

I'm sure others can suggest things that stand out to them.

I noticed that one of the 3.5" discs (specifically, the third one in the second row of "IMG_0198.heic") has "FUN SCHOOL 2" (as in Database Software's 1989 educational title, all three versions of which were also published for the BBC Micro, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Acorn Electron, Amstrad CPC, and Commodore Amiga) written on its label, along with "Sprite scaling in Passage of the Guardians". Whether or not this means that it originally had one of the Acorn Archimedes versions of said title on it but now no longer does, I do not know, but it would be a rare discovery if it still did, given that none of the Archimedes versions of any Fun School title published on it (which include the aforementioned Fun School 2, 1990's Fun School 3 and 1992's Fun School 4) have been archived (however, I am guessing that they are probably very similar to their Commodore Amiga counterparts).

Furthermore, the eighth disc in the sixth row of "IMG_0198.heic" is Acorn Computing magazine's cover disc from their September 1993 issue, which coincidentally contains a crippled one-level demo of another educational title I mentioned on here only last week, CSH's then-new Amazing Maths (the player's green sunglasses-wearing square is on its label, and it has indeed been archived, but the ADF of it is not worth downloading for the demo).

[philpem]

I've got the Archimedes versions of Fun School 3 and 4 here - along with Granny's Garden and 10 out of 10 German. They'll be getting archived at some point

[lurkio]

Interesting items include ... a notebook that appears to contain designs for the sprites in some of the original MRM games, including a rather notorious one.

Thanks to Phil for emailing me with advice for dealing with the ageing, grimy MRM floppies!

I still feel that the task ahead of me is a bit daunting, but at least I've now scanned in the MRM notebook, in an attempt to pysch myself up to begin the task of cleaning and archiving those floppies...

For now, here's the scanned notebook at archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/MRM_Software_notebook/

[davidb]

For now, here's the scanned notebook at archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/MRM_Software_notebook/

Thanks for uploading that! I'm sure a few of us had school books like that one!

[lurkio]

Thanks to Phil and Chris for giving me some great advice about working with old, neglected floppy discs and handling them with care and caution -- all of which advice I promptly ignored, saying, "To hell with it", and just sticking a disc into my drive without any prep whatsoever!

Well, okay, that was a slight exaggeration. I did at least use a drive which I had previously had to take apart and clean the heads of — and the cleaning had helped to put the drive back into working order after an old and/or dirty floppy had scraped against the heads and rendered the drive pretty much useless. So I knew I could always clean this drive if worst came to worst. Plus, I made sure to inspect the two discs I'd selected for my first attempt at archiving the MRM collection, to see if they looked particularly warped or dirty. Fortunately they didn't. So I wasn't being entirely reckless.

But I have to confess that there did seem to be several smallish dark spots of what might have been some sort of grime on the surfaces of both discs, which did make me a little anxious...

At first I thought the discs were goners because they would *CAT but wouldn't *VERIFY beyond tracks 00 and 01. Then I realised they might be 40-track rather than 80-track. (D'oh!) That was a pain because the 40/80 switch on my take-apart-and-clean drive had broken, and the drive was permanently stuck in 80T mode! But I toggled the switch anyway because I love a lost cause. And, to my surprise, it worked! I could have sworn the switch did nothing last time I tried it! Weird. And vaguely worrying...

Anyway, the drive was then able to read the discs without any obvious problems, so here are the first two 5.25-inch discs I've archived from the MRM haul, using a DataCentre. They both seem to contain similar files, namely test programs for a text adventure game framework in BASIC, plus some miscellaneous pictures and BASIC animations:

ADV0.SSD

(100 KiB) Downloaded 82 times

ADV1.SSD

(100 KiB) Downloaded 86 times

[lurkio]

Bits-and-bobs disc 1. This disc seems to contain helper routines for games, plus demos, menus, sounds, sprites, etc.

BB01A.SSD

(100 KiB) Downloaded 87 times

[lurkio]

Artefacts from the development of Dominoes, Banana Man, plus misc.:

DOM.SSD

(100 KiB) Downloaded 81 times

[lurkio]

"Steve October ROM&RAM 92". Programs for a version of Blockbusters ("Blockblusters") and "SCRABit":

ROMRAM.SSD

Basic DISC-to-RAM transfer with *XFER from ADT ROM

(200 KiB) Downloaded 80 times

ROMRAMA.SSD

*EXPORT with RamFS (disc read error)

(100 KiB) Downloaded 75 times

[lurkio]

PIGMAN2/TEST6.

Graphics/character/sprite design programs. Plus a possibly MIA version of the notorious PIGMAN animation (NOT SAFE FOR WORK!).

PIGMAN2.SSD

(100 KiB) Downloaded 96 times

[scarybeasts]

Thanks to Phil and Chris for giving me some great advice about working with old, neglected floppy discs and handling them with care and caution -- all of which advice I promptly ignored, saying, "To hell with it", and just sticking a disc into my drive without any prep whatsoever!

Well, okay, that was a slight exaggeration.

Great job for the stream of discs appearing on this thread! I'll take a look at some of them in a bit. Sounds like some interesting finds already.

That was a pain because the 40/80 switch on my take-apart-and-clean drive had broken, and the drive was permanently stuck in 80T mode! But I toggled the switch anyway because I love a lost cause. And, to my surprise, it worked! I could have sworn the switch did nothing last time I tried it! Weird. And vaguely worrying...

That's curious. I also have a drive that is no longer behaving itself until I sometimes toggle the 40/80 switch a bit after power-on. Out of interest, what internal drive make / model is yours? Mine's a TEC-FB502.


Cheers
Chris

[lurkio]

"MIKES FUN DISC 1990".

"ROM & RAM" animation. Graphics editor and code tests/demos.

FUN.SSD

*EXPORT with DataCentre (RamFS) (disc read error)

(100 KiB) Downloaded 82 times

FUNA.SSD

Basic DISC-to-RAM transfer with *XFER from ADT ROM

(200 KiB) Downloaded 85 times

That was a pain because the 40/80 switch on my take-apart-and-clean drive had broken, and the drive was permanently stuck in 80T mode! But I toggled the switch anyway because I love a lost cause. And, to my surprise, it worked! I could have sworn the switch did nothing last time I tried it! Weird. And vaguely worrying...

That's curious. I also have a drive that is no longer behaving itself until I sometimes toggle the 40/80 switch a bit after power-on. Out of interest, what internal drive make / model is yours? Mine's a TEC-FB502.

I'll let you know when I next have to open up the drive and clean the innards -- which will probably be any day now...

What I do know is that it's a single Opus drive in an Opus-Challenger-style enclosure with a blank faceplate over the opening of the empty lower bay, plus some sort of small auxiliary circuit board between (I think) the 40/80 switch and the main drive -- but that's probably all irrelevant!

[lurkio]

"EOR".

More graphics tests.

EOR.SSD

(100 KiB) Downloaded 76 times

[scarybeasts]

That's curious. I also have a drive that is no longer behaving itself until I sometimes toggle the 40/80 switch a bit after power-on. Out of interest, what internal drive make / model is yours? Mine's a TEC-FB502.
[/quote]

I'll let you know when I next have to open up the drive and clean the innards -- which will probably be any day now...

What I do know is that it's a single Opus drive in an Opus-Challenger-style enclosure with a blank faceplate over the opening of the empty lower bay, plus some sort of small auxiliary circuit board between (I think) the 40/80 switch and the main drive -- but that's probably all irrelevant!


[/quote]

Cool! But best of luck in _not_ having to clean it, because all of these discs are going to have super stable surfaces
A pic of the front of the drive usually identifies it, if only because all the levers / buttons are different.

[lurkio]

"MC3".

Graphics code tests and animation.

MC3.SSD

(200 KiB) Downloaded 80 times

[lurkio]

"VEG!" and "SKUDS!"

"MAG 1991 ALL THE LATEST" (title displayed by menu program). I think MAG is Mike (A..?) Goldberg.

A game and an animation. The game is "VEG! by LEA BASON & Mike Goldberg".

VEG.SSD

(200 KiB) Downloaded 80 times

"VEG!" (a game)

Animation (“PATRIOT”, “ALLIES”, “IRAQ”)

[lurkio]

A pic of the front of the drive usually identifies it, if only because all the levers / buttons are different.

The drive I'm using is the Opus:

[lurkio]

"TRAFFIC". This disc seems to contain an incomplete program that just errors out.

TRAFFIC.SSD

Basic DISC-to-RAM transfer with *XFER from ADT ROM

(200 KiB) Downloaded 60 times

TRAFFICA.SSD

*EXPORTed with RamFS after using Disc Doctor to format track 04 because it wasn't *VERIFYing and none of the sectors of the track could be read by *DZAP. (Eek! Dodgy archival procedure: formatting a track on a disc when I'm supposed to be preserving it..! (Chris, please don't read this!))

(100 KiB) Downloaded 74 times

[lurkio]

SPRITES

Beebug(?) sprite designer program, saved sprites, and some example animation programs.

SPRITES.SSD

(100 KiB) Downloaded 97 times

[lurkio]

"Valentine Word Gen"

Valentine poetry generators, word animations, and drumkits.

VAL.SSD

(100 KiB) Downloaded 84 times

[lurkio]

"ROOMS"

Maze room designer, sprite reflector, and Dickie Brickie screen creator.

ROOMS.SSD

(100 KiB) Downloaded 81 times

[Pernod]

A vandalised Creative Sound floppy that I don't believe is archived

[sa_scott]

"ROOMS"

Maze room designer, sprite reflector, and Dickie Brickie screen creator.


ROOMS.SSD



1.png



ROOMS.jpg

Oooh, this is interesting. Some real gems in this collection.

[lurkio]

A vandalised Creative Sound floppy that I don't believe is archived

First it was PIGMAN2, and now this!

MRM have a lot to answer for.

[lurkio]

Oooh, this is interesting. Some real gems in this collection.

Hopefully there’s more to come. But I’ve just had to open up the disc drive and hard-clean the heads because of all the gunk they’d picked up from these ageing dirty floppies. Do I dare subject the poor drive to any more punishment..?

[lurkio]

"BACKUP COPYS!"

Backups of a possibly MIA game that seems to have been intended for publication in Let's Compute magazine.

[EDIT: Looks like it's Mike Goldberg's development disc for his series of articles on writing games in Let's Compute magazine.]

BACKB.SSD

(200 KiB) Downloaded 61 times