fuzzel's personal BBC Micro floppy disc archive

[lurkio]

... My disc collection on the other hand might be more interesting. I have about fifty discs, mostly games "borrowed" from my local computer club and again I have no way of recovering the programs from them. Lacking the knowledge myself is there anyone out there who might relish the challenge of archiving my old discs for me?

If you see the MRM disc recovery thread on Stardot, you'll see what my approach is: basically I handle all discs very carefully and gingerly and any I can't recover I basically pass on to philpem of Stardot who has offered to image them more "forensically" ... Re my learning how to archive discs, I just picked it up as I went along. I don’t do anything sophisticated. I generally just try to do a basic export from floppy to DataCentre. I also have an UPURS kit but don’t use it much. I don’t have a Kryoflux or anything forensic like that. The most complicated discy thing I ever did was archiving Tile Mosaic: viewtopic.php?p=148714#p148714

Most of these floppies are in poor shape and my drive will not read them. They make awful screaming sounds! ... I have managed to get discs 61 and 62 to DSDs though. I know these two were important. It did involve taking my disc drive apart and cleaning it before I got them to read. Hopefully they will bring back some memories. I am only going to try to read the games discs that have something I don't recognise. At this point I don't want to risk my drives on an "Acornsoft" disc that will almost certainly not have anything new on...

TO BE CONTINUED..!

[leenew]

May the force be with you...

Lee.

[fuzzel]

Can't wait

[lurkio]

Here are the first few discs I've managed to archive. Some sides of some discs wouldn't read properly, so I tried multiple different methods to archive them, and even then I wasn't always entirely successful. Not yet sure what (if anything) to do about the (sides of) discs that I couldn’t archive perfectly.

You can assume that I've used the *EXPORT command in RamFS to accurately archive each (side of a) disc, unless I've noted otherwise. (I always try *EXPORT first. If that fails, I then try to do a file-by-file copy using *XFER with the ADT ROM. (If *XFER succeeds, then I might go back and give *EXPORT another try, in case the disc is now "warmed up" enough to cooperate!) If *XFER also fails to copy all the files, then I give up, for the time being...)

I've had a look at side 1 of Games Disc 4. The games are all on the CBMGA, although most have different file names and file sizes. Not sure which are the original versions. I like my menu btw, I doubt I created it and wondered if you'd seen a version of it anywhere? There are a few extras on the disc - the Bones animation which I remember well, Viper which draws two Elite ships (probably my effort, would have been nicer if they rotated) and BACKUP9, a tape copier (not sure if it handles locked tapes or tapes with changing file names - pretty useless if not) ... Not much to report on side 2 except that I had a copy of Jeremy Goes Jumping, the unreleased Superior Software game with the hauntingly atmospheric music. There's also a header for a Superior Software demonstration disc (LOGO) but I've no idea what was on that demo disc.

Copiers / Games disc 4

GD4.DSD

(400 KiB) Downloaded 25 times

Games disc 5

GD5-0X.SSD

The file “FatMan” is missing! Side 0 imperfectly archived file-by-file using the *XFER command in the ADT ROM.

(200 KiB) Downloaded 20 times

GD5-2.SSD

(200 KiB) Downloaded 20 times

Games disc 6

GD6-0.SSD

(200 KiB) Downloaded 24 times

GD6-2.SSD

Side 2 archived file-by-file using the *XFER command in the ADT ROM

(200 KiB) Downloaded 18 times

GD6-2A.SSD

Side 2 archived accurately, track by track, using *EXPORT in RamFS (DataCentre)

(200 KiB) Downloaded 25 times

[lurkio]

GD10.DSD

Games disc 10 or "Disc Number 10"

(400 KiB) Downloaded 23 times

[flaxcottage]

Daft question, I know, but do you clean the disc surface before trying to archive?

I use 75% IPA on a cotton wool bud to clean the disc through the cut out, starting with the index hole visible and slightly rotating the disc each time until the index hole appears again. This generally does the job so that *EXPORT works. If it does not I try the XFER method to get the catalogued files for safety then try repeated *VERIFYs. It is amazing how *VERIFYs can result in a readable disc.

Also I very regularly clean the disc heads and use different drives as well.

Sometimes though nothing works as there is physical or magnetic damage to a track or sector.

[lurkio]

I use 75% IPA on a cotton wool bud to clean the disc through the cut out

Doesn’t that damage the surface (and/or the deeper layers) of the disc, though?

[flaxcottage]

100% IPA will do. The small amount of water seems to stop that.

I used to use a special 'head cleaner' liquid but then discovered it was just IPA diluted with a small amount of water. If the disc surface is really damaged and the IPA cleans it to make the disc readable and archivable, which it wasn't in the first place, then I call it a win.

I have had one disc where cleaning it just stripped the magnetic coating off but that disc was so far gone just trying to read it in a disc drive would have done the same thing.

I had one last week that looked perfect. The magnetic coating gleamed and there were no blemishes at all. It would not read and kept giving lots of different errors. Cleaning it revealed very little dirt but afterwards it read perfectly. There must have been some surface tarnish that I could not see.

The worst discs I've tried have been those with that white disc fungus on them The fungus seems to go right through the magnetic surface. I've sometimes had to go to 100% IPA to remove it and read the data from the disc. Then it has usually been ADT and *XFER to retrieve individual files and using different disc drives and multiple attempts.

[lurkio]

Thanks, John! I shall bear your advice in mind and persevere...

Here's disc 11. A tricky one. Took several attemps to "warm up" and read:

... looking at disc 11, side 2 there's another unreleased game on - VTOL, which was written by Peter Johnson (who also wrote that Lite Cycles game I discovered on an old tape) and David Lovekin. I have a vague recollection of this being demo'd at the Washington Computer Club and eventually distributed. Whether Peter allowed it or not I have no idea. I've never actually played it so might have a go to see much of a game there is. Looking at the version on Stardot the actual game file seems to be identical to the one I have although I don't have the Superior Software loader ... On disc 11, side 1 there's an interesting little loader program called TAPA.

Games disc 11

GD11-0R.SSD

Side 0. Reconstructed from a combo of *XFER (ADT) and $.FALL2 from a previous *EXPORT (RamFS).

(200 KiB) Downloaded 17 times

GD11-2X2.SSD

Side 2. *XFER (ADT).

(200 KiB) Downloaded 20 times

And now, here's disc 16A (text adventure games from Level 9) which took multiple attempts with RamFS, *XFER, and UPURS before I realised I'd finally recovered enough data in different attempts to be able to create a "merged DSD" that seems to work!:

I made a start with GD16A.DSD which seemed to contain all the Level 9 games. I then looked at one of my homemade files, COLLOOK, and found it was empty. However, you successfully managed to extract a complete version on GD16A2.SSD and it was a messages printer for Colossal Adventure. I've also noticed there are a few save game files on the discs ... For the memory hungry games like Colossal, Adventure Quest and Dungeon Adventure, I used STL0E00, Solidisc's sideways RAM rom which allowed me to run disc games at &E00 (you probably noticed it cropping up on various discs). However, I haven't got that working yet in Beebem, so I'm using Master 128 mode instead which works pretty well.

Games disc 16A

GD16A merged.dsd

Merged the results of multiple archive passes

(400 KiB) Downloaded 20 times

[flaxcottage]

Great work there.

It is surprisingly satisfying when things work.

[lurkio]

Erm... I think I might have "cleaned" one of my drive heads a bit too hard...

[vanekp]

oh no that's not looking very healthy

[lurkio]

oh no that's not looking very healthy

That's what I thought, but with leenew's help I just glued the two metallic tabs back onto the black plastic 'lever" thingy and now the drive seems to be working perfectly..?!?!

[vanekp]

Oh that's good news, amaze it still works after that as its quite a delicate part of the disc drive, hope the repair lasts, but sounds promising, could be all the alcohol from constant cleaning may have softened the old glue that held it together.

[lurkio]

amaze it still works after that as its quite a delicate part of the disc drive

That's what I always believed, but those parts obviously have greater tolerances than I thought because after we glued the head back on, it definitely didn't look 100% straight! And yet the drive seems to work fine!

Here's disc 18, more text adventure games:

... [this disc is] one of my favourites as you'd expect containing lots of adventures, though what Statix is doing on there I haven't the foggiest. All of the games work, thank goodness, although it looks like a couple of files from side 1 are corrupted (Y and ADVSAV - they have no $ directory prefix) ... the Acornsoft games (Quondam was a proper toughie) and the Robico ones (can't recall who John Tickle was) ... I had repeated attempts at Crown of Mardan ... don't think I ever played the Melbourne House games ... I probably thought Classic Adventure was a poor imitation of Colossal Adventure. I also really enjoyed 5 Spheres of Goliath ... And for those who like escaping from Prison cells (Lee) there are a couple of games on there that fit the bill

Games disc 18

GD18 merged.dsd

Made various different archive attempts. Merged the successes.

(400 KiB) Downloaded 17 times

And here's disc 20 -- games and ROMs. Took multiple attemps to archive fully:

There are three roms on side 2 - Upgrade, Maxim and Bigrom - none of which I'm familiar with ... On the games front I can't get Who Dares Wins 2 to work from the menu but it does work if you run it from the Basic prompt nor can I get the Tynesoft games - Vindaloo and Rig Attack to work [but Vindaloo works if you LOAD "Vindloo" and then RUN it]

Disc 20: games and ROMs

GD20-0X2.SSD

*EXPORT (RamFS)

(200 KiB) Downloaded 16 times

GD20-2X2.SSD

*XFER (ADT ROM)

(200 KiB) Downloaded 19 times

[fuzzel]

This latest disc (disc 20) on side 1 contains three unknown roms - BIGROM, UPGRADE and MAXIM. It looks as though BIGROM is a multi-function rom, UPGRADE is a disc utility rom (from *DUMPing it) by R Clayton (who also wrote Merlin) and MAXIM is by J Price - not sure what this does although he could be the Jason Price who wrote Fruits (Micro User, Ceefax - 1988). I've created a separate disc (see attached) which contains the three roms and a small file called MOVER which will move it from &2000 (if you load the rom there first) to &8000 in rom slot 1 (if you make it writeable). I've created a file called GUIDE on the disc with instructions. Note that when you *HELP after loading UPGRADE and MAXIM there's no list of commands but if you *UPGRADE or *MAXIM it recognises the command but nothing appears to happen.

ROMS Disc.ssd

(50 KiB) Downloaded 15 times

[iamaran]

Maxim could be "a new 16k assembly system" mentioned on page 21 of The Third Official Acorn User Exhibition - Brochure and Stand Guide. Download: https://tinyurl.com/7s4rscud.

[fuzzel]

Well found, I think you might be right. Highly, highly unlikely we'll find a manual but how about this advert:

Anyone like to have a go at programming with it?

[fuzzel]

*MAX would appear to activate the rom.

[lurkio]

Games disc 21:

GD21-merged.dsd

Fairly easy to archive

(400 KiB) Downloaded 19 times

Games disc 22:

GD22-merged.dsd

Fairly easy to archive

(400 KiB) Downloaded 15 times

Games disc 23:

I've noticed Chichen-Itza (unreleased) is by Alligata according to the CBMGA but by Hanover Software according to my version and is also given the sub-title "Citizen Sid & The Golden Monkey". Possibly someone's having a bit of fun there.

GD23-merged.dsd

Fairly easy to archive

(400 KiB) Downloaded 21 times

Games disc 24:

... noticed that my version of Dunjunz requires sideways ram (and my Solidisc sideways ram at that). I'll have to edit it to work with Beebem's sideways ram ... And I can't get Gold Run to play.

GD24-0X.SSD

Side 0. *XFER (ADT ROM). Couldn't archive lots of the Imogen level data files.

(200 KiB) Downloaded 19 times

GD24-2.SSD

Side 2. *EXPORT (RamFS). Fully archived.

(200 KiB) Downloaded 17 times

[lurkio]

Disc 26-1: Nice to see some Cholo save game files ... There's a file called COMTAB on the disc, I don't know which game this is from. Disc 26-2: On Codename: Droid there's a doctored screen referring to Hanover Soft so now I'm guessing that's a pirate's pseudonym. Maybe the street where they lived?

GD26-merged.dsd

Fairly easy to archive

(400 KiB) Downloaded 14 times

Disc 27-1: Firstly Ransack ... Also, the Blockbusters game, which ... I can't get to run. Note that there's a program on there called Question Master where you can create your own questions (also on the CBMGA but not referred to). I never realised btw that my fellow Washington Computer Club alumnus Kevin Blake wrote another version a few years later. Disc 27-2: The Living Daylights - looking at the loader file it would appear there's an enhanced version for sideways ram (the command *SRLOAD is used). At first I thought it was simply a copy of another game's loader file but one of the files referred to is QROOM which sounds like Q's Room to me. Also I have what appears to be a level editor for Impact (courtesy I presume of Gary Partis, another WCC alumnus (name-checker!) which isn't on the CBMGA disc)

GD27-merged.dsd

Fairly easy to archive

(400 KiB) Downloaded 19 times

Disc 28-1 Enthar 7 ... There are a number of files on here &0600 in length which I'm guessing are Enthar 7 save game files. Unfortunately, I don't recall the command to restore or load a file (not RESTORE or LOAD) but will figure it out at some point. Lode Runner - my disc has three data files containing lots of extra rooms. Disc 28-2 An old favourite of both of us - L [A Mathemagical Adventure]. I don't recall Zor's Revenge but it looks ok ... There's a short adventure called MACA1 which looks like a type-in, maybe an Alice one.

GD28-merged.dsd

Fairly easy to archive

(400 KiB) Downloaded 15 times

[iamaran]

Disc 28-1 Enthar 7 ... There are a number of files on here &0600 in length which I'm guessing are Enthar 7 save game files. Unfortunately, I don't recall the command to restore or load a file (not RESTORE or LOAD) but will figure it out at some point.

@LOAD and @SAVE.

[fuzzel]

Thanks for that, I tend to use Save State now in Beebem rather than the game's own built-in SAVE/RESTORE routines.

[lurkio]

Disc 29-1: There's are cheat versions of Quest and Saigon credited to Porky Pig and Hoskas. Uridium credits Tequila (Gary Partis) for ripping it off. Colourspace is on the CBMGA but not sure if it's actually a game? Disc 29-2: On Jet Set Willy 2 the loader file performs an SRWRITE command on a number of the loaded data files. Not sure how that command works or whether this is an enhanced version. There's also a Kourtyard map editor called EDITOR.

GD29-merged.dsd

Fairly easy to archive

(400 KiB) Downloaded 22 times

Disc 30-1&2: Acheton game and help files. There are lots of my save games on here. I very much doubt I got very far though, the game is probably the most challenging released for the BBC Micro (except perhaps Locks of Luck)

GD30-0.SSD

Side 0. *EXPORT (RamFS).

(200 KiB) Downloaded 14 times

GD30-F.SSD

Side 0 (flip-side of flippy disc). *EXPORT (RamFS).

(200 KiB) Downloaded 12 times

[fuzzel]

Disc 26-1: Nice to see some Cholo save game files ... There's a file called COMTAB on the disc, I don't know which game this is from. Disc 26-2: On Codename: Droid there's a doctored screen referring to Hanover Soft so now I'm guessing that's a pirate's pseudonym. Maybe the street where they lived?

I've had a look at the COMTAB file I referred to above but can't make head nor tail of it, can anyone else? The file size is exactly 16k so at first I thought it might be a block of data to be loaded into sideways ram but then looking at the file in detail (see file dump attached) there appears to be a single word on each line of 8 bytes. Some look like commands, others look like words missing their first letter. Very confusing but it does look like a long list. There are two games on the disc - Cholo and Palace of Magic and COMTAB is right amongst the Cholo files.

COMTAB.TXT

(76.05 KiB) Downloaded 12 times

[billcarr2005]

It's from CHOLO, it's on the original disk. No idea when / if it's loaded by the main code though, couldn't find the string "COMTAB" anywhere else on the FSD/SSD in plain sight, but maybe the program is encrypted

[fuzzel]

Thanks Bill, I'd suspected as much given it was amongst the other Cholo files.

[lurkio]

I can't get the enhanced versions of Crazee Rider and Stryker's Run on disc 31 to run due to them being modified to work with Solidisc's sideways ram version.

GD31-merged.DSD

Fairly easy to archive

(400 KiB) Downloaded 16 times

On disc 32 I wrote a modified version of Starship Command to allow the loading and saving of the high-score table (Star-Fleet records). I added f8 - Loadfile and f9 - Savefile to the menu. I can see my highest score was 404 which I'll probably never beat. The save file is called S-File. I suppose Starship Command 2022 Edition could be modified to incorporate this.

See "Games of strategy".

GD32-merged.DSD

Fairly easy to archive

(400 KiB) Downloaded 14 times

[lurkio]

Looks like my copy of Life of Repton is Repton 3 plus the levels files from Life of Repton. I wonder why I ended up with that? Presumably it would have been just as easy to get a copy of the whole game. I managed to get Tanks working on my games disc 33 side 2 by removing write-protection. There's an interesting plea from the author in the first few REM lines. Nice try mate but I don't think it'll have worked ... Seems like a half-decent strategy game ... (TMU awards it 3/5 stars: Jul-87 review). Incidentally, in one of TMU's news articles there's a report of two up-and-coming games - Tanks and Nelson and from what I can see Nelson was never released. I think I'll add it to the list of lost games on Stardot...

GD33-0.SSD

Side 0. *EXPORT (RamFS)

(200 KiB) Downloaded 13 times

GD33-2.SSD

Side 2. *EXPORT (RamFS): BROKEN?

(200 KiB) Downloaded 12 times

GD33-2X.SSD

Side 2. *Xfer (ADT ROM)

(200 KiB) Downloaded 16 times

GD33-2X2.SSD

Side 2. ???

(200 KiB) Downloaded 12 times

Games disc 37 has Exile on both sides 1 and 2 (look like perfect copies of each other). Unfortunately, it's a protected version which asks for letters from the novella to be typed in correctly otherwise you get a short-lived demo version to play.

GD37-merged.DSD

Fairly easy to archive

(400 KiB) Downloaded 13 times

Games disc 39 sides 1 and 2 contains Lord of the Rings with the Icebox rom and a couple of save game positions.

GD39-0.SSD

Side 0. *EXPORT (RamFS)

(200 KiB) Downloaded 15 times

GD39-2X.SSD

Side 2. *Xfer (ADT ROM)

(200 KiB) Downloaded 13 times

[lurkio]

Games disc 40 contains a D&D style game called DUNG which I have no recollection of. It looks interesting but when I've tried to start the adventure proper I realised I've only added a few locations and only catered for the north command! Looks like a project I might well return to ... There's also a tedious-looking capital cities quiz ... Football Manager ... and some Computer Concepts roms with what appears to be a Spellchecker dictionary on side 2.

GD40-merged.DSD

Fairly easy to archive

(400 KiB) Downloaded 19 times

... the disc [50] contains Return to Doom and lots of save files and what looks like an IceBox save state of Adventure Quest

Fairly easy to archive

GD50-merged-R.DSD

(362.5 KiB) Downloaded 19 times

Disc 51 side 1 contains ... my original Blake's 7 adventure which has a different file size to the one that Lee rescued for me so I'll compare the two to see which is more recent. There are some printer utilities, an electronics experiment (EX6) either from school or taken from TMU, a Mode 8 demo and an adventure framework (ADVMAKE). I'm very, very happy to see Middle Kingdom parts 2 and 3 (part 1 being on a disc that Lee recovered), although part 2 looks a bit small so maybe it's incomplete or just a small game. I think I may have mentioned to Lee that I wrote Middle Kingdom adventure with a schoolfriend. I recall that we initially discussed making a game on the theme of Level 9's Middle Earth trilogy but I hadn't realised that we'd actually finished part 1 and had no idea at all that we'd also done parts 2 and 3 ... There's a file called BLTUNE which is a very poor attempt by me to program the Blake's 7 theme tune, presumably as a loader file. There's also a file called COMPRES which compresses text and is written in assembly language. I'm amazed I had the ability to write that so I'll have to do some digging and see if I've just nicked it from somewhere else (I very much doubt I'd claim it as my own though, who was I trying to fool?) There's a mode 2 screen compactor called Compac, also written in assembly language which I've used to compress the loader screen for Blake's 7 adventure. There are a few small files on the disc of unknown origin, possibly save game files. Disc 51 side 2 ... There are some Star Wars videos that I'd thought about a couple of weeks ago: viewtopic.php?p=384869#p384869 It was nice to find the guy who originally created them and also great to see them again on my disc (B.FILMS + 4 x screen files). There are some sound sample demos - Laura Branigan's Self Control, Ghostbusters theme and the Buggles' VKTRS and a curiosity called SENTNCE - "This short sentence takes up 21k, a lot really but it's very accurate" - who was that guy? I found a mention of it on Stardot: viewtopic.php?p=356954#p356954 Looking a lot out of place on that disc is a Stock Market game.

GD51-merged-R.DSD

Fairly easy to archive

(390 KiB) Downloaded 23 times