Hello

[admin]

Hi Folks

Let me tell you a little story...

I've been involved in the computer industry for MANY years - I started out messing about with PDP-8s when I was 13 and still in school (some 40 years ago now!).

At some point after kicking around university doing whatever seemed shiny at the time I had a brush with the computer games industry in the form of an outfit called Melbourne House (I think it was actually Beam Software who signed my cheques, but its a loooong time ago so I'm nor sure). Whilst there I did a rewrite of Hungry Horace for the Dragon.

Fast forward to last Friday when I'm sitting in the board room of a company who have just employed me (I've been a computer consultant of various flavours for many years now) having a few beers and trading stories about what we did when we were young and silly... Anyway, I tell the story of Hungry Horrace and the MD idly taps out a Google search on the computer that we have just been reviewing presentations on: up come various games nostalgia pages about Hungry Horace and after a few more clicks I'm looking at a screen dump of a title page with my name on it! What a hoot! I had never imagined that anyone would recall this game, let alone have screen dumps and cassette images!

I'm not so sure its work I would be proud of so many years later (I can remember a huge dramatic rush getting in a final assembler run just moments before the courier pickup of the cassette master to be sent to the duplicators in the UK) but I guess everyone was young once!

So I'm sure you know what I'd like to ask: in the first instance can anyone tell me if HH works on an emulator and, if so, what emulator is "best" for me to try out. I guess I'd also be interested in exploring whether anyone has a working Dragon they may be willing to part with and ship to far off Australia!

Cheers, Dieter.

[admin]

Hi Dieter,

I use XROAR and have just checked HH for you, works fine - it can be downloaded from here :

http://www.6809.org.uk/dragon/xroar.shtml

There is a version of this that works on the PSP as well, it can be found here :

http://www.emuhq.com/search/pspdragon/

I'm going to presume HH works on it as well, as it's the same emulator and it has worked with every other game I've tried, although the PSP has to be "homebrew enabled" first.

I have a spare Dragon you could have for postage costs - only one problem, I don't have a PSU for it, or any leads.

Hope this helps

Gavin

[admin]

Hi Dieter,

Curiosity got the better of me, I've just tried it on the PSP - works fine there too.

Gavin

[admin]

Hi Dieter,

Nice to see another former Dragon developer on here! You can usually pick up a working Dragon 32 fairly cheaply on eBay. You can also still buy a brand new Tano Dragon (basically a Dragon 64) from US company California Digital (http://www.cadigital.com/computer.htm). It will no doubt come with a US power supply though!

Colin

[admin]

Hi Dieter,

Curiosity got the better of me, I've just tried it on the PSP - works fine there too.

Gavin

Hi just found this great site and I am particularly interested in the PSP emulator. I've heard that this is only good for disk images and not .cas images, is this true? if so is it possible to convet a .cas to .dsk image? I can only see HH listed as a .cas image in the download section how did you get this to work on the PSP?

Apolgies for so many questions.. I'm just excited at the prospect of re-kindling my childhood!

[admin]

Hi Dieter,

Nice to see another former Dragon developer on here! You can usually pick up a working Dragon 32 fairly cheaply on eBay. You can also still buy a brand new Tano Dragon (basically a Dragon 64) from US company California Digital (http://www.cadigital.com/computer.htm). It will no doubt come with a US power supply though!

Colin

It will also be NTSC. I just bought one a month ago and they look like they just came from the factory if they are all like mine.
Tore the box by accident in the first week though... grrrrrr.

[admin]

Hi Shutty

The Game is available in the Archive disk collection, ARCAD03B.VDK

Load the disk on to your PSP in the Disk directory for the Dragon emulator

Run the emulator and from the options screen, Load the disk into the emulator and select RUN which takes you back to the Dragon screen with the String { RUN" } showing.

Just append { HORACE.BIN" } to the end of the string, making it { RUN"HORACE.BIN" } and press enter, this will run Hungry Horace.

Simple as that.

Gavin

[sixxie]

I've never quite understood why the PSP port can't load CAS files - it uses the same file handling abstraction as everything else, so if that bit was rewritten for the PSP it should just work. Unfortunately I don't have a PSP to test.

I can vouch for the DS port though

I ripped the box for my Tano within minutes - incredibly easy to do.

[admin]

Thanks for the replies!

I only used HH as an example above as it was mentioned with regard to the PSP, didn't realise it was available here in disk format.OK so what about games that are only available in .cas format, any one know if these be conveted to disk format?

I've downloaded the source for the PSP emulator if i get time (6 month year old son permitting!!!) I might investigate further.

Also has anyone been able to load Wintersoft's Juxtaposition in .cas format? I've tried it on an XP machine with no luck, the load dies soon after the "graphical" splash screen is displayed. The .wav version loads first time tho!

[Alastair]

Also has anyone been able to load Wintersoft's Juxtaposition in .cas format? I've tried it on an XP machine with no luck, the load dies soon after the "graphical" splash screen is displayed. The .wav version loads first time tho!

Hello there.

This was discussed on the old forum, see pages

[Edit. Links have been removed since they no longer seem to work.]

with the most plausible answer given by Sixxie on the third page, though the fixed .cas file is no longer available from Sixxie's site.