Hello all - ex Dragon owner

A place to discuss everything Dragon related that doesn't fall into the other categories.
Alastair
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Re: Hello all - ex Dragon owner

Post by Alastair »

drmarkb wrote:The only problem I do have with cassettes is on the longer loaders like Cashman and Buzzard Bait.....
I haven't looked at Cashman but you can save a lot of time on Buzzard Bait by using a cracked version, which will also save wear-and-tear caused by inserting and removing the dongle every time you load the game. The time savings can be seen in the attached picture with the original at top, a cracked version in the middle, and Steve's cracked and noise fixed version at bottom - and yes, the numbers across the top are minutes...
BuzzBaitComp.jpg
BuzzBaitComp.jpg (43.79 KiB) Viewed 7366 times
Steve's version omits the loading screen which accounts for the additional time saving over the standard cracked version, it also does not auto-run but typing "EXEC [enter]" takes less time than it takes for the loading screen to appear.
Sarah
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Re: Hello all - ex Dragon owner

Post by Sarah »

Yep, the gapped format that Microdeal used for awhile was mostly a waste of time; it didn't offer enough in the way of real advantage to justify the increased wait. I think (IIRC) it allowed for rewinding to retry failed blocks, but since it didn't prompt the user to do so, nobody would be any the wiser anyway. I suppose there's also a chance that the game would still run (to some extent) with a failed block too.

Cashman was probably re-issued without all the gaps (pretty sure my original copy is without gaps). Didn't they also officially re-issue Buzzard Bait without the dongal in the end? If so, I don't know what format it used, as I only had the original release.
drmarkb
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Re: Hello all - ex Dragon owner

Post by drmarkb »

Thanks, great idea. The Buzzard Bait case certainly has room for another cassette with a truncated version..... :D
IIRC Buzzard Bait was indeed released without the dongle- certainly for the Coco, pretty sure for the Dragon too. Every version of Cashman I have ever seen has been the super long one though, including the CoCo release, but I would have thought they did reissue it.
That loading format certainly was a pointless waste of time - fortunately very few of the Microdeal games I own use it. I can't complain too much though- 30 years plus on the fail rate on Microdeal games seems to be ludicrously low- I think I have maybe two out of nearly the the whole range of games that needed replacing.
sixxie
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Re: Hello all - ex Dragon owner

Post by sixxie »

Thought I'd see how well it zipped up:

http://www.6809.org.uk/tmp/da/cassettes ... _bait.flac

Not that well, but not too bad - just over 1.5 minutes...
drmarkb
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Re: Hello all - ex Dragon owner

Post by drmarkb »

Well worth the wait at 1.5 mins- and a vast improvement on ten mins plus.....

I wonder if the real aim of the extended loader was to make sure c15/c20 tapes would not fit the games, making them less attractive to copy......
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robcfg
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Re: Hello all - ex Dragon owner

Post by robcfg »

It was designed to give time to check the dongle between blocks.
sixxie
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Re: Hello all - ex Dragon owner

Post by sixxie »

Really? That's interesting.

I think I only ever owned a version (original) that had an ungapped loader, and it checked after loading (I think it expects the joystick input to vary between two ranges, but I forget).

Might have played it a lot less had it been a 10 minute load! Especially if it was constantly checking for the dongle, given how unreliable that was anyway (quite common to load the entire thing and have it screw up, dongle quite definitely in place).
drmarkb
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Re: Hello all - ex Dragon owner

Post by drmarkb »

I see. How does that work vis-a-vis Cashman, Demon seed and all the other super long loaders around 84/5? Were they ever dongled at any point prior to release? Or was it just a case of using the format so that they could introduce the dongle to everything at a later date?

BB really was great- FWIW I own the Atari 800 XL Joust (I got my wifes' old Atari working over the summer and bought the game cheaply) and I think BB is marginally better, not for the first time that a Dragon/Co-Co clone is better than the official version on other machines either........
Alastair
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Re: Hello all - ex Dragon owner

Post by Alastair »

I had assumed that the gapped format was something to do with the dongle, but with what has been said (by Sarah, Ciaran, and Mark) with regard to other long loading non-dongled games and an ungapped dongled Buzzard Bait, I now have my doubts.
sixxie wrote:Might have played it a lot less had it been a 10 minute load!
It certainly reduced the number of occasions I loaded Buzzard Bait.
Sarah
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Re: Hello all - ex Dragon owner

Post by Sarah »

Microdeal seemed to regularly evolve its autorun formats, going through numerous distinct eras (starting with off-the-shelf usage of Datacom's Autorun utility à la Donkey King and ending with their own fairly sensible & stable multipart format). The gapped non-dongal titles were perhaps just unlucky (in terms of loading time) to have been released during a particular time period, regardless of whether or not Microdeal had ever considered using the dongal on more titles (although the capability to do regular dongal checks might well have been a significant influence on the direction they took; robcfg's comment certainly makes a lot of sense). It was also the first of their formats to use a hires loading screen IIRC. I think the earliest title to use it that I encountered was Cutherbert In The Mine, which was no poor game, yet the loading screen impressed more at the time!
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