repaired games from bad tapes

[.mad.]

you must have the patience of a saint.
I would be interested to know which tools and OS you used to manipulate the WAV.
only had partial success with Audacity.
if i find anymore duff recordings, i know where to send them.

[.mad.]

Hi Rob,

is there any chance you can work your magic on this A-Z Chase wav?.

http://archive.worldofdragon.org/archiv ... 5Bb%5D.wav

[robcfg]

you must have the patience of a saint.

Either that or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder...

I would be interested to know which tools and OS you used to manipulate the WAV.
only had partial success with Audacity.
if i find anymore duff recordings, i know where to send them.

Well, I actually had to create a special tool myself, aptly called DragonCas.

You can read about it here.

It actually works on MacOS, Linux and Windows. It's not perfect by any standard and it can take a lot of time but I've been able to recover many damaged tapes with it.

is there any chance you can work your magic on this A-Z Chase wav?.

Yes, sure!

This one is more complicated, but it seems to have 2 copies of the program so I'm focusing on the second one which seems to be in better shape than the first one. I already extracted 6 blocks

[robcfg]

I finished extracting A-Z Chase from the wav file.

I think that the program is twice on the wav file as it seems to be complete. That said, here you have the working cas file and as bonus, the source code, as I know have also a program to decode the basic tokens

[.mad.]

I finished extracting A-Z Chase from the wav file.
I think that the program is twice on the wav file as it seems to be complete.

Many thanks for that!

the tape inlay says the program is recorded twice on each side of the tape.
So it's not another part or extra data for the game.
the wav is in stereo, so there are 4 copies available.
none of which i could get to load.

[robcfg]

You’re welcome!

The starts of the blocks looked quite unstable but the data itself was usually quite ok.

There was a nasty byte that I solved by looking at the partial listing of the program and realizing it was a comma.

[.mad.]

This Farmfax Trainer ROM seems to be missing from the archive.
i doubt anyone will use it.
it's really just one for the collectors.

[.mad.]

This is one of the best Dragon games i have seen.
and now we all have a working version.

Dark Star (Design Design)
The current version in the archive crashes MAME and Xroar, if you do not reconfigure control options before playing.
*this crash can be fixed if you save and then load your settings from tape.

this version just works without the need for any messing about.
keyboard is the default control.
Q - speed up
A - Slow down
Z - Left
X - Right
N - Up
M - Down
, - Fire
1 - Status map
3+4 (together) - self destruct

[robcfg]

You don't need to save the settings and load them back, you just need to set them as otherwise they contain invalid values.

The version you posted has these setting already set to appropriate values.

Now, the question is, do we have a verified dump from an original tape? Because the wav in the archive is clearly generated and not recorded from a tape, and this cas file has a completely different structure as the previous one.

[.mad.]

Now, the question is, do we have a verified dump from an original tape? Because the wav in the archive is clearly generated and not recorded from a tape, and this cas file has a completely different structure as the previous one.

Hi Rob,

The "working" copy i posted, is NOT from an original tape, but a BIN file converted from a disk.
it's much more stable than the current "hacked loader" and (so far) seems bug free with default options configured.

i am pretty sure the original wouldn't crash if you just pressed space to start on the title screen.
That would be a very poor oversite from the programmer.
but hey... stranger things have happend.