Scott Adams on disk

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Alan
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Scott Adams on disk

Post by Alan »

I recently downloaded the Scott Adams text adventures from the Zimmers archive but I can't get any of them to work with VICE.

The site says "They require 16 kilobytes of memory at blocks 2 and 3, so you will need either a configurable 16k expansion, or a 24k expansion" I've tried the 16K, 24K, and full blocks settings with VICE, but the games still crash immediately after responding to the "Do you want to restore a game" question.

Has anyone else gotten these to work? How about on a real VIC?
Alan
carlsson
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Post by carlsson »

In VICE, instead of choosing 24K expansion, enable only blocks 2 and 3 (custom configuration). This is because a couple of pointers to screen and colour memory are moved whenever the first 8K (block 1) is enabled, and will cause garbage with these Scott Adams' games.

For a real VIC-20, either run a program that will "unexpand" the 24K expanded VIC, or at least issue these POKEs:

POKE648,30:POKE36866,150:POKE36869,240:PRINT"{CLR}"

On Zimmers there is a readme file written by yours truly about ten years ago. It mentions lowering RAMTOP (POKE 56,30) and moving start of Basic. Those are not really required to run the Scott Adams' adventures, but may be useful if you want the machine to act like unexpanded.

See also unexp8-32k.prg in the utilities directory.
Anders Carlsson

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Ghislain
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Post by Ghislain »

I've always wondered why a SYS 32592 command was required to start a Scott Adams game cartridge. The reason for this I can now assume are:

-Scott Adams adventures required 16K of continuous memory and couldn't be broken in two like most VIC carts (banks 5 and 3or1) and it used banks 2/3

-Since there was no code at bank 5 when a Scott Adams cart was inserted, it would start the VIC-20 in BASIc mode
"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound
carlsson
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Post by carlsson »

Who programmed the interpretor, Commodore or Adventureland Inc? How much of the 16K is game data? Is a part of the code identical in all five adventures, so it would be possible to load the data part from another Scott Adams adventure? I would believe it is possible to divide it into a 3+5 cartridge if they had spent some time into it.

Maybe if I'm really bored one day, I'll look into the code and try to get some answers, but if someone gets to it before I do... :D
Anders Carlsson

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eslapion
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Post by eslapion »

My solution for running Scott Adams games in VICE is to have a "custom" memory configuration with ram available at BLK2 and 3 but not at BLK1.

This avoids having to software "unexpand" the vic because with no ram at blk1, it will look no further.
Bobbi
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Re: Scott Adams on disk

Post by Bobbi »

On my real VIC I have a 32K expansion with switches for each bank and also a global write-protect switch and a reset button.

I load the game into memory as normal, then set the write-protect switch and hit the reset button. Very handy!
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