Armas vic 20 tribute site update

Arma · Post by **Arma** » Thu Nov 04, 2004 2:26 pm

hi all
New taps and screenshots added are Vixel volume 2, Rainbow towers, Shape up, Krazy Kong, galaxions, grub & defend, get lost, titan games tape 1, lunar lander, 3d maze, gridder, kwazy kwaks, super worm, shark attack, at the circus, alien panic by nufekop, grand prix & nuclear attack, spiders of mars, tank trap and coming soon cave fighter.

watch this space for a load more leter this month

as usuall any not listed on the site that any of you may have access to it would be most appreciated if you could lend them to me or do the taps off your own backs and mail them to me and i will host them up for all to marvel at

Many thanks

Arma

sjakie43 · Post by **sjakie43** » Thu Nov 04, 2004 5:02 pm

Hi Arma,

Very Good!

Keep up the good work.

regards

Dirk

Macguyver · Post by **Macguyver** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 6:46 pm

Keep up the updates, Arma! Glad to hear you're back at it.

I've bid on an old vic cassette six pack on Ebay just now that I remember had some great games on it, I haven't seen any of them in your TAP archive or in Gamebase V1. If I win the auction, I'll make sure they get uploaded & rescued from the sands of time!

Mac

"Every TAP dump counts"

Arma · Post by **Arma** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 2:41 pm

Glad to hear it a man after my own heart

i look forward to seeing them

Macguyver · Post by **Macguyver** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 7:33 pm

Good News Arma, I won that ebay auction, it's a rare but solid collection of games that were released by Cymbal Software in '83. I remember in particular that Metro Dome and Ice were really good, these are a real find and I'll be happy to send them your way shortly.

Assuming that I can read good TAP files from the cassettes, here's what was included: Metro Dome, Demond Hunt, Horse Race, Ice, Star Fights, Laser Shoot, Tanks, Convention, Chase, Night Flyer, Maze Master, Senorita, Grand Prix, Galactic Defender, Cargar, Crazy Balloon, Space Birds

By the way on ebay I'm known as Jungle-Jimbo, if you see me bidding on Vic software, be aware that anything I find will be dumped to the V2 database and/or your site Arma. I'd hate to be competing with anyone from the board.

Looking forward to seeing what your new TAP files are!

Mac

davidv_ · Post by **davidv_** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 5:43 pm

Sorry to bump up a VERY old thread

Macguyver wrote: Assuming that I can read good TAP files from the cassettes, here's what was included: Metro Dome, Demond Hunt, Horse Race, Ice, Star Fights, Laser Shoot, Tanks, Convention, Chase, Night Flyer, Maze Master, Senorita, Grand Prix, Galactic Defender, Cargar, Crazy Balloon, Space Birds

there were an auction on ebay with the same set but it disapeared.
If i remeber correctly "ICE" was a VERY nice Pengo clone.

Did you get as far as to digitize the TAPs?

Macguyver · Post by **Macguyver** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 1:56 am

Yes, I was able to digitize the TAPs. I got all of them to work except one- "space birds".

You're right about ICE. It's a great Pengo clone, and it's actually the best game of the whole Cymbal set. I played it tonight.

I forwarded the whole lot of TAP files to Mayhem to include in his upcoming release of all the Vic ROMs ever made, AKA Gamebase Vic20 2.0

Macguyver

nbla000 · Post by **nbla000** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 3:01 am

Macguyver wrote:You're right about ICE. It's a great Pengo clone, and it's actually the best game of the whole Cymbal set.

If you want i've the single-filed version too so you may start it from Floppy.

Mikam73 · Post by **Mikam73** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 8:31 am

I have one Vic game thats missing from Armas page called Roulette.

Too bad I dont have scanner, only digital camera..

If he wants pic, I can take it.

I wish his page had Vic20 cartridges too.. Then it would be perfect..

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 4:04 pm

I am the one who finally got the "disappeard" tapes.

I have them here and all game seems to be readable on my old VIC and datasette.

However, I noticed almost all these games are copy protected by putting machine language code in the cassette buffer.

Anybody might have an idea how to circumvent this method of protection? Even if I copy the data on tape themselves, how do I convert these tapes to a .TAP file ?

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 2:36 pm

If you record the tapes as WAV files and use WAV-PRG/Audiotap, you will get TAP files that contain everything on the tape, including the machine code in the headers.

In order to convert these to e.g. disk format, it is required to crack the game, i.e. analyse the machine code and all the files included. Often the tapes load in small chunks, possibly with a loading picture. Sometimes you can convert it to a multiloading disk (like nbla000 has done), but most of the time you'd want to make it as effective as possible, single-filing w/o loading picture and apply a cruncher if required. Of course that is not within archiving purposes, but more from a practical point of view.

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 9:49 pm

The tape version of paratroopers did that; loading in small chunks.

However, these are protected by giving the file a huge filename with the extra characters that load up directly into the cassette buffer.

Its an old technique which I think was once described in Compute's Gazette.

Back in 1984, I think I made a small basic program that saved back the data but created a filename using information found in the cassette buffer.

I expected someone to be familiar with that trick.

Something like typing:
FOR T=828to828+peek(166):a$=a$;chr$(peek(t):next:SAVE a$

If you see the point of this program and can tell me wether it would work or not, that would be highly appreciated.

But this requires detailed knowledge of the function of every byte below 1024...

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 9:21 am

Yes, I know about putting code in the tape buffer. I know the SYS to load only the header of a program, so you can analyse the code before running it.

Once upon I time, I made this note in one of my books:

A$="":FORA=833TO1023:A$=A$+CHR$(PEEK(A)):NEXT: FORT=0TO3:POKE43+T,PEEK(829+T):NEXT:SAVEA$,1,1

I'm not sure if this exactly correct, but anyway, I still claim that if you convert a WAV to TAP, the resulting file should contain all the header information.

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 3:44 pm

Carlsson wrote:A$="":FORA=833TO1023:A$=A$+CHR$(PEEK(A)):NEXT: FORT=0TO3:POKE43+T,PEEK(829+T):NEXT:SAVEA$,1,1

This little note will prove extremely useful!!!

Thank you VERY much!

I notice you put the adress of basic start into 829-830 and the end at 831-832 but the only descript I have for adresses 828-1023 is "Cassette Buffer". Obviously there's more to it than that.

Would you have a resource that would offer more details ?

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 6:32 pm

Macguyver wrote:Yes, I was able to digitize the TAPs. I got all of them to work except one- "space birds".

I did get space birds to work and I will scan the box and documentation for these games.

Would you care to include these as well?

I went to Mayhem's site and the stuff he seems to have is only for the 64 and I visited the homepage for GB20 and except for the 2 external links nothing seems to work there.

Denial