Acorn Archimedes Software Preservation

[bcass]

So what happens when a game tries to save back to disk?

[Jon Abbott]

It works.

[antom]

Originally Posted by Jon Abbott

We could really do with a web site to start collating all this info into pages for each game, containing the official ID, meta-data, screenshots, scans etc...so people can start contributing.

Anyone know how to do that for free, with DB skills to code it?

I used to run tagew.co.uk, about 12 years ago now, which used to host a number of Arc disc images along with various other crap - been meaning to get on with doing something similar but more like LemonAmiga with the domain, just a case of finding the time to do it. Have a nice self-built framework that I could try it out with as well (and the domain's still there doing nothing right now).

[Jon Abbott]

Sounds like a good plan, I've sent you the spreadsheet with the list of games so far. We'll need a page for each, the ability to upload screenshots and scans of documentation etc and fixed fields for the metadata as per earlier in the thread.

If that's a pain, then a Wiki with a template would suffice for the time being.

[Jon Abbott]

More JFD images from original floppies on The Zone!

The Dungeon
Fire & Ice (only works if copied to HD first...still looking into why)
Star Fighter 3000
Stunt Racer 2000 Extra Tracks

My original Stunt Racer 2000 seems to think its been changed and refuses to load, so need to fix that before I upload the image.


I've also converted the following APD's to JFD:

Carnage Inc
The Cobalt Seed
Cycloids
DarkWood
Drop Ship
Formula 2000
Gods
Gribbly's Day Out
The Last Ninja
Magic Pockets
Nevryon
Populous
Powerband
Premier Manager
Repton 3
Repton 4
Sensible Soccer
The Wimp Game
Wolfenstein 3D
World Class Leaderboard

EDIT (a few more uploaded):
Maddingly Hall
SilverBall
X-Fire

[Jon Abbott]

Anyone fancy going through all the Arc JFD/ADF images, taking screenshots of the title screen and in-game at native res, saved as PNG?

Nasty job I know. I've started collating info from the web - cover art, screenshots etc in preparation for a web site - but the quality is poor at best.

Likewise, if anyone has any originals in packaging and fancies scanning the manuals / box art / floppies @ 300 DPI, feel free to send them to me to add to the database.

[Jon Abbott]

Made a start on screenshots today, between coding and managed to do around 40. They're coming out quite small once run through PNGOUT, less than 10k in most cases.

I've also figured out how to support games that need to load via Shift-Break and fixed a lot of bugs. I'd like to fix DarkWood before I post the next version, but I still haven't found out why it hangs after inserting a disc. I'll give it one last go tomorrow.

Had a further thought on reducing disc image sizes for full image JFD's. After recording a game loading, or copying the files to RAM, there are lots of sectors that aren't touched. In a partial JPD, these are marked as missing and will produce a disc error if read (which isn't an issue on a read only game disc), however, if I add just the sector ID's to the sector table and mark them as having no data, I can allow reads and writes by returning 0's for a read or writing to the delta Data table for writes.

Why bother I hear you ask, well, games that require write access to disc tend to leave lots of data around, which increases the image considerably. To allow writes, the image needs to contain all the sector ID's.

[jms2]

Sorry to raise a problem, but...

With some anticipation, I tried out some of the latest JFD files using ADFFS 1.33b on Risc OS 3.1. So far I have tried three multi-disc games, but only one works:

Arcturus - this works fine

Silverball - doesn't recognise inserting disc 2, and accesses floppy instead

Wolfenstein - as above, although on one attempt it did recognise disc 2. On prompting for disc 3 however, it went to the floppy in the same way as Silverball.

Am I doing something wrong?

Another very minor issue is that Magnetoids reports disc error 10 when you mount the image. Thereafter it works without any problems.

EDIT - Just spotted v1.34. I'll try that.

[Jon Abbott]

Sounds like you don't have enough free space in the module area. If it can't allocate enough, it will eject the image and point you back at the floppy drive.

Ensure you have at least 1mb free before loading ADFFS.

[jms2]

I'll check. But as this is a 4MB machine, I'd be surprised.

EDIT

OK, just checked using ADFFS 1.34. Your suggestion that a lack of RMA was the cause looks to be correct. However, ADFFS's appetite for RMA space seems to be pretty massive!

When Silverball failed to recognise disc 2 I pressed Reset and then checked the RMA size. It was 1760K. Similarly after loading Wolfenstein it was 2240K. Is this what ADFFS genuinely requires, or is it possible that there is some kind of memory leak going on?

I've had similar bad luck with two of the other titles I've tried. This must sound like whingeing, but it isn't! I'm still enormously impressed with what you've done on this project. I just seem to have run into a lot of problems all at the same time..!

- Minotaur - hangs the machine with a flashing cursor top left. Maybe this is RO2 only?
- Maddingly Hall - gives Disc Error 22.

Reassuringly, Black Angel does work, and so does Arcturus.

John

[Jon Abbott]

ADFFS and associated modules take around 200K, add to that the extracted floppy image which could be up to 800K. So you're looking at 1Mb worst case for an DD floppy. Due to filecore re-entracy ADFFS has to be RAM based

Minotaur - very badly written program and not worth the hastle. I spent hours trying to get it to run...I made some notes somewhere, but can't find them. I'll get back to you.

Maddingly Hall - it could a problem with the original APD it was converted from. Just run it again and it should work. I'll double check it's not a bug in ADFFS causing it.

I think there may be a memory leak, I'll do some debugging later. I suspect I've forgotten to release one of the temp tables used during loading, as the RMA is slowly increasing on each floppy load and it eventually crashes.

EDIT: Minotaur, either boot from it (mount floppy, hit F12, type "DIR ADFS::0.$" then so a Shift-Break), or change to drive 0 first and manually run (F12, "DIR ADFS::0.$" followed by "!boot"). Its only compatible up to RO 3.1 by the looks of it.

EDIT2: Haven't found any memory leaks, but have found a few quirks in the order it allocated the memory and have saved around 8k! It seems more consistent now and I'm not seeing RMA memory rising like it was. Doing final testing and should have it up soon.

EDIT3: 1.35 is up, see my comments on the Icon Bar ADFFS thread regarding the RMA creep issue.

[Jon Abbott]

I've put revision 1 of Magnetoids on The Zone! - A required sector was missing

Screenshots are coming along quite well, have now done well over 100 games. If anyone has any scans of manuals etc, please upload or eMail them to me so I can add them. At some point I'll get all this up on a web site.

[Jon Abbott]

ADFFS 1.36 is available. I've completely re-written the way it changes disc via hot-keys to work around the RMA memory leak caused when CLib tries to release it's RMA allocations during a transient callback event. Instead of using a callback, it now swaps discs during an SWI event if there's a change pending.

jms2 - see if this improves things for you.

[jms2]

Great, I'll give it a try!

EDIT
That does indeed solve most problems:

Wolfenstein - now works
Black Angel - worked already, but now has enough memory to run in 2MB mode
Magnetoids - disc error fixed
Minotaur - works but as you say the game is rubbish!

The only remaining issue is with Silverball, which still does not accept disc 2. The failure mode has changed though - previously it accessed the floppy drive but now it does nothing!

EDIT 2

It has just occurred to me that, although the memory leak is fixed, my RMA usage is still over 1500K and I wonder what is going on with my machine to cause that! It can't just be down to ADFFS's activities. I'll investigate over the weekend and test some more games.

Incidentally one thing I have not tried is installing any games to the hard disc (those that have proper installers). Presumably, doing this would reduce dependence on ADFFS to the bare minimum and should be a good idea - what do you think?

[Jon Abbott]

Silverball dismounts the disc, so ADFFS ignores the disc change request. I'll modify the code so it keeps track of the disc set.

Installing to HD will make no difference if it requires the floppy. You'll probably find a lot of RMA space is being used by updated modules and ROM modules that have been moved to RAM to speed them up. Check your boot sequence.

[jms2]

Hello Jon,

I have been experimenting further with v.1.36. Not good news I'm afraid:

Drop ship: Does not recognise key press to change disc.
FTT: As above.

The games that worked before do still work though.

My machine starts with a 320k RMA which grows by about 80k when it sees !System. The jump to 1500k occurs on loading ADFFS and then mounting a disc, but it does not seem to grow thereafter.

Regarding installing to hard disc, what I was getting at was that, whilst ADFFS would still be needed, its only role would be to validate that the "key disc" was present. Thereafter, all loading would take place from the hard disc - which ought to make things simpler and avoid disc swapping under ADFFS. That said, I still have not tried this idea.

[Jon Abbott]

The new disc changing method needs some work! I've been looking at Sensible Soccer, but will test Drop Ship and FTT. SS is hanging randomly for some reason, almost certainly interrupt related. As I've had to switch the code from using a transient callback, I now have to make it support full re-entrancy, which may or may not be possible. If I can't fix it, we'll have to live with the memory leak.

Installing to HD...Yes, you can avoid the disc swapping by installing to HD for games that support it. Some games are currently only working once installed to HD, such as Fire & Ice and Darkwood.

[Jon Abbott]

I purchased a Kryoflux and will see if the raw images can be converted to something usable. It's completely useless in its stock form, as you can't write raw's or create your own IPF's. Ironically I can actually do more on a stock Arc that with a Kryoflux! Shame as the hardware is impressive.

I analysed a few protected floppies and there's a slim chance it may be possible to create usable images from them. Not something I'm going to be looking into anytime soon though.

[Jon Abbott]

Originally Posted by jms2

Drop ship: Does not recognise key press to change disc.
FTT: As above.

Both tested and are changing disc okay, for Drop Ship I had to change !Run2 to get it working. See the "potential fixes" section here.

[bcass]

Not sure how much use these will be, but they're pictures (not scans) of the covers I took when I sold some of my Archimedes games last year:

http://multiupload.biz/aeh9dpqi2o5x/...d.biz.zip.html

Cataclysm
Clares Arcade 3
Overload (Clares)
Thundermonk

[Jon Abbott]

Need high res scans I'm afraid, but thanks for coming forward.

I should have some more original images to upload soon, having bought just about every game that's come up on eBay over the past month. It's starting to get expensive though!

If anyone has original boxed copies they'd like to sell, PM me. I'll let you know if they're ones we're interested in.

[bcass]

Uffenkamp Computer Systems still holds quite a large stock of Archimedes games:

http://www.ucs.de/ucs/Spiele.html

Email for details here: kaiu@ucs.de

They're reputable and have been in the business for years.

[vexation]

Originally Posted by bcass

Uffenkamp Computer Systems still holds quite a large stock of Archimedes games:

http://www.ucs.de/ucs/Spiele.html

Email for details here: kaiu@ucs.de

They're reputable and have been in the business for years.

Not seen Archie images of Cartoon Line, Demons Lair, Enter The Realm, Haunted House, Saloon Cars or Rick Dangerous on-line - tempted to buy and image them myself, not sure I can justify €100~ for the sake of nostalgia tho >< (especially when there are so many tasty 128/256GB SSD's knocking around at the moment)

[Jon Abbott]

I've already purchased a lot of those and will post up images soon.

[Jon Abbott]

ANNOUNCEMENT:

The Centre for Computing History and The Archimedes Software Preservation Project will be combining efforts to preserve original copies of Archimedes software in both physical and digital form.

The Centre for Computing History are a non-profit registered charity based near Cambridge and as such are keen for donations of software, hardware and more importantly money and corporate sponsorship to expand. If you feel you can help, please donate or put the museum in touch with companies prepared to sponsor them in their efforts. The museum has a vast collection of hardware and software and has expanded rapidly since its creation. Having outgrown their current facilities, they are expanding to an open museum in Cambridge, aiming to be open early in the new year.

The aim of the Archimedes Software Preservation Project is to provide publicly available images of all legacy Archimedes software, in it's original protected state, along with the means to mount the images on both physical and emulated hardware. In addition to the disc media, boxes, manuals, artwork etc will be scanned and made available along with metadata.

ADFFS is the initial first step along this aim and is continuing to be expanded as new disc protections are encountered. If you wish to help the project, by donating software or providing images / scans or getting involved in development, please PM or eMail myself.

[bcass]

Good news. The Archimedes deserved as much.

[Jon Abbott]

ADFFS 1.37 is available. Silver Ball and Oh, No! More Lemmings now change disc correctly.

[breach]

Wow! Impressive, Jon!

Any chance the images could be compressed? I think those 800kB ADFs should compress well, and a Zip will all the disc images, or a Zip per game with all its discs in would be more efficent to download.

Edit:

Actually, I've seen lists of Acorn games. It would be good to make a list marking those which we have images for, and those which we don't currently have any copies of. That would mean people will know what to keep a look out for.

[Jon Abbott]

For a complete list of all games, please see this post.

Incomplete, missing scans:
2067 BC (missing box, manuals etc)
Arcturus (missing box, manuals etc)
Cannon Fodder (missing box)
Diggers (missing Arc specific instructions)
Dungeon, The (missing box, manuals etc)
Heimdall (need scans of an undamaged box)
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 (missing box, manuals etc)
Magnetoids (missing box, manuals etc)
Slappit (missing box, manuals etc)
Star Fighter 3000 [SA version] (missing box, manuals etc)
Stunt Racer 2000 Extra Tracks (missing box, manuals etc)

Incomplete, missing floppies:
Wolfenstein 3D (missing WolfProg disc)
Ballarena
Blaston
Bubble Fair
Cartoon Line part one
Fine Racer
Kerbang!
Pac-mania (Grandslam)
Sally and Wally
Tactic

In progress:
Alone In the Dark (1995) (Krisalis Software)
Ballarena (1990) (Sisteme)
Birds of War (1993) (The Fourth Dimension)
Blaston (1991) (Eterna)
Break 147 & Superpool (1991) (The Fourth Dimension)
Bubble Fair (1991) (Eterna)
Cartoon Line part one (1991) (Eterna)
Chocks Away Compendium (1991) (The Fourth Dimension)
Chocks Away Extra Missions (1991) (The Fourth Dimension)
Chopper Force (1992) (The Fourth Dimension)
Crystal Maze, The (1993) (Sherston Software)
Cyber Chess (1992) (The Fourth Dimension)
Dungeon, The (1993) (The Fourth Dimension)
E-Type II (1994) (The Fourth Dimension)
Fine Racer (1991) (Eterna)
Fire & Ice (1995) (Renegade)
Holed Out!! (1989) (The Fourth Dimension)
Hostages (1990) (Superior Software)
Inertia (1990) (The Fourth Dimension)
Karma - The Flight Trainer (1992) (Periscope Software)
Kerbang! (1991) (Eterna)
Krisalis Collection, The () (Krisalis Software)
Lemmings (Learning Curve version) (1991) (Krisalis Software)
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 (1992) (Krisalis Software)
Maddingly Hall (1989) (Minerva)
MiG-29 Fulcrum (1991) (Domark)
Oh, No! More Lemmings (1992) (Krisalis Software)
Pac-mania (1989) (Grandslam Entertainments)
Play It Again Sam 1 () (Superior Software)
Quest For Gold (Learning Curve version) (1992) (Krisalis Software)
Ravenskull (1997) (ProAction)
Repton 3 (1988) (Superior Software)
Repton 3 Four Game Compilation (1992) (Superior Software)
Repton 4: Ego (1992) (Superior Software)
S.W.I.V. (1992) (Krisalis Software)
Sally and Wally (1995) (Oregan Developments)
Saloon Cars (1991) (The Fourth Dimension)
Saloon Cars Deluxe (1991) (The Fourth Dimension)
Sensible Soccer (1993) (Renegade)
Stunt Racer 2000 [RPC version] (1994) (The Fourth Dimension)
Stunt Racer 2000 Extra Tracks (1994) (The Fourth Dimension)
Tactic (1990) (Eterna)
Technodream (1993) (Superior Software)
Virtual Golf (1993) (The Fourth Dimension)

Complete:
Air Supremacy (1991) (Superior Software)
ALPS (1992) (Alpine Software)
Black Angel (1992) (The Fourth Dimension)
Chuck Rock (1991) (Krisalis Software)
Conqueror (1988) (Superior Software)
Enter The Realm (1991) (The Fourth Dimension)
Enter The Realm [SA version] (1992) (The Fourth Dimension)
Flashback (1994) (U.S. Gold)
Haunted House (1993) (The Fourth Dimension)
Heimdall (1993) (Krisalis Software)
Labryinth (2000) (Acornsoft)
Lemmings (1991) (Krisalis Software)
Minotaur (1987) (Minerva)
Pac-mania (Learning Curve version) (1991) (Domark)
Pandora's Box (1991) (The Fourth Dimension)
Quark (1993) (Oregan Developments)
Star Fighter 3000 (1994) (Fednet Software)
Stunt Racer 2000 (1993) (The Fourth Dimension)
Stunt Racer 2000 [SA version] (1994) (The Fourth Dimension)
Xenon 2: Megablast (1993) (Eclipse)
Zarch (1987) (Superior Software)


If you have originals not listed above and would like to image them, email me: jon at jaspp dot org dot uk

The project can accept Kryoflux stream, JFD images created with ADFFS and ADF images created with ADFimage/Dimager where there's no disc protected. They must be from originals floppies, not copies of originals, confirm by accompanying the disc image with a scan of both sides of the floppies.

[breach]

Originally Posted by Jon Abbott

EDIT: The following originals have yet to be imaged:
Alone in the Dark (missing box and manuals)
Cannon Fodder (missing box and manuals)
Chuck Rock
Enter the Realm [SA version] (missing box and manuals)
Flashback (missing box and manuals)
Heimdall
Karma - The Flight Trainer
Quark (missing box and manual)
Star Fighter 3000
Star Fighter 3000 [SA version] (missing box and manuals)
Stunt Racer 2000 [SA version] (missing box and manuals)
Wolfenstein 3D (missing WolfProg disc)

That's the list we need to track down originals of? Or you've got originals but they've not been imaged yet?

Edit: By "imaged" you mean making disc images, right? Or is it to do with getting cover art/manual images?

[Jon Abbott]

Originally Posted by breach

That's the list we need to track down originals of? Or you've got originals but they've not been imaged yet?

Edit: By "imaged" you mean making disc images, right? Or is it to do with getting cover art/manual images?

Original floppies I have, that I've yet to image into JFD, clearly where they're missing manuals etc I need to track them down as well. I'm scanning box art (all sides if appropriate), anything inside the box, the floppies etc. The manuals are OCR'd into PDF and tidied up. I'll post an example so you can see what I mean.

Anything not on the list needs the community to help out with.

EDIT: Look at F1013400.zip on The Zone! for the example...Enter The Realm. It's not complete, but you'll get the idea.

[breach]

Looks good to me!

[slamdunk]

Fantastic! Keep up the good work!

[Jon Abbott]

Does anyone have a good box for Heimdall? The copy I purchased on eBay has water damage and is unscannable. I need all sides of the box scanned at 300dpi to complete and release it.

[Jon Abbott]

ADFFS 1.39 is available. Sensible Soccer and Heimdall now change disc correctly.

Also includes various converters, APDtoADF / APDtoJFD and ConvRec to convert recordings into JFD files.

If you wish to image any protected floppies, use the following method:

1. Clean boot the machine if disc 1 has been seen previously
2. Load ADFFS
3. Start recording via: *ADFRecord adfs::4.$.recording
4. Insert disc 1
5. Copy all files from it to the RAM drive or a temp folder (this is to ensure all sectors with files on are noted)
6. Launch the game, once it's past the disc protection check, or prompts for disc 2, hit Ctrl-Shift-F10 to stop the recording
7. Modify the variables in the header of ConvRec and run it with disc 1 in the drive


To image disc 2 onward (which usually aren't protected):

1. Clean boot the machine if the disc has been seen previously
2. Insert disc X
3. *ADFRecord adfs::4.$.recording
4. Copy all files to the RAM drive or temp directory
5. *ADFStop or hit Ctrl-Shift-F10 to stop recording
6. Modify the variables in the header of ConvRec and run it with disc X in the drive

As I've yet to write the delta write code for JFD's; save game discs are probably best imaged as ADF (using Dimager or ADFimager), so they can be flushed back to the HD.

[Jon Abbott]

ADFFS 2.01 is available

Look here for changes since 2.0

[breach]

Spotted that there's a new "1.50 alpha" release of ArcEm:

http://arcem.sourceforge.net/

The change log says it's faster than it was and there is now a port for the Amiga.

http://arcem.sourceforge.net/changelog.html

[prowler]

Originally Posted by breach

Spotted that there's a new "1.50 alpha" release of ArcEm:

http://arcem.sourceforge.net/

The change log says it's faster than it was and there is now a port for the Amiga.

http://arcem.sourceforge.net/changelog.html

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...&postcount=218

[MethodGit]

Anyone had luck with getting Rick Dangerous yet? Would like to see proof a full version of this existed somehow...

Also, did anyone manage to grab a copy of the Krisalis Gold Collection ISO back when it leaked to torrent sites a couple of years ago? It's still listed on TPB but there's no seeders or leechers to it at all. Came across a 2Shared link which is also kaput.

[Jon Abbott]

Originally Posted by MethodGit

Anyone had luck with getting Rick Dangerous yet? Would like to see proof a full version of this existed somehow...

You can buy it from CJE Micro's for £5