Are Coverdisks Worth Anything?

[prowler]

Thanks for entrusting your disks to me. They were here when I arrived home yesterday evening.

Following an Amiga Explorer session this afternoon, I've uploaded an initial set of disk images to the Zone.

Each is assigned a name based on the disk's volume name. Where no volume name exists, I have supplied a name based on how the disk was labelled.

Seven of the eleven disks you sent have imaged successfully at the first attempt! The other four disks (marked '*' in the list below) have read errors and will require a bit more work to get valid disk images.

The disks
*******
Softville PD Service - Sof 181 (OkimateDemo.adf)
Amiga Format 117a - Fiasco 2.2, ViewFonts 2, PoolMem *
Amiga Format 117b - GunBee F-99, Mini Arcanoid (AF117b.adf)
Amiga Action, May 1995, Disk 3 - Sensible Massacre 2, Demon (AMIGAACTION.adf)
Demon Card Game (Demon V1.01.adf)
Tetris (TWINTRIS FINAL BY RAZOR.adf)
Pinball Dreams, Disk 1 (Pinball Dreams 1.adf)
Pinball Dreams, Disk 2 (Pinball Dreams 2.adf)
Pinball Fantasies, Disk 2 - Party Land / Speed Devils *
Pinball Fantasies, Disk 3 - Billion Dollar Gameshow / Stones 'n' Bones *
Ultima V - Boot / Play / Underground Disk *

I shall try other techniques on the remaining disks.

[Titler]

Not to worry if the last 3 don't come off, as they were just for personal nostalgia... the one that really needs to be saved is the second Amiga Format disc, to be sent off to Amiga Magazine Rack But stirling work so far all the same, I guess those cheap plastic disc trays were good for something in the long run after all! (Even if I had to force the lid open with a screwdriver in the cheap lock, as I've long since lost the "keys"!)

For everyone else, the Amiga Action coverdisc, Softville PD and Gunbee AF Demo were not in the records; Demon is, I think, an unpack from the AA disc, which I'd sent in case that disc couldn't be saved at least. The Dreams and Fantasies are just my old high score disc, as is the Ultima V disc and Twintris I wasn't sure what it was, it's been so long since I used the Amiga, but I wanted it adf'ing to run it by Akira, just in case it was his long lost love

[Titler]

Ahah! I wondered why "Sensible Massacre 2" never unpacked properly from that Amiga Action disc... thanks to the wonders of WinUAE, I can now confirm that it's A1200 only. Cheers! ("Michael Jackson" - Ed) for not bothering to state that in your shoddy rag all those years ago.

[penfold_t_mole]

Originally Posted by mk1

I'd be interested in CU Amiga May & July 1990 coverdisks (and the mags too) if anyone has them..

What number are they? i have a few covers disks going on ebay tomorrow. I did list a lot on their own a few weeks ago but got emails asking to split so at that point i thought it much better to list on their own as people seem to be, in the most part looking for 1 or 2. I did then get a couple of emails complaining about littering eBay amiga. LOL. In my opinion thats a bit shocking really! anyway so anyone after coverdisks checkout eBay monday night i think theres about 600 going on

[penfold_t_mole]

Originally Posted by MethodGit

Do you happen to have any of the following (that I can think off my head atm)?:

Amiga Action - July 1991 - Disk 1 (R-Type 2)
Amiga Action - December 1993 - Disk 1 (C.Fodder) and Disk 2 (Brutal Sports F.)
The One - May 1994 - Disk A - Mr Nutz/Clockwiser/Ouch!/Tanx'n'Stuff

Hi do you still need the one may 94? i have it if you do.

[prowler]

Hi Titler,

It turns out that the Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies and Ultima V data disks are non-DOS disks - that's why they have no volume names.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to save the Pinball Fantasies and Ultima V disks. Each have several missing sector headers, which means unreadable blocks. It will depend on where exactly the important data is.

The Pinball Fantasies disks each have a missing sector header after 16kB, which isn't very encouraging, but the Ultima V disk is error free up to 665kB.

I have Pinball Fantasies 1,2 and 3 disks in my collection, which I could upload if you think they might be useful, but I have no idea yet what data they contain.

Originally Posted by Titler

...the one that really needs to be saved is the second Amiga Format disc, to be sent off to Amiga Magazine Rack

This disk is an enigma. Every time I tried to mount this disk in the Amiga Explorer transfer window on my PC, it caused the program to hang, so eventually I gave up.

It turns out that inserting the disk into one of my Amiga's floppy drives causes a requester to pop up, reporting that the disk cannot be validated because of a bad header type on disk block 881. Cancel that, and another requester pops up reporting a checksum error on disk block 946.

Cancel that, and the disk icon appears on the desktop with the volume name Protext Data Disc. Thus, the disk appears to have been overwritten.

Double-clicking the disk icon opens a window and machine-gun requesters reporting a further 46 checksum errors, before a single icon appears, entitled All_to_HD. The title bar reports that the disk is 100% full with 512 bytes free. However, Icon -> Info reports 0 bytes 01-Jan-1978 00:00:00 for the file.

From the Shell, List reports (after cancelling another swatch of requesters):
All_to_HD 2084 bytes -s--rwed 22-Sep-98 20:07:05
1 file - 6 blocks used

Incredibly, despite the disk errors reported by Workbench, I was able to image the disk successfully using TSgui.

I would like to have a look at the image with a binary file editor and in WinUAE to see what else I can find out before I upload it.

[Titler]

Hmmmm... I don't recall ever writing over it, but Pro-Text is the word processor I had with my Amiga and used throughout my student days, so it's possible I accidentally did at one point. Don't worry if it turns out to be Pro-Text data, as I made working copies of all my old essays years ago But this will be a shame all the same because on that AF disc originally I discovered, when trying to get the AF Amibee demo running, that there's a routine which is needed to launch the Workbench Arkanoid clone on the Amibee disc.

I also couldn't get Amibee to launch either, it freezes after selecting graphics/control options on anything but a default A1200 under emulation, but cycles back to the discs first screen when the options are selected with said A1200.

As for where the data is on those discs, I don't have a clue I've long since completed Ultima V on the amiga under emulation again, I just wanted my original save I guess because of memories of playing it for the first time, and being informed of my Grandfather passing away when I first entered the Underworld in search of Captian Johne... And of course, it's nice to have challenges from the past to beat, like in pinball; Surprisingly, I managed to whop my Demon high score, which took me a year to get at Uni, in 10 goes here in the future

[prowler]

I now have 901,120 byte ADF images of the whole set of disks, but the outstanding ones have errors. Checksum errors can usually be fixed by salvaging blocks individually from the disk using a track editor, but missing sector headers always mean at least one block is lost.

I will upload the best images I can get, and you can test them with your game to see whether anything important has been lost. Unfortunately, the non-DOS nature of the disks means that salvaging individual gamesaves will be very difficult without the original game disk.

It would help if your Pinball Fantasies data disks turn out to be compatible with the version I have.

Originally Posted by Titler

Hmmmm... I don't recall ever writing over it, but Pro-Text is the word processor I had with my Amiga and used throughout my student days, so it's possible I accidentally did at one point. Don't worry if it turns out to be Pro-Text data, as I made working copies of all my old essays years ago But this will be a shame all the same because on that AF disc originally I discovered, when trying to get the AF Amibee demo running, that there's a routine which is needed to launch the Workbench Arkanoid clone on the Amibee disc.

I also couldn't get Amibee to launch either, it freezes after selecting graphics/control options on anything but a default A1200 under emulation, but cycles back to the discs first screen when the options are selected with said A1200.

The AF117a disk files are included on Amiga Format CD 33, which I downloaded from the EAB Server last night.

I will upload a disk image containing those files, which I will call AF117a.adf, to see if they help solve the problems with GunBee F-99 and Mini Arcanoid.

Also, the Protext Data Disc image might jog your memory if I upload it.

[Jonathan Drain]

Originally Posted by penfold_t_mole

Hi do you still need the one may 94? i have it if you do.

If you can copy this to to an ADF it'd be great

[mk1]

Originally Posted by penfold_t_mole

What number are they?

They are 1 and 3.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by prowler

The AF117a disk files are included on Amiga Format CD 33, which I downloaded from the EAB Server last night.

I will upload a disk image containing those files, which I will call AF117a.adf, to see if they help solve the problems with GunBee F-99 and Mini Arcanoid.

@Titler:
I have uploaded to the Zone a 3MB hardfile for use in WinUAE containing the decompressed content of Amiga Format 117a coverdisk, as featured on AFCD33.

The decompressed files would not fit on an ADF. It's just as well, because otherwise the upload might have been mistaken for a genuine coverdisk image.

I hope this helps with loading the AF117b coverdisk programs.

[Jonathan Drain]

I'm amused there's a coverdisk called "F117A"

[prowler]

I have made some progress in recovering the AF117a coverdisk.

(See this post for details.)

It turns out that the disk is not completely overwritten, as I had feared, but the volume name and creation date has been changed and an attempt has been made to copy a file onto the remaining free space. Some of the files on the disk have been damaged, possibly by removing it from the disk drive while it was being written to; hence the checksum errors.

Inspection of the files salvaged from the disk reveals that more than one file is damaged, but the largest of them is not nearly so badly damaged as it might have been.

Recovering the coverdisk contents may still be possible thanks to the inclusion of the uncompressed disk files on AFCD 33, the cover-mounted disc available with the CD version of the magazine.

I will post further updates on my progress in this thread.

[Lorfarius]

Had a big pile of demo disks with a recent ebay auction and not sure if they are rare or worth anything to the likes of AMR, here's a pic in case there's something special:

[MethodGit]

Well so far nobody's made a working image of that Mortal Kombat disk, so that would be a start.

[Lorfarius]

I don't have a way to do it myself but if anyone can help I don't mind sending the disk on (or any others if there's more of interest in that lot)

[prowler]

Hi Lorfarius,

I can help with that! You're welcome to send me any of those disks for imaging. I'll upload the images to the Zone and return the disks to you afterwards.

PM me when you're ready.

[Lorfarius]

Will do Prowler, thanks

[Titler]

Just wanted to publicly say thank you to Prowler for saving both the data for the wider community, and my own personal data... I've no real idea how to use the hardfile though, so could someone download the "Coverdisks" zip he put into the Zone for me, and see if you can get the Gunbee demo working? I have to admit I'm tempted to pay for the original (which is still on sale) just so I can play it finally

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Titler

Just wanted to publicly say thank you to Prowler for saving both the data for the wider community, and my own personal data...

Thanks, mate, but there's still quite a bit to do on those other disks.

Originally Posted by Titler

I've no real idea how to use the hardfile though, so could someone download the "Coverdisks" zip he put into the Zone for me, and see if you can get the Gunbee demo working?

You can mount the hardfile in WinUAE as a hard disk. Just hit the Hard Drives tab in the configuration panel and choose Hardfile, then navigate to where you unzipped it. When the emulation starts, you should be able to access all the files as if they were stored on another hard disk on your emulated Amiga. It holds all the decompressed files from the lzx archives on the AF117a coverdisk.

However, I'm now confident I'll eventually be able to recover the original data on the AF117a coverdisk, which isn't anywhere near as damaged as I had thought. Then, you should be able to load Gunbee properly if, as you say, there are some files on the other disk that it requires.