"Pinball Nightmares"

[Rissy]

Hey all,

So last night, since the G/F has now discovered Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies, I decided to take copies of the original copied disks in order to preserve the high scores (and general condition) of my old ones from when i was 13 or so.

I used X-copy 6.4 to take the copies as it gave me a chance to try out a new Ebay purchase of an external floppy drive.

I left them out for her to play whilst i got on with other things....

"Chris!!! This game isn't working now!!??"

Neither Pinball games would work from their X-Copy 6.4 counterparts!?

So now to cut a long story short, I proceeded to spend an entire night dedicated to just trying to get these copies of copies working.

Pinball dreams wasn't too hard. I took my laptop .SCP copies of them and wrote these to the same disks and then they both worked (old high scores preserved on them ok).

Pinball Fantasies however, the same trick wouldn't work for Pinball Fantasies.

Disk 2 table disk required for me to convert the .SCP image to .ADF and write THAT to disk before it would work. Again, old high scores preserved.

Disk 3 was the real problem child. I had to keep taking newer and newer Greaseweazle reads in .SCP of the disk; each time the resultant file would be kb's in size larger than that last for whatever reason. Even converting this like i had done with Pinball Dreams, to .ADF didn't work reliably. In fact when it did work, the tables would load, but none of the high scores would be intact!? weird.

In the end, on my fourth Greaseweazle read version of the disk, I tried pushing it through Linux Disk Utilities as a .SCP and convert it to .IPF. That proved successful, and the disk worked with all the high scores preserved.

I don't know at this point whether those extra few kb's have made all the difference or pushing it through disk utilities has. Tonight i may try writing the fourth attempt read .SCP direct to disk and try that, and if that doesn't work, then also try converting it to .ADF too.

Anyone else found this at all?

[Rissy]

I'm still having problems even after converting my Pinball Fantasies disk into .IPF.

It's more reliable in the Amiga df0: compared to my external floppy drive df1:

But still the game crashes quite often. I've attached an image of what it looks like. Are these "scores" or "scratches" normal for this game? I seem to get the same result in HxC irrespective of physical floppy disk which has been written with the Pinball Fantasies d3 image to it from my original copied disk.

Piball Dreams d1 and d2 look very much like this Pinball Fantasies d3 image when analysed like this, and they both work fine.

Out of interest, you get quite a spectacular disk image pattern from Pinball Fantasis d2, see attached as well. Disk 2 seems to work just fine and all i had to do with that was write the .SCP straight to a new disk.

[Rissy]

Ah! I think i've cracked it. You still have to convert to .IPF file (due to the save game potential on the disk(s)), but i think Pinball Fantasies pushes the memory available on an Amiga a500 to the limits. So if you either turn on WITH the disks in df0: and df1: already, then it works fine, or if you have no external df1: and resort to disk swapping in the Amiga drive, again, it works fine. At least now i'm not questioning the integrity of my data on my disks any more.

[BarryB]

I don' think you can create your own IPF of Pinball Fantasies, the only tool that can create Amiga IPF's is Keir Frasers Linux program Disk-Utilities but Pinball Fantasies is not supported yet!

HxC has an IPF export but it does not work, the author of HxC confirmed that!

Why not write the official IPF's to disk if you can?

[Rissy]

Originally Posted by BarryB

I don' think you can create your own IPF of Pinball Fantasies, the only tool that can create Amiga IPF's is Keir Frasers Linux program Disk-Utilities but Pinball Fantasies is not supported yet!

HxC has an IPF export but it does not work, the author of HxC confirmed that!

Why not write the official IPF's to disk if you can?

I've used Keir's disk utilities tool "disk analyse" to create these .IPF Pinball Fantasies disks. I've been up and running with that tool for about a week now.

I've so far proved Cannon Fodder save disks, and now PF disk 2 and 3.

In the case of PF disk 2 and 3, i left the "format" option blank. Seems to work just fine.

[solarmon]

I'm not quite following what has been done, or even what you are trying to do ultimately, but are the original Pinball Fantasies disk original ones or the cracked version of the game?

[Rissy]

Originally Posted by solarmon

I'm not quite following what has been done, or even what you are trying to do ultimately, but are the original Pinball Fantasies disk original ones or the cracked version of the game?

To me, they are copies. But it looks like that they might be copies of originals directly from back in the day, as it has NO advertising etc on it to suggest it's a cracked copy. So they're not legit disks, but it might very well be a copy of a legit set of disks....?

[solarmon]

The photos of the Pinball Fantasies images you provided above doesn't look like the originals, but anything written/copied on an Amiga itself will have that 'swirl' pattern.

[solarmon]

If you don't specify a format for disk-analyse then it will assume and use AmigaDOS as the format.

The original Pinball Fantasies game disks are not in AmigaDOS format, so I don't think your images are if the original game disks

[BarryB]

Could be the AGA version, that's ADOS + manual protection! Only the OCS/ECS version has MFM tracks!

[Rissy]

Right i'm back with more "Nightmares".

After working so hard to get copies of my PD and PF disks and managing to retain my original high scores, AND have them work from archives on disk AND now Gotek, the latest challenge comes to trying to get original versions of these two games working with the company set unpersonalized unsaved high scores.

I've collected 0377 and 0025 from this source:

http://www.oldgamesfinder.com/?q=pinball&m=-4

I wanted to convert the .IPF files into .HFE so that they would work on my Gotek AND be writeable so that the G/F can actually save some high scores rather than forever being in my shadow of greatness.
Obviously to do this, I tried washing the disk images through Disk-Analyse by Keir F under Linux. This didn't work. I then tried the same again, but go direct from .IPF to .SCP. This again, didn't work. At this point I wasn't sure how else to go other than literally writing the .IPF images to floppy using my GW, and then reading them back in immediately again with the GW and save the outputs as .SCP. So that's what i've done.
The results are as follows:

PD doesn't work in WinAE. Can't even get the first disk to load up.
However, converting the .SCP using HxC to .HFE work in the Gotek, BUT, the highscores set by the company will not be overwritten and saved to the USB!? WHY?

PF works fine in WinAE. But, after converting the .SCP files to .HFE and applying them to the Gotek, the disks wont load there at all!? WHY?

Can anyone help me with what I need to do in each games' case please?

[BarryB]

All the official SPS IPF's are on the EAB FTP!

Not sure why you're having so many issues GW should write the IPF's no problem! Are your disks OK, do they format/verify in X-Copy on a real Amiga and are the heads on the drive you write with clean? Can you try on another 3.5" drive to see if you have the same problems writing back?

Are you using the latest version of the HxC software (currently 2.5.6.6) to convert the IPF to HFE? Firmware up to date on the Gotek, either HxC or Flash Floppy?

Other than checking those things can't really see what the issue is!

[fxgogo]

I would just take a photo of your scores and move on. he he.

[Rissy]

Originally Posted by BarryB

All the official SPS IPF's are on the EAB FTP!

I didn't know this!

Originally Posted by BarryB

Not sure why you're having so many issues GW should write the IPF's no problem! Are your disks OK, do they format/verify in X-Copy on a real Amiga and are the heads on the drive you write with clean? Can you try on another 3.5" drive to see if you have the same problems writing back?

I'm not using floppy disks. I'm trying to use a Gotek. Although I had to resort to using my GW to write the .IPF to a floppy, just so that I could read it back off the floppy as a .SCP because nothing else I tried was successful at doing this!? - Not even Keir F disk utilities!

Originally Posted by BarryB

Are you using the latest version of the HxC software (currently 2.5.6.6) to convert the IPF to HFE? Firmware up to date on the Gotek, either HxC or Flash Floppy?

I've only been up and running for maybe a couple of weeks with HxC, so unless it's been updated since, then I should be running the latest. However, HxC does NOT read in .IPF! So you cannot use that to convert them to .SCP or anything else.

Originally Posted by BarryB

Other than checking those things can't really see what the issue is!

The issue is, that I CAN get PD working on the Gotek, but high scores will NOT save to the USB file and I cannot get PF working on the Gotek at all!?

[Rissy]

So the plot thickens. I've literally taken the Amiga apart again, and swapped out my Gotek for the floppy drive again. I've then tested each disk with the written Pinball Dreams and Fantasies .IPF images. In the case of each game, they work in the Amiga fine, and highscores are saved to the disks not a problem.

So the issues i'm having clearly for each, is how to get them both to run on the Gotek.

I'm sure someone out there has managed to write these images to a Gotek so that they fully work, including being able to save your high scores back to the files?

[Rissy]

The plot thickens even more so. I've now proved that if I copy the good .IPF written disks back to my laptop using my GW (in Amiga .SCP format), and then write that same resultant .SCP file back to a completely different floppy disk and try that in the Amiga, it hangs, exactly as it does in WinAUE. So there's something being corrupted or lost or changed from the exercise of reading/converting the .IPF to .SCP / .HFE even by way of using a GW and physical disks! Nobody else seems to be that bothered by this except me it seems, but eventually when there's no more floppies to work with, and everyone is using Goteks or some other means, then i'm sure people will become bothered. It's one thing preserving software for all time, but it's another thing if that software is preserved only to work on physical media which is no longer around....

[Rissy]

I think this is the problem. See attached. I don't know how to get around this. There are tracks not being fully read, or missing enitrely. This is very confusing. How does the .ipf file get written to a floppy disk without issue and then work just fine!? I need someone more educated on this to tell me what's going on...


Can't ANYONE help me?!

[BarryB]

Pinball Fantasies OCS/ECS is not supported in disk-utilities, the format MUST be added first to disk-utilities before it can convert! Plus, that command will never work even IF it was supported!

However, Pinball Dreams IS supported so that one will work:

disk-analyse -f "Pinball Dreams" "PinballDreams_Disk1.ipf" "PinballDreams_Disk1.hfe"
T0.0-0.1: AmigaDOS
T1.0-69.1: Pinball Dreams
T70.0-77.1: Unformatted
T78.0-78.1: Pinball Dreams
T79.0-82.1: Unformatted

disk-analyse -f "Pinball Dreams" "PinballDreams_Disk2.ipf" "PinballDreams_Disk2.hfe"
T0.0-0.1: AmigaDOS
T1.0-69.1: Pinball Dreams
T70.0-77.1: Unformatted
T78.0-78.1: Pinball Dreams
T79.0-82.1: Unformatted

[Rissy]

Originally Posted by BarryB

Pinball Fantasies OCS/ECS is not supported in disk-utilities, the format MUST be added first to disk-utilities before it can convert! Plus, that command will never work even IF it was supported!

However, Pinball Dreams IS supported so that one will work:

disk-analyse -f "Pinball Dreams" "PinballDreams_Disk1.ipf" "PinballDreams_Disk1.hfe"
T0.0-0.1: AmigaDOS
T1.0-69.1: Pinball Dreams
T70.0-77.1: Unformatted
T78.0-78.1: Pinball Dreams
T79.0-82.1: Unformatted

disk-analyse -f "Pinball Dreams" "PinballDreams_Disk2.ipf" "PinballDreams_Disk2.hfe"
T0.0-0.1: AmigaDOS
T1.0-69.1: Pinball Dreams
T70.0-77.1: Unformatted
T78.0-78.1: Pinball Dreams
T79.0-82.1: Unformatted

I realised that Pinball Fantasies isn't listed there. But with the nature of me writing the .IPF file to physical disk, and then back again as a .SCP to my laptop using my GW in both directions, I thought perhaps I could side swipe the limitations of disk-analyse in its current status. Clearly this doesn't seem to be the case because what gets read back in by the GW is garbage and doesn't work despite the .IPF disk it came from working perfectly!!? This is something I can't understand.

Thank you for advising me how to use the disk-anaylse tool for Pinball Dreams. I'll go try that now.

I was using the line:

disk-analyse --format=pinball_dreams....
in place of:
disk-analyse --format="Pinball Dreams"....

The usage of this tool is clearly not consistent according to the advice given in the "format" help page here: https://github.com/keirf/Disk-Utilit...nalyse/formats

because I successfully used the line:

disk-analyse --format=sensible.....

for creating a Cannon Fodder Save Disk from .SCP to .IPF last week, and that works perfectly. If the usage for Pinball Dreams is the quoted line "Pinball Dreams", then why is the Cannnon Fodder save disk not "Cannon Fodder"?

This is inconsistent.

"Cannon Fodder" = sensible

versus

"Pinball Dreams" # Tracks 1, 66-155, 158+ may be empty on either disk
* amigados pinball_dreams

What does the "*" line represent then? What is *amigados pinball_dreams if not the command for the options usage?

[BarryB]

The * tells disk-utilities to apply the formats after it to all tracks or tracks that have not been specifically targeted.

In the Pinball Dreams entry "* amigados pinball_dreams" means check each track for AmigaDOS format AND Pinball Dreams format, if a track matches either format that track is written, anything that doesn't match is ignored and created as unformatted!

You could do Pinball Dreams like this:

"Pinball Dreams"
    0-1 amigados
    2-139 pinball_dreams
    156-157 pinball_dreams
    * ignore

In this case * ignore will create unformatted tracks for any track not specified by the lines above it!