AlienBash I & II - Original Coder Contacted - Help Needed in Rescuing 68000 Source!!

[prowler]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Prowler, DIC from whdload is your friend for disk imaging

Not yet it isn't.

Thanks for the suggestion, Denis. I didn't know anything about that. I'll check it out soon.

[dlfrsilver]

command line is like this :

DIC DF0: nameofthedisk.adf followed by 'return'

[prowler]

The executable is very small. Is it standalone or does it have any dependencies?

[TCD]

Seems to be standalone : http://www.whdload.de/docs/en/dic.html

Installation
copy it to C: or a similar plac

Won't hurt to install the rest of the WHDLoad package aswell though

[prowler]

I have written the hard disk images and filesystems to a CD-R which I shall be sending off to Glen tomorrow for his scrutiny.

I'm also going to start work on imaging the floppy disks tomorrow.

[viddi]

Awesome!

Good luck with the floppy disks.

[prowler]

I sent the CD-R off to Glen this morning, and then got started on the floppy disks.

In this first session, I have made valid images of 24 Amiga formatted disks, and found one with read errors which will need a bit of work to restore it.

3 disks are PC formatted. I have not made images of these yet. One has filesystem errors which need fixing first.

So far, I have tried 28 disks. 24 are good, two more look good and the other two should come good with a bit of work.

Overall, the disks are in very good condition considering they have been stored in an attic for the last ten years.

I am very much more confident about the outcome now than I was before I tried any of them.

This first lot of disks are mainly magazine coverdisks, PD, shareware library and Demo disks. Some have been overwritten by Glen with utilities or code, but they're generally in good shape.

I should be able to spend the next couple of days working on these disks as well.

[prowler]

I have made valid images (using RAWRITE2.EXE) of two of the PC formatted disks while I have been online tonight and fixed the filesystem errors on the other one. I cannot make an image of this one yet, because it still needs some work with a disk editor.

Out of 28 disks tried so far, 26 are good, one more is fixable and the other one probably is too.

[Retro1234]

Nice work prowler - Lets hope someones able to pickup the source and do something with it.

Also be interesting to checkout the MAP editor.

[prowler]

I've made valid images of another 15 Amiga formatted disks today.

Of 43 disks attempted so far, 41 are good and two still need fixing - one Amiga formatted and one PC formatted.

Fixing those disks requires different system configurations which I don't have set up presently.

[prowler]

I fixed the PC formatted disk, and recovered some old shareware zip archives without directory entries. Glen's going to find some files here that he hasn't seen for a very long time!

Today, I made valid images of a further 5 Amiga formatted disks, but another 3 have read errors.

Of 51 disks tried so far, 47 are good and four need fixing (all Amiga formatted). One of the bad disks might not be important, because the backup was okay!

[Peter]

Keep up the good work prowler - cant believe how robust these old Amiga disks are!

[prowler]

In today's session, I made valid images of another 50 disks, found 14 more with read errors and 3 with filesystem errors.

I have now tried more than half the disks. So far, out of a total of 118 disks, 97 are good and 21 have errors.

I am going for as many good images as I can get before I tackle the disks with errors. The bad disks all have one or more read errors or filesystem errors. Two disks I have not been able to read so far because they're high density disks formatted to 800K. I've only tried one disk drive so far; I might have more luck with another.

Some good news: two of the disks I have got good images of are AlienBash Code 1 and Alienbash code 2. Maybe it's just as well that the backups of those two disks are on the high density media.

In general, the code and art disks are in pretty good shape. The troublesome disks are mostly the utilities.

I'm going to try and complete this part of the work tomorrow. I always find it much more interesting to see what I can recover from bad disks.

[TCD]

Sounds great prowler I wait for your TOSEC scan Keep it up mate!

[gggcumming]

[IMG]file:///C:/early_ABII.gif[/IMG]Received disk from Peter today (thanks) - there's some funny old stuff on there - including very early test builds of games - attached is a screenshot from a very early build of ABII - not very good!

Hmm - not sure there's much worth saving!

[prowler]

I've now finished the first pass through these disks.

I have 153 valid disk images from a total of 191 disks - that's an 80% success rate! That's not bad at all, for a collection of disks which has been stored in an attic for the last 10 years. It's even more remarkable when you consider that I have been using a disk imaging method (Amiga Explorer) which aborts at the first sign of a disk error. This was deliberate, to avoid unnecessary wear and tear on the Amiga's floppy disk drive if the disks were found to have deteriorated excessively.

There are now 38 disks for recovery, but it's not as bad as it sounds. For example, seven disks have filesystem errors which cause Amiga Explorer to hang as soon as the disk is inserted in the drive, and another disk causes Amiga Explorer to quit because the AmigaDOS volume name, which is used for the disk image filename, contains slashes which are invalid under Windows.

A fair number of the remaining disks will have checksum errors which can be resolved with retries, and even unrecoverable errors, if such are found, can occur in unassigned areas of a disk or may damage only files which are also present on another disk, and there is a fair amount of duplication in this collection.

Originally Posted by gggcumming

Received disk from Peter today (thanks)

Hi Glen,

Thanks for letting me know it arrived safely.

Originally Posted by gggcumming

There's some funny old stuff on there - including very early test builds of games - attached is a screenshot from a very early build of ABII - not very good!

You're just being modest. It doesn't look bad at all to me!

Originally Posted by gggcumming

Hmm - not sure there's much worth saving!

There you go again!

[seuden]

Awesome news prowler, some great work you've done!!

[Graham Humphrey]

That really is quite astonishing dedication Prowler, you deserve a knighthood or something.

[prowler]

In a quick session on my Amiga 1200 this evening while dinner was cooking, I recovered four of the remaining disks by resolving checksum errors with retries.

157 down, 34 to go...

[gggcumming]

Yes truly an effort beyond the call of duty!

Free beer next time your passing through Bristol!