SOS - Reviving a Power 3000 tape

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XavSnap
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Re: SOS - Reviving a Power 3000 tape

Post by XavSnap »

hi,

I asked to French community , and the Buffer problems is known and seem to be generated by the Windows driver!
french forum: <http://forum.system-cfg.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=8520>

In case of recording, you had to:
Turn off the virus protection, all background programs (including the screen-saver!) and don't use the mouse or the keyboard!

All actions on the computer seem to slow down or interact to the microprocessor's resources and Windows buffers recording.
:mrgreen:
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andejens
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Re: SOS - Reviving a Power 3000 tape

Post by andejens »

Hi XavSnap,

Thanks a lot for your research. It is highly appreciated. I have been using an older Lenovo T60p windows computer with Audacity. This setup has been pretty good previously and later in the day (of the SOS recordings) I managed to digitise a few other games successfully.

But the theory of missing bits in the buffer (and the explanation in the French forum) sounds very plausible. So I will try a different setup (Using a different computer).

Question to you all: What setup do you use to record the old tapes?

I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Best Regards
Anders
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andejens
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Re: SOS - Reviving a Power 3000 tape

Post by andejens »

OK - Managed to record the file on my MacBook Pro using a dodgy setup:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r0gx6uftkjxom ... 2.wav?dl=0

It produces a file that can be read into EightyOne - it displays a nice start screen, but crashes when I press the O or P key.
According to the instructions the game is meant to be played using a joysitk - which I couldn't figure out how to setup in the EightyOne emulator.
Do you think this yields an accurate recording of the programme?
Also do you think there is a difference between the Power 3000 ROM and the Lambda 8300 ROM?

/Anders
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XavSnap
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Re: SOS - Reviving a Power 3000 tape

Post by XavSnap »

Hi !
The wav file seem ok ... :D
SOS.p
(1.89 KiB) Downloaded 463 times
But, it crash on EO...
:evil:

This dump match with previous release...
it can't be due to a dump error in the machine code.
May be an EO hardware error.
:roll:

[EDIT] Try to choose the 2K or 48k ram pack! It's better...
CaptureEO.JPG
CaptureEO.JPG (26.39 KiB) Viewed 11419 times
May be a bad memory emulation in EO. :ugeek:
[EDIT]
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mrtinb
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Re: SOS - Reviving a Power 3000 tape

Post by mrtinb »

It looks like this game (https://youtu.be/utwo2jHx8fU). How ever it’s in Danish. It starts with TRYK SKYD which means PRESS FIRE. Then it runs a few seconds before it crashes.
Martin
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XavSnap
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Re: SOS - Reviving a Power 3000 tape

Post by XavSnap »

Yes, it's the same...
1.jpg
1.jpg (11.4 KiB) Viewed 11398 times
... But, with many other enemies!!! (UFOs ?)
:shock:
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Re: SOS - Reviving a Power 3000 tape

Post by mrtinb »

But looking at the description on YouTube:
An old game U.F.O. (year 1983) running on an emulated Lambda 8300 computer (EightyOne emulator - Thanks Mike Wynne for this very realistic emulator).

I had a copy of this old game, but it crashed almost instantly in the emulator.

Then some day I decided to try to fix the problem, and the process was basically:

1) load game in the EightyOne emulator and then soft reset before it would crash.
2) dump memory to file.
3) disassemble memory with the DASMx Z80 disassembler.
4) refresh my old machine language skillz :) while analyzing the program
5) isolate the problem to some ROM calls which led me to understand that the game was written to another ROM version than the one included with the emulator.
6) fix the ROM calls and assemble with the TNIASM Z80 assembler.
7) Hook up my digital joystick, but since there is no joystick support in the emulator, I had to install AutoHotKey, and then write a script to map joystick to keys.
8) Fire up the emulator, load my ROM fixed version of U.F.O - and play the game with my digital joystick - as I did 27 years ago :)

UPDATE: An error occurred during the disassembly - the enemies are not supposed to only appear on the top of the screen, they should appear at any altitude. I have fixed this in a later version.
It seems it will not work in the emulator because Lambda 8300 has different ROMs, and the one in Eighty One is a different one than the one this game is written for.
Martin
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Re: SOS - Reviving a Power 3000 tape

Post by mrtinb »

Great to se some Danish software. :-)
Martin
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Re: SOS - Reviving a Power 3000 tape

Post by andejens »

mrtinb wrote: Wed Dec 27, 2017 9:44 am Great to se some Danish software. :-)
Yes - that's basically what I'm after.
Question: I have a working Lambda 8300 computer - what would it take to dump the rom (If at all possible)? I'll fire it up and see if it can load the SOS game from tape.
It could be pretty cool to have an emulator that could run some of the rather few number of Danish games out there.

/Anders
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mrtinb
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Re: SOS - Reviving a Power 3000 tape

Post by mrtinb »

Here are 4 ROMs for Lambda 8300. Maybe 1 of them will work with the emulator?

https://k1.spdns.de/Vintage/Sinclair/80 ... Kong/ROMs/
Martin
https://zx.rtin.be
ZX81, Lambda 8300, Commodore 64, Mac G4 Cube
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