Hello all.
Like most of you i got my first computer young, in the 80s and it was named VIC-20. D___! i wanted a ColecoVision to play!
Well Ill make use of this thing - I tought. Then went all my next saturday mornings typing Tank-v-ufo/Killer Comet/Rocket Command and anything i could find (even apple II programs that of course didnt work).
Played Radar Ratrace/Jupiter Lander for much of the next year. Also got bootlegs of tapes from grade school buddies (no concept of piracy at this age heh). One game that i fancied a lot was named "Meteor Shower" and recently ive been tracking it on google for fun without much success.
So now im grown up and working full time as a C++ programmer doing pc/mac music apps. Sometimes i just want to calm down and relax, but since im a geek that just means hacking on some "not that usefull" (but fun nonetheless) hobby of messing around with my collection of vintage computers and consoles. (i bought a house and the first i did was to hunt down all the things i dreamed of in my youth and buying them cheap (the "golden" era of classic gaming collecting in 1999-2001 before the ebay profit makers.
Anyway, so there i was trying to digitise those old tapes without any success whatsoever with any TAP methods (well i need a better tape player). So i tried a few other means but fell on lots of unexpected problems. Since "digital archeology" is something we should all take seriously, wouldnt it be nice to start a FAQ or something to help more casual people to digitize their rare gems?
Anyway here goes my method (and problems i had). I already made myself a x1541 cable (yes the old type) so that i could transfer my old demos and creations from C64 to PC, so i figured i could dump all tape prg's using my vic-20's and 2 datasettes to 1541's then d64 and voila... but NO!!!
- i did forget to mention that ive never seen a VIC RAM exansion in my life?
No kid i knew in Montreal/Quebec had one back then so i didnt.
While Basic programs from memory to 1541 just saves fine, save"prog",8,1 ALL ML progs give "out of memory" errors when trying to save them. what??? how come, why aint there enough memory to save these while there is when its a basic program... That still puzzles me.
Does that trick work when you have just say 3k more of expansion?
Saving the program to ANOTHER tape works fine, its the save"ml-prog",8,1 or just ,8 that gives out of memory....
Ok, heck ill just try to load the prg on my C64 and transfer from there!
OK saves fine ,8,1. unplug C64, plug back vic-20 : load file, garbled graphics... (google like mad... ahhhh 0x0801 vs 0x1001 there it is!)
Oh, how am i supposed to save a program on my c64 that will load back on vic at the right address? Hours pass. Light bulb!. Ive got a cinemaware warpspeed cart that i can use to save regions of memory to be reloaded at different start adresses!
Ok that worked!!!, But thats a bit tedious to do for all of the programs i have.
So, saved all tape programs on C64, then to PC using trans64 (SC doesnt work for me) -> D64 editor, export all PRG's .. hex edit second byte to change the load addresses from 0x08 to 0x10's and voila!
I can finally play Meteor Shower again (and others lesser known ones!) when drag/dropping directly in VICE (unexpanded/ntsc)
So where do i dump my findings?
I still have to cross check to package only the ones that i cant find online.
David
Tale from a new guy
(I'm in Cornwall, Ontario).Welcome. Btw, a machine language monitor cart is a big help in saving things when you get out of memory.
PRG Starter - a VICE helper / Vic Software (Boray Gammon, SD2IEC music player, Vic Disk Menu, Tribbles, Mega Omega, How Many 8K etc.)
I wonder if you can use part of the video matrix as temporary RAM? You may try POKE56,31:POKE52,31 before loading the program. That would "mortgage" the first 256 bytes of video matrix for Basic (or ML) programs, a total of 3837 bytes free. If it is a Basic program and you run it like this, it is likely to crash out due to both Basic and video system using part of the same memory area.
Anders Carlsson
