Use Cursors To Scroll Text Use Cursors To Scroll Text Tape To Disc Transfer. Tape To Disc Transfer. Messages sent by Albert Schofield. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ISSUE 50 ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: D7X and 999 From: K3H (ALBERT SCHOFIELD) Subject: SNAPSHOT DISC UTILITY. Hello Martin. Welcome to the club. I read your article with great interest. I too am an avid SNAPSHOTter. I usually use it as a sort of half-way house for getting a game to work on disc unaided. The main reason that SNAPHOT will not work on some programs is because the *WAIT command uses the 6522 USER VIA TIMER. This unit is used mainly to drive the printer and user port. Unfotunately some games also use this unit and this interferes with the *WAIT command. Sometimes SNAPSHOT will not shoot at all. Sometimes it shoots repeatedly and the solution is, as you say, to press break at the right time. Sometimes it shoots much too early and the solution then is to use a much higher number with the *WAIT command. Sometimes as high as forty or fifty. When SNAPSHOT does not shoot at all this can sometimes be got round in various ways. It is true that SNAPSHOT will not normally work with ELITE but if you can get SNAPSHOT to shoot before ELITE uses the 6522 timer then you will succeed. When ELITE is first run, the usual ACORNSOFT screen comes up with a window in the middle containing the title, in this case ELITE. This stays on the screen for about five seconds. During this time SNAPSHOT will work. This calls for a bit of tricky timing and several attempts may be necessary. I usually use *WAIT 2, then wait for about seventeen seconds and then enter *ELITE2. The disc cannot be BOOTed as pressing break disables SNAPSHOT but *EXEC !BOOT may be used. I have the superior software version of ELITE but I should think that it is basically the same as the original Acornsoft version. Also some games use the 6522 timer in the instructions or the initial screen. In this case just load the game itself. Sometimes SNAPSHOT will not shoot at the first attempt but will succeed at the second attempt so don't give up too easily. Finally if you have problems transfering any particular program I am always ready to give help. More next month. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ISSUE 51 ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: K3H (ALBERT SCHOFIELD) Subject: TAPE TO DISC ON THE BBC'B' Some cassette based games have very short data streams inserted into them. These are easily missed when transferring to disc and of course the game will not work without them. One such game is CAVEMAN CAPERS. This game is in six parts, CAVEMAN, CAVEMA2, CAVE2, CAPERS2, TUNE where the second half is a data stream and the last part is START. CAVE2 is the section that loads in both parts of TUNE and in the disc version is not required. So to transfer CAVEMAN CAPERS to disc proceed as follows. The first part CAVEMAN is an ordinary basic program so load this in and add the following two lines:- 57*KEY0 *LOAD CAPERS2|M*LOAD TUNE|M MODE7:*START|M 59*FX138,0,128 Then save it to disc as CAVEMAN. Load in the second part CAVEMA2 using *LOAD""1900. Then enter 60 to delete line 60 and save to disc using *SAVE CAVEMA2 1900+118D 8023. The cassette should now be at the start of CAVE2 so put the computer into TAPE mode, type *RUN and load in CAVE2, CAPERS2, TUNE including the short data stream. As soon as the screen clears and 'Searching' appears at the top right hand side of the screen, press ESCAPE, type *DISC and save the now complete file TUNE to disc using *SAVE TUNE 600+130. Now rewind the cassette to the start of the file CAPERS2 and load this in using *LOAD""1900. Then save it to disc using:- *SAVE CAPERS2 1900+4000 164D 1600. Load in the last file START from cassette using *LOAD""1900. Save this to disc using:- *SAVE START 1900+500 164D 7B00. Chaining CAVEMAN should now load and run CAVEMAN CAPERS from disc. More next month. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ISSUE 52 ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: K3H (ALBERT SCHOFIELD.) Subject: TAPE TO DISC ON THE BBC 'B' Some cassette based games can only be made to work on disc by loading part of the game via Sideways Ram. COMBAT LYNX is one such game. This game is in three parts, COMBAT, LYNX and LYNX1. Part one is a basic program and *RUNs the second part. The second part is the loader for the third part. It is locked but works just as well when unlocked. The third part is also locked but will not work when unlocked. It is also a very long file (&7C00). The load address is &400. It therefore needs downloading but because of its length, I have found this impossible to do. Therefore it has to be loaded from Sideways Ram and locked in the Rom Filing system. COMBAT LYNX can of course be transferred to disc using SNAPSHOT. But this causes corruption at the bottom of the screen and also the flashing cursor is present. So for a perfect load SWR loading must be used for the last part. So load in the first part. Delete line 20 and add the following lines:- 20 *KEY10 CLS|M*LOAD LYNX|M*ROM|M *OPT1,2|MCALL&2C00|M 30 ?&FF30=0:*LOAD LYNX3R 8000 40 ?&FF31=0:*LOAD LYNX2R 8000 50 ?&FF32=0:*LOAD LYNX1R 8000 60 CALL!-4 Save this to disc as COMBAT. This file works with the Watford Rom/Ram board. Otherwise you may have to alter lines 30, 40 and 50 to suit your SWR. Load the second part from cassette with an unlocking utility using *LOAD""2C00 and save it to disc using *SAVE LYNX 2C00+2C00. The third part, due to its long length, will have to be transferred to disc using the one block at a time. The method which I described in an earlier article. Also because the file is locked, the file that does the transferring will have to be combined with an unlocking utility. The file can now be saved into three ROM images and also locked. To do this I use the excellent ROM Image Generator by Mark Lock from the november 1987 issue of BEEBUG magazine. This allows you to lock the files and also continue from one rom image to another with long files. Save the rom images as LYNX1R, LYNX2R and LYNX3R and it is essential that the long file itself is saved as LYNX1. It is also essential that the rom images are loaded in the correct sequence. The first file (COMBAT) does this. Chaining COMBAT will now load the rom images and *RUN the game. LYNX1 will now load from the RFS in about twenty seconds and give a perfect display. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, PRESS SPACE PRESS SPACE