[Coco] DS-69B Reverse Engineering/GofD Archive

[Andrew]

Joel,

I have (somewhere) a DS-69B and a copy of all the software - however, it 
has been a long while (at least 14 years) since I even plugged it in, I 
don't know if it still works or not. Plus, right now I don't have the 
time to contribute anything to such an RE project, though it does 
interest me.

If you can wait, let me get back to you on this at a later point 
(probably a few to several moons from now). I am sorry I can't offer you 
more on this...

--

BTW - regarding the GofD archive and getting it to run on a real CoCo, 
from what I remember about my original copy, it wouldn't run properly on 
a CoCo 3, just a CoCo 2. Whether that applies anymore with the version 
that runs under an emulator, I really don't know. I don't know if the 
game (emulated or not) does special "tricks" that only work with a CoCo 
1/2 (some games back in the day did this), or if the copy protection 
scheme got in the way (maybe timing issues?), or what - but I do 
remember there being an issue with running it on a CoCo 3.

I also still have all the BASIC routines Tim Lindner sent me to pull 
what I could off of my original floppies and such, but I couldn't tell 
you exactly how they work, other than they put the WD controller in the 
disk controller in a "wierd" mode to change how it read the tracks to 
check the copy protection, etc. I don't know if the Disto controller 
could do this mode or not (it was peculiar to the WD chipset used in the 
FD-50x controllers).

It would be best to contact Tim about this issue, as he knows how the 
copy protection scheme used by Diecom works (he needed to get them 
running for the MESS emulator). He also should have copies of the code 
we used, plus a lot more. He told me that it might be possible to force 
the controller into the proper mode and write out the tracks in the same 
format as they were on the original floppies, but that he used his 
CatWeasel for that instead.

If you do manage to get a floppy version working (especially on a CoCo 
3), please let me know - I would love to play GofD on my original 
hardware again (emulation looks great, but it just isn't quite the same).

Something else I would like to see would be a patch for it from PMODE 4 
to PMODE 3 - I don't know if this is possible or not, but it would be 
great if it was so that it could be played on an RGB monitor.

-- Andrew L. Ayers
    Glendale (Phoenix), Arizona