[Coco] COCO to PC transfer and Using VCC

[Allan Chaney]

JP,

Thanks for the info on Drivewire.  I'm going to give it a try.

The game that was published by Sundog Systems did contain copy protection on
the Player Disk side.  The City disk side of the floppy has not copy
protection.  And of course I have a copy of the commercial version.  But I
also have all of my unprotected copies with 5 years worth of versions as I
worked on the game.  Luckily I kept my final disks in a zip lock bag along
with the commercial version and the manual.  That really helped preserve the
disks.  I have about 100 disks that were not "zip locked" that contains the
source code.  Most of these disks are unusable.

The file formats are all standard .bin with 3 small files in Basic.  I wrote
the entire game in 6809 assembly using Edtasm+.  Well I originally wrote it
in Basic, realized that wasn't going to work and then spent about 3 years
converting the whole thing into Assembly while in college.

My goal is to get the game up and running in Emulation and release it to
Public Domain.  It's certainly not worth anything except of course to me
personally and people nostalgic for retro gaming. 

I'll keep in touch as I progress.

Allan

-----Original Message-----
From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On
Behalf Of J.P. Samson
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 9:07 PM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [Coco] COCO to PC transfer and Using VCC

Another option for getting the game into your Windows PC is to use  
DriveWire:
http://www.frontiernet.net/~mmarlette/Cloud-9/Software/DriveWire.html

It'll let you hook up your CoCo to a PC via a serial port (using a  
Serial-to-USB converter if necessary).  The PC then becomes a file  
server for the CoCo.  You can copy files from floppy disks through the  
CoCo onto the PC and vice versa.

The big issues are whether your original floppy disks containing the  
game are copy protected, and if you used a non-standard format for  
storing data on the disks (e.g. abnormal sector sizes).  In these  
cases, it is a bigger challenge getting the game onto a Windows PC and  
working in an emulator.

There are some other options, such as hooking up a 5 1/4" 360k- 
compatible floppy drive into your PC and using some CoCo-oriented disk  
copying utilities.  I'm not familiar with what this involves.

I'm sure somebody out there has tried exactly what you want to do, so  
someone may even have Windows PC disk images ready to go.  The VCC  
emulator is usually pretty good for compatibility, but I've found that  
not everything will run in it.  All you can do is try--either it'll  
work or it won't!  I wish it did a better job with color artifacting  
(like the Java-based Mocha CoCo I/II emulator).  And yes, VCC will let  
you "flip" disk images on the fly, as you require--disk access  
shouldn't be an issue.

You may also wish to consider releasing your game into the public  
domain as some authors have now done.  (See
http://nitros9.lcurtisboyle.com/approvals/approvals.html)

-- JP


On Sep 10, 2008, at 7:44 PM, Allan Chaney wrote:
> The game I wrote is called "Paladin's Legacy" and it was published  
> by Sundog
> Systems in 1989. It is an RPG adventure/action game for COCO I,I and  
> III
> with 64k and floppy drive.  I would like to preserve and run the  
> game in a
> modern PC system using VCC Emulator.  After reading about VCC at
> vcc6809.bravehost.com, if I understand correctly, I should be able  
> to run my
> game on my Windows XP PC with VCC.  VCC will create a virtual disk  
> that
> handles the floppy disk access from my game. However my problem is  
> getting
> my game files transferred to a windows PC from the COCO.  The files  
> that
> make up my game are almost all Binary (.bin) with a few basic  
> files.  I also
> still have the source files (.asc).  I don't have a PC with 5.25  
> floppy so I
> am unable to use VCC to read the old Tandy Floppy Drive (assuming  
> that that
> is even possible).
>
> I visited www.thesvd.com  and found a product called SVD (Semi- 
> Virtual Disk)
> that will copy images of files/floppies from an old COCO to a modern  
> Windows
> PC over RS232 (or in my case a usb-RS232 converter).  I don't have a  
> PC with
> RS232 but apparently I can use a USB-RS232 converter.
>
> My real question is if I buy SVD and copy the images of my game  
> disks to my
> PC, do you think VCC will run my game?  The game uses a lot of disk  
> access
> since it's a two sided RPG.  The game requires you to flip the disk  
> when you
> enter cities and then flip back when you go back to the main world  
> map.


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