Sam the Little Spaceman

Anything QL Software or Programming Related.
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Chr$
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Re: Sam the Little Spaceman

Post by Chr$ »

vanpeebles wrote:Wow! I’ve wanted to play this for years!
£5 prize to the first one to write a walk-through ;)


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mk79
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Re: Sam the Little Spaceman

Post by mk79 »

M68008 wrote:The mdump utility creates microdrive images in a format different from the QLay one. For example, it includes multiple copies of bad sectors in case this can help data recovery later.
Is the mdump utility somewhere available to download? Unfortunately couldn't find it.

Cheers, Marcel


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tofro
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Re: Sam the Little Spaceman

Post by tofro »

mk79 wrote:
M68008 wrote:The mdump utility creates microdrive images in a format different from the QLay one. For example, it includes multiple copies of bad sectors in case this can help data recovery later.
Is the mdump utility somewhere available to download? Unfortunately couldn't find it.

Cheers, Marcel
It is part of Daniele's Q-Emulator install - Which can be downloaed from his site.


ʎɐqǝ ɯoɹɟ ǝq oʇ ƃuᴉoƃ ʇou sᴉ pɹɐoqʎǝʞ ʇxǝu ʎɯ 'ɹɐǝp ɥO
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Chr$
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Re: Sam the Little Spaceman

Post by Chr$ »

Yeah, it's in QL Software/FileUtil/ of the Q-emuLator install dir.


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bwinkel67
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Re: Sam the Little Spaceman

Post by bwinkel67 »

So far I've only been able to get it to run on Q-emuLator from MDV1_. I even tried mounting the same directory on both MDV1_ and MDV2_ and changed both boot and load_sam2 to run form MDV2_ and it still didn't work (the thought was that maybe it hits MDV1_ and when it can't find it it quits). So upon further review, after running load_sam2, it doesn't seem to hit any more microdrives but it won't run. Is this some sort of copy protection? I had planned to see if there was anything in the binary files but since it's not even trying to hit MDV1_ after the load and basically just hangs, I'm a bit of a loss.
Last edited by bwinkel67 on Fri Jul 31, 2020 2:16 am, edited 1 time in total.


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mk79
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Re: Sam the Little Spaceman

Post by mk79 »

tofro wrote:It is part of Daniele's Q-Emulator install - Which can be downloaed from his site.
lol, I've been looking all over the net for a good dump utility and now it turns out I already had it on my hard-drive for years :D Thanks.


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Outsoft
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Re: Sam the Little Spaceman

Post by Outsoft »

Chr$ wrote:Sam the Little Spaceman by Aholasoft of Finnland. Is it really MIA?

I appear to have a working (but non original) copy that I have successfully recovered today.

sam_little_spaceman1.jpg
Great Job!!!

Need to check If we dumped it or not but seems not ;)


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Re: Sam the Little Spaceman

Post by RWAP »

bwinkel67 wrote:So it looks like the game will run on JSU ROM. I switched the JS ROM to the JSU ROM on the Q-emuLator and got it to work. I believe the game needs to start from MDV1_. I looked through all the binary code and couldn't find any reference to devices but it will not work from MDV2_ onward. I also tried FLP1_ and that didn't work either. The clone program makes a copy of the game and it does ask which device to boot from but then only modifies boot and load_sam2 and changing to anything other than MDV1_ causes it not to load, so not sure how useful the clone program is.

I haven't looked through it in a HEX editor. I did hack the Tanks game back in the 90's to work with a US NTSC TV (to stop it auto-switching to monitor mode) and I recall having to step through it with a debugger (I still have the debugger) to figure out when it was switching screens. I suppose if I get some time I can do that here as well.
RWAP wrote:You can tell whether it is the original version or the one I updated
Since you had patched it before, do you have any insight?
I just had a look at this - the code does not ring too many bells - it has to be loaded to a specific address in memory. I think this is my updated version as it runs without issue on a JS ROM but I can't be sure.

It works from mdv2_ etc in q-emulator by changing the device in boot and load_sam2 files, starting in 128K and disabling Toolkit II.


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Re: Sam the Little Spaceman

Post by nikosdoykas »

in qubide with minerva+tk2 or jm the ql say bad parameter on load restart bin...
its an mdi image ot a img...?
or a trick to say that we have only 128kb?


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Chr$
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Re: Sam the Little Spaceman

Post by Chr$ »

Outsoft wrote: Great Job!!!
Thanks Simone.
nikosdoykas wrote:in qubide with minerva+tk2 or jm the ql say bad parameter on load restart bin...
its an mdi image ot a img...?
or a trick to say that we have only 128kb?
TK2 is no problem. Minerva may be the issue.

The 128k reboot routine does actually work with qemulator but I don't get anywhere using the Minerva ROM (for qemulator).
It's an mdv image made using mdump - supported by qemulator and vDrive. As mentioned above by the qemulator creator: "On other systems, you can access them through the MDI driver (available on this page: http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/utils/index.html)".
(I have no experience with the MDI driver yet).


https://QXL.WIN
Collector of QL related computers, accessories and QL games/software.
Ask me about felt pads - I can cut them to size and they have proved excellent for mdv data recovery.
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