Re: Sam the Little Spaceman
Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:13 am
£5 prize to the first one to write a walk-throughvanpeebles wrote:Wow! I’ve wanted to play this for years!
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Sam the Little Spaceman
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Re: Sam the Little Spaceman
Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 1:39 pm
Is the mdump utility somewhere available to download? Unfortunately couldn't find it.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.
Cheers, Marcel
Re: Sam the Little Spaceman
Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 2:23 pm
It is part of Daniele's Q-Emulator install - Which can be downloaed from his site.mk79 wrote:Is the mdump utility somewhere available to download? Unfortunately couldn't find it.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.
Cheers, Marcel
Re: Sam the Little Spaceman
Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 3:31 pm
Yeah, it's in QL Software/FileUtil/ of the Q-emuLator install dir.
Re: Sam the Little Spaceman
Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 12:19 am
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.
Re: Sam the Little Spaceman
Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 12:45 am
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 yearstofro wrote:It is part of Daniele's Q-Emulator install - Which can be downloaed from his site.
Thanks.Re: Sam the Little Spaceman
Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 7:07 am
Great Job!!!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
Need to check If we dumped it or not but seems not
Re: Sam the Little Spaceman
Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 1:27 pm
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.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.
Since you had patched it before, do you have any insight?RWAP wrote:You can tell whether it is the original version or the one I updated
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.
Re: Sam the Little Spaceman
Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2020 9:15 am
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?
its an mdi image ot a img...?
or a trick to say that we have only 128kb?
Re: Sam the Little Spaceman
Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2020 8:13 pm
Thanks Simone.Outsoft wrote: Great Job!!!
TK2 is no problem. Minerva may be the issue.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?
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).