[Coco] Playing games from floppies

[Arthur Flexser]

You don't need an MPI or Y-cable to transfer a cartridge game to disk.  You
can instead save the game to cassette first, after disabling the autostart
with tape, then offset load it from cassette to $2000 or somewhere and
append a loader that copies ROM to RAM and moves the game back to $C000.

Art

On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 10:57 PM, Andrew <keeper63 at cox.net> wrote:

> Kandur,
>
> Back in the day (well, I still have it actually) with my CoCo 2 and 3 as a
> kid, I had more than a few floppies with cartridge games on them. If you
> look thru back issues of the Rainbow, Hot CoCo and the like, you should be
> able to find the technique on how to transfer them. IIRC, you need to have
> an MPI or a Y-adapter for the cartridge slot so you can have both the
> floppy controller and the cartridge plugged in at the same time.
>
> There was a pin on the end of the cartridge that you had to cover with a
> piece of tape (IIRC, it was some kind of interrupt pin). This would allow
> the CoCo to boot up with the floppy controller, and not boot the cartridge,
> but by virtue of being on the bus, it was still mapped into memory, I
> think. You could then easily save the binary image from memory to the
> floppy.
>
> This was only valid though for the simpler cartridges that didn't use any
> fancy address/mapping hardware for more memory space (I think games like
> Thexder, Pitfall, RoboCop, etc - used this scheme; I recall an article
> about it in the Rainbow as well, from probably 1987-90 or so); basically
> almost all of the old-school 4 and 8k cartridges could be transferred like
> this - and they floated all over the BBS network back then, too.
>
> As such, there really isn't a need to worry about going at it alone,
> yourself, unless you have something that isn't in the archives already (and
> if you do, we would love to hear about it - likely more than a few of us
> would help with preservation if needed).
>
> But if you browse the archives, you can generally find cartridge dumps -
> most end in .BIN or such; I don't recall the exact process for loading them
> from a floppy (LOADM "GAMENAME.BIN" - probably needs an offset, maybe a
> CLEAR or EXEC at some address?) - but again, scour the Rainbow and such for
> info - it's out there.
>
> So - how to get them to your CoCo floppy drive? That's - a bit more
> complicated. As others have said, DriveWire is probably the easiest and
> best way today, but if you didn't want to go that route...
>
> ...build a PC. Basically, you want to make a "retro" DOS PC with a 5.25
> floppy drive; you'll want (ideally) a DSDD drive, and you'll need a
> motherboard or floppy controller to plug it into; an old Pentium box would
> be perfect. Install DOS (a copy of 6.22 would be best - FreeDOS might also
> work, or Caldera OpenDOS if you're feeling adventurous), then set up one of
> the DOS emulators (I am partial to Jeff Vavasour's work, personally), plus
> all of the DOS tools.
>
> Format a floppy on the CoCo, then pop it in on the PC and start up the
> emulator; make sure you can mount and read/write to the physical floppy
> drive on the PC, and that you can read what you wrote on the CoCo. Get that
> working - it isn't difficult.
>
> Also on the PC - install a DOS supported ethernet card (an old Intel or
> 3COM EISA card is perfect if you can find one), then search around for the
> various ethernet DOS tools out there; there's one out there that's an FTP
> server that you can setup, then use an FTP client on your main PC (or Mac
> or whatnot) to transfer files to the DOS machine. From there, you can then
> stop the server (you can only do one thing at a time under DOS), then use
> the CoCo/DOS floppy tools to transfer the file to your RSDOS formatted
> floppy, and test it out on the emulator. If it works there, then try it on
> the actual machine.
>
> Otherwise, you might also set up a 3.5" floppy drive on the same machine,
> and transfer from the internet PC to the DOS PC via 3.5" floppies (you may
> need to find a USB 3.5" floppy drive for your modern box, if it doesn't
> have a floppy drive controller on the mobo).
>
> Another possibility - which I've never tried, btw - is to set up DOS to be
> able to read/write to USB memory sticks (thumb drives); such drivers do
> exist for DOS, though they are a tad experimental still. But - with that,
> you could dump the file to the USB stick and then read it back on the DOS
> machine.
>
> Another possibility (though DriveWire would be a better way) would be to
> set up a null-modem cable from the PC to the CoCo, then run term software
> on both ends and transfer from the PC to the CoCo using ZMODEM or similar...
>
> On 12/19/2017 06:39 PM, coco-request at maltedmedia.com wrote:
>
>> Message: 8
>> Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2017 13:35:49 -0800
>> From: Kandur<k at qdv.pw>
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts<coco at maltedmedia.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Playing games from floppies
>> Message-ID:<1519025078.20171219133549 at qdv.pw>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>>
>> Rich kids bought (and still buying:)  game cartridges,
>> poor kids like me bought floppies. That's why I have
>> over 100 floppies with coco stuff on them, but no games at all.
>> Can you tell me how can I  put games onto my floppies?
>> Thanks anyway.
>>
>> Kandur
>>
>
> --
> Andrew L. Ayers
> Glendale, Arizona
> https://github.com/andrew-ayers
> http://www.phoenixgarage.org/
>
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