[Coco] Infocom text adventures

Arthur Flexser flexser at fiu.edu
Mon Apr 28 03:30:17 EDT 2014


It wouldn't surprise me if the CoCo versions of the Infocom games were
written with a modular screen driver, to ease porting the game to different
platforms.
So the task of getting it to use an 80-column screen may amount to just
having to modify one routine.

Art


On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 3:01 AM, Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com> wrote:

>
> Nick, you're right, the Infocom games run under RSDOS but boot with the
> dos command.
> I imagine since they are ML, they probably write text directly to the text
> screen area and avoid RSDOS rom overhead (I would), so converting them to
> an 80 col Coco 3 screen would be no easy task. You would need the sources
> (or good disassemblies) and knowledge of how to write to an 80 col HW
> screen in ML.
> If ya wanna try... The DOS cmd loads track 34 (all 18 sectors) starting at
> $2600, then executes: equivelent to "EXEC&H2600". What's at $2600 is most
> likely a "loader" that loads the game from the disk and jumps to it's start
> address. It the same way OS9 starts.
>
> If they were in OS9, it would be a trival task to make them 80 col :-)
>
>
> Bill Pierce
> "Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
>
>
> My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
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>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nickma2 <nickma2 at optusnet.com.au>
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Mon, Apr 28, 2014 2:24 am
> Subject: [Coco] Infocom text adventures
>
>
> Are the CoCo version of the infocom text adventures (Zork etc) written
> under OS-9  ?
>
> I know you use DOS to boot the disks but is I don't see any OS-9
> prompt. I therefore assume it is has a custom boot sector and loads
> the M/L directly.
>
> Has anyone tried to change these to use an 80 column screen mode on
> the CoCo3?
>
> Nick
>
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