Was Montezuma's Revenge available on disk for the Adam?

[nectarisneo]

Hello everyone. I finally managed to get my Adam floppy drive working thanks to the very helpful info that I got from members of this forum. Now I'm wondering if Montezuma's Revenge was ever available on floppy or part of a cartsoft or copycart compilation. Is there a site that has listings of the contents of those compilations? I tried sacnews but the listings were limited. Thanks.

[NIAD]

Montezuma's Revenge was never officially released on disk or data pack specifically for the ADAM... only on cartridge for the ColecoVision and then of course later for the ADAM. Actually, none of the cartridge based games where released by their respective creators. It took until 1986 for SOME of the ColecoVision carts to be legally made available on disk and data pack by TeleGames after they acquired the distribution rights to a fairly large selection.

 

All that aside, YES, there are numerous cartridge compilation disk images available that were made with different ADAM cart copier programs... MultiCart Backup and CopyCart+ were the most popular amongst ADAM users back in the day and there were also cart copiers available in CP/M.

 

You can even transfer a rom image that you have on your PC back to an ADAM disk and therefore assemble your own "Favorites" collections.

 

Check out: www.theadamresource.com and look under the Software Menu for a link to a huge archive!

[nectarisneo]

Thanks once again for the great info. Any advice on how to convert the cartridge roms to .dsk format? I downloaded Virtual Adam and was planning on running Copycart on it but I can't seem to get it to work. Is there a Windows utility for creating .dsk cartridge compilations from multiple cartridge games? Thanks.

[NIAD]

Follow the link provided below for all the conversion programs and instructions I provided previously in Post #7 of that thread. See how you do and if you have further questions, just post them here.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/177853-looking-for-specs-on-coleco-adam-floppy-drive-model-%237817-power-supply/

[nectarisneo]

Thanks again for the quick reply. I used dcopy over the weekend to create a working 5.25" floppy for use in my Adam drive and it worked great. Based on what I read in the Adam Connection manual there doesn't seem to be an option to create copycart style compilations from cartridge roms unless I'm missing something. I tried to run copycart+ on Virtual Adam but the program doesn't allow the mounting of a cartridge and a floppy image at the same time. Basically I'd like to create a copycart or multicart style disk with some of my favorite cartridge games for use in my Adam drive. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[NIAD]

Here we go:

 

Using CopyCart on the ADAM, prepare a blank disk by choosing to create a CopyCart media and choose to format it (or make it through Virtual ADAM and transfer the resulting disk image to a 5 1/4" disk with DCOPY)

Take that CopyCart ready disk and place it into your PC's 5 1/4" drive

Decide what rom files you want to transfer onto the CopyCart (ADAM) disk and make sure to keep track of the size of each and how much space you have available on the ADAM disk

Rename the rom files on the PC to the 8.3 filenaming standard (ie: antaradv.rom)

Execute "The ADAM Connection" (eos.exe)

Choose to "Transfer a file from MS-DOS to ADAM format" and enter the PC rom filename and then the ADAM filename (ie: antaradvC). REMEMBER to add the "C" at the end of the ADAM's filename... this is the file extension of CopyCart roms.

Continue on your merry way to fill up the rest of the disk!!!

 

While Virtual ADAM is a tremendous Frontend/Utility for ADAMem, it does have it's drawbacks/defeciencies that the author is aware of and can't fix due to how it runs through DOSbox. If you want to use the PC to create a CopyCart compilation, you will have to use ADAMem by itself (with or without the ADAMem Manager Frontend by Marcel) as it does allow you to mount a cartridge rom file and boot CopyCart from disk/ddp and then procede to dump the "mounted" cart to a CopyCart prepared disk/ddp.

 

It still amazes me what a fantastic job Marcel de Kogel did on this emulator even though he never had an ADAM.

Edited April 5, 2011 by NIAD

[nectarisneo]

Wow that sounds great. I just tried to format a "blank" disk with Copycart in Virtual Adam (to get familiar with the program) and after the format was complete I was asked for the # decimal blocks on drive. Do I need to complete that step or is just formatting sufficient? If I do need to provide that then how many blocks should I enter? Oh, and one more question. I tried to write the Zaxxon Super Game dsk to disk with dcopy and got an error message about the file being too large for the disk. I believe it said that there was an excess of 512 bytes or something like that. Should images that are larger than 160k be written to a double-sided floppy? If so, do I need to change the /H switch from /H:1 to /H:2? Sorry for the newbie questions but I really don't know very much about the Adam. The Colecovision was my first game system as a kid and I just recently started to play around with the Adam. Thanks. You've been a tremendous help. The Adam is definitely a cool machine.

[NIAD]

1) More than likely your ADAM Disk Drive is original/unmodified, so your response to the CopyCart question of decimal blocks is 160.

 

Homebrewers developed 5 1/4" 320K, 5 1/4" 360K and 3 1/2" 720K upgrade/mod kits for the standard ADAM Disk Drive and A LOT of these were sold... especially when person's drives broke down.

 

An ADAM disk is broken up into:

 

Block 0 - the boot block that is read when your press the Computer Reset (storage disks or data packs error out to SmartWRITER while programs/games like ADAMCalc or Super Buck Rogers read the boot block and proceed to load the program.

Block 1 - the Directory that has space for 35 files. Format and initialize a disk with a 2 block directory and you have room for about 70 files, 3 block directory about 110 files but let's not confuse the issue and stick with 1 block (1K) directories for now. The Operating System has a bug when you delete a file that the directory slot is still used, the file attribute is just changed to deleted. Also, if you write 35 1K files to a disk or data pack, you still have PLENTY of Free Blocks for storage of more files but no more space in the directory and your next save attempt will give you the "No More Room" error!!! Plenty of work-arounds for some of these oversights due to rushing the system out for the X-Mas '83 season and any seasoned ADAMite will be able to supply the info.

Block 2 thru 159 - area for storage of files or programs.

 

Concerning the Super Zaxxon disk image, it sounds like you got a file with some kind of 512K Header or Footer added to it. The disk image should be 160K (163,840 bytes when you check the files properties). If the filesize is 256K, then you have the datapack version and you have to break the DDP image up into two files to transfer back to 2 ADAM disks and then rebuild on a datapack (the datapack has to be a Right Directory DDP... used for all Super Games and a few other titles that made load times faster than the standard Center Directory DDP).

 

No problem re. the questions, it's been a lot of fun passing on my knowledge of the system and helping out like I did in the 80's and 90's when running a Users Group.

 

I owned and used many other systems from that era (C=64, Apple II, TRS-80 and later the Amiga and early PCs), but the ADAM was and still is my all-time favorite and "YES", it is a cool machine that has a lot more under the hood than people have ever given it credit for. Just bad timing with it's release (towards the end of the 8-bit era and beginning of 16-bit EVEN though 8-bitters went on for many more years) and management's rush to get them out for the X-Mas '83 season instead of properly debugging everything. It would have been nice if the power supply wasn't housed in the printer either, but Coleco had to finds ways to cut costs to keep their vision of an all-in-one system package feasible.

[nectarisneo]

Thank you once again for the extremely detailed response. I greatly appreciate all of your help. I'll follow the instructions that you provided and report back with the results.

[nectarisneo]

Once again your instructions were perfect. I was able to create my own custom game compilation disk and enjoy it. I used a Windows 98 pc and was able to open an MS-DOS window with the various programs without any issues. As a side note, I don't have a 360k pc floppy drive but my 1.2M drive seems to work. Thanks so much for the help.

[NIAD]

Once again your instructions were perfect. I was able to create my own custom game compilation disk and enjoy it. I used a Windows 98 pc and was able to open an MS-DOS window with the various programs without any issues. As a side note, I don't have a 360k pc floppy drive but my 1.2M drive seems to work. Thanks so much for the help.

Glad to hear all went well.

 

I have heard from numerous people that the 5 1/4" 1.2Mb drive doesn't write to ADAM disks very reliably or at all so I'm interested to know what brand of drive you have.

[nectarisneo]

I just checked my 5.25" pc floppy drive and got the following information from the label on it. I've also attached a photo of the label itself.

 

TEAC FD-55GFR

Part no. 19307351-49

 

The drive came from a 486SX that I found on the curb on my way to work one morning. I'm glad that I didn't recycle it. I may try to find a 360k pc drive in the future but I can say from experience that this particular TEAC model does work for writing ADAM disk images. I guess that I got lucky. Thanks again.

[jblenkle]

Old thread here, but I'll throw in my 2 cents...Teacs are one of the few 1.2mb drives that may write ADAM disks reliably...but only some of them, not all of them. I was advised by someone -- I forget who -- to always use Teac drives whether 360k or 1.2mb for working with ADAM disks. I personally use a Teac 360k in an older computer using DOS to read and write ADAM disks.

 

I just checked my 5.25" pc floppy drive and got the following information from the label on it. I've also attached a photo of the label itself.

 

TEAC FD-55GFR

Part no. 19307351-49

 

The drive came from a 486SX that I found on the curb on my way to work one morning. I'm glad that I didn't recycle it. I may try to find a 360k pc drive in the future but I can say from experience that this particular TEAC model does work for writing ADAM disk images. I guess that I got lucky. Thanks again.