Posted By
Luca
on 2010-07-14
06:08:53
 |  Bard's Tale 1 and 2
Ok, it seems I'm the one and only owner of a working version of Bard's Tale and Bard's Tale II, I remember they've been sent to me eons ago by Nukeman (probably).
Both had been converted by Csory, whereas Bard's Tale III had been converted by Pigmy instead.
Csory put a terrible disk protection on those two games, applying a code 22 disk error on some sectors (e.g.: all the tracks get error at sector 03) of characters and scenarios disks, we dunno why, maybe his intention was to limit the spreading of them (for some commercial/pd purposes?).
Both the games run on the original machine, with some bland flaws in Bard's Tale.
The last beta of Star Commander transfer tool contains an important fix: now it regularly copies sectors showing that kind of error codes, whereas it used to skip'em in the previous versions. Due to this, I checked the D64 images I did in the past years for those to games and, yes, the implied sectors were missing!
Then I copied'em again with the new SC beta, and removed the errors with DirMaster: the new D64 images appear to be now complete even in the original code 22 sectors.
Unfortunately, emulators still refuse to load the games when the disk flipping occurs, bad luck, my hopes were so high! 
Now, the question: do I've done something wrong (removing the error code for example)? Could it be an emulator's flaw? Help!
The new images are on both Plus/4World and Othersi.de sites:
http://plus4.othersi.de/plus4/Games/b/Bard's_Tale.zip
http://plus4.othersi.de/plus4/Games/b/Bard's_Tale_II.zip
On Rulez.org you can download the early D64 versions and see their BAMs (code errors, structures and missing sector contents).
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2010-07-14
08:05:14
 | Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
The note on Bard's Tale 1 "The current disk image is broken and will not load past init screen." is somewhat incorrect. I get to the point where it asks for a character disk. But I think that is what you mean, right?
I'm not sure what Csory did but have you tried creating a .G64 image (not even sure if Star Commander supports that)? Usually, those keep everything "strange" the way it is. Some Kingsoft disk images are like that (they have some kind of copy protection as well).
Also I'd try it again without "fixing" anything. At least the Kingsoft protection will check for those errors.
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Posted By
siz
on 2010-07-14
10:47:43
| Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
Csory did a conversion for Bard's Tale III too. It can handle 1551 and 256k RAM (only the Csory type one) as cache. When I got it from him I had to fix it to work on a stock (unexpanded) machine.  Unfortunately I tried to create images from the disks but they are unreadable. Or simply it has the same protection that you mentioned?
I don't know, I'll check it when I'll have some time after my vacation that starts tomorrow.
Edit: I probably has Bard's Tale 1 and 2 from Csory too but not sure about them. 
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2010-07-14
11:18:52
| Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
siz: check your BT1 and BT2 disks. Maybe you can back them up.
I updated the notes on Bard's Tale 1 to reflect the current status. Both YAPE and Plus4Emu behave the same way: they don't accept the character disk. Maybe it's an emulation error, but it's more likely to be a problem with the disk image.
If the original disks works for Luca, then the original game CAN read it and CAN accept it. Which means some other program can read it too, and then back it up somehow. I think we need someone with deep knowledge of the disk stuff to help out. Gaia? TLC? Crown? Anyone?
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Posted By
Chronos
on 2010-07-14
12:35:14
 | Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
Meanwhile you can check:
http://www.bardstale.de/
there are some rumours about copy protection in the c64 version, maybe Csory converted it aswell
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2010-07-14
12:53:48
| Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
Yape can handle .G64 images and so does Star Commander (EDIT: Not, yet. See follow up posts). So why not giving this a try?
If the disks works on the real iron, it's probably just a "problem" of copying it correctly.
Edited to correct false assumptions.
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Posted By
plbyrd
on 2010-07-14
16:15:06
| Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
You should also try making the disk image with CBM-Command as it doesn't attempt to fix disk errors while generating a D64.
Be sure to get the most current release on the downloads page:
http://cbmcommand.codeplex.com
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Posted By
SVS
on 2010-07-15
02:17:33
 | Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
Why don't ask Csory or Nukeman theyselves?
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Posted By
Luca
on 2010-07-15
03:00:59
| Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
Does Star Commander produce .G64 disk images? Sure? "MNIB" would eventually create a G64. but not with my X1541 cable, I suppose. The valid alternative should be six-packing the disks on a real c64, then transfer the 6 files and rebuild some valid .G64 images.
I really would try all of these but yesterday my graphics board died and my PC doesn't wanna light on...
In case of success, someone with a protected copy of Planetfall will have no excuse to copy that ;)
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2010-07-15
05:31:02
| Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
Luca,
you are right. SC doesn't support GCR stuff, yet. But, hopefully, it's coming soon (from SC's doc "Coming soon" section: High Priority Changes "Support for GCR-coded disk images.")
I was mislead by some posts and should have checked more carefully
The sixpack workaround is at least known to work (and has been discussed here:
http://plus4world.powweb.com/forum/7391)
Anyway, this doesn't change the route: Go .g64 And good luck with your PC!
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2010-07-15
07:12:10
| Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
Don't you guys know nibtools? I used that to convert some of my G64's (like Hulk) to D64 (with sector error info). Sometimes it is just enough to have the sector error info. Hulk, for example, does work with D64 only, too. Here is the nibtools readme page:
http://c64preservation.com/files/nibtools/readme.txt
But of course, we'd better need a working G64 first...
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Posted By
siz
on 2010-07-27
16:03:21
| Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
I'm back from holiday and found some time to dig up my old disks and make opencbm work on my replacement motherboard. (In case someone has similar problems: I had to turn off ECP mode on the parallel port and set it back to normal bi-directional to make it work).
I used to create images with nibtools what was mentioned by Gaia.
I could create nib images from Bard's Tale II and convert them to D64 files with nibconv.
There was no read error on either disks and the character disk is usable too.
I also created images for Csory's version of Bard's Tale III.
All D64 images were tested in YaPE with both 1541 and 1551 drive emulation.
Everything seems to work just fine.
Tomorrow (or maybe tonight) I'll dig some more because I couldn't find Bard's Tale 1 but it must be somewhere near the other ones. 
edit:
Where can I send or upload the images? Should I send them to Csabo or Luca? Or...?
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Posted By
Luca
on 2010-07-27
18:08:13
| Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
Great news siz! You can use the Plus4 World Uploader feature in the FEATURES link up here to upload it directly in the /incoming folder.
I did it too, right tonight. I've built up one of my C64s, sixpacked the disks, obtained the G64s and then the D64s. And in any case with any emulator, they still don't work, but I've kept these new images as the best at the moment available, and changed the ZIPs on Othersi.de with new ones, containing both D64s/G64s. The protection has been perfectly copied, but they still don't work. Little improvement in Bard's Tale, using G64s you can reach the first choice of disk copying, but it does not load the game itself
Update: siz we got 2 and 3, they're perfectly working...and they have a different directory and no protection at all compared to mine! This means that the original ones have been hacked at that time. I decided to keep'em all in the same ZIP, both working and not working.
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Posted By
siz
on 2010-07-28
07:05:59
| Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
Probably the versions I have are the latest ones because these include 1551 and 256k RAM expansion support as well. Maybe when Csory made these changes he found the protection and removed it instead of making it work on the 1551.
My disks are directly from him. He copied them for me sometime in late 1993 or early 1994.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2010-07-28
07:10:14
| Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
Do you have Bard's Tale 1 too?
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Posted By
siz
on 2010-07-28
08:18:02
| Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
As I mentioned above: I haven't found that one yet. Currently I'm archiving all of my disks so if I have it I'll upload it too.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2010-07-28
10:18:05
| Re: Bard's Tale 1 and 2
Ok. Keep checking for needed stuff we don't have, someone told me there's an unknown 220V demo too...
Corollary: a Plus/4 convertion of the SixPack stuff would be a very kind choice.
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