Posted By
coxy202
on 2015-04-16
16:38:12
|  zork 1
I have a commodore plus 4 and I am trying to get the zork games to run. Every time I run the game it goes back to monitor.
Can any one tell me what I am doing wrong
thanks
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2015-04-16
20:03:00
| Re: zork 1
Hi there,
Are you doing this on a PC with an emulator, or on an actual machine? Assuming the latter: are you in PAL/NSTC land? What type of disk drive do you have? Is it only Zork I that does this (since you wrote games, plural)?
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2015-04-16
21:30:57
| Re: zork 1
I just tried Zork 1, the original (not cracked) archive off our site, under YAPE 1.0.6. It works fine for me. I am in NTSC-land.
When loading the game, be sure you LOAD"*",8,1 ... and when prompted about the 1541, only select Y if you're using a genuine 1541 or an emulator with 1541 CPU emulation. (IEC emulation is not the same. Neither is 1551 CPU emulation, or a real 1541-II or 1571 ... for all of these, select N to turn off 1541-specific routines within the game.)
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Posted By
coxy202
on 2015-04-16
21:33:34
| Re: zork 1
Hi there,
Thanks for your reply. I have an actual plus 4 machine purchased from America. I am in New Zealand not sure if its pal? Loading from a 1541-III drive using a SD card (d.64 file) Have also tried to load it from a floppy on my 1541-II drive but with same result.
Does it with all three games.
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2015-04-16
22:26:06
| Re: zork 1
Is this problem specific to the Zork games? Are you able to run other games downloaded from Plus/4 World?
Pop your Plus/4 open and look at the Kernal ROM. It will be marked as either:
318004-0x - this is a PAL Kernal. x will be 1 through 5, indicating revision number.
318005-0x - this is a NTSC Kernal. x will again be 1 through 5.
An unmodified NTSC machine from America will run approximately 16% faster than a PAL (New Zealand, Australia, Europe) machine. As the computer and disk drive need to "talk" to each other at about the same speed, the 16% difference could be JUST ENOUGH to cause a professionally produced, disk-intensive program (such as the Infocom games) to have problems.
But before we get into hardware details, let's verify something. Download and install YAPE (http://yape.plus4.net/), and using its default settings, try to play the .d64 you downloaded. Let us know if it works -- if not, then your download could be faulty. Re-download and try again.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2015-04-17
08:59:27
| Re: zork 1
Just two small things to add: New Zealand, eh? That's cool! We don't have many visitors from there. Second, could you maybe take a photo of the screen? I still don't quite get what you mean by "goes back to monitor", perhaps seeing it would help.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2015-04-17
09:48:52
 | Re: zork 1
I would of thought New Zealand uses PAL the same as Australia and Europe?
All computers and consoles from America are NTSC, unless it states otherwise... Saying that, I have seen before that shipping charges are much cheaper from America than importing from Europe and maybe why you bought from there in the first place.
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2015-04-17
13:04:04
| Re: zork 1
@MIK - entirely possible that he purchased a PAL Plus/4 from here (US). There are a few converted and imported machines floating about, just as there are a few NTSC's on your side.
And to tell you the truth, some people are not aware of worldwide differences. I (again, in US) was tweeting with a woman in Surrey not too long ago, and stated that my BST started three weeks earlier than hers. I'm still waiting for her to realize that America doesn't DO British Summer Time. 
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Posted By
coxy202
on 2015-04-17
18:11:17
| Re: zork 1
Thanks for all your posts, all very helpful.
Looked inside and machine is NTSC. Downloaded yape and tried same program. Works fine but is quite slow to load and run.
When trying to load on the actual plus 4 from 1541-III with sd card it stops and the following comes up on the screen
Break
PC SR AC XR YR SP
; 0BEF 30 00 00 00 F6
Maybe to do with my drive. Will load prg files no problem but not d64 files.
Plus 4 machines are rare down here. I have never seen one on tradme but found plenty in the us on ebay. Have a couple of c16 computers and one I have upgraded to 64k.
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Posted By
gerliczer
on 2015-04-18
02:34:45
| Re: zork 1
Well, I don't really know SD2IEC drives, but do you properly mount the disk image (the .d64 file) or you try to load it as a program? Simply loading it will not work.
The machine being NTSC may cause problems, because there were very few programs written to be TV system independent. Most programs are PAL only.
Loading being slow is the expected behaviour. Try using some disk speeder program. Those are usually called turbos. But these won't work with your 1541-III. Try buying a JiffyDOS ROM for the machine, because SD2IEC drives support the Jiffy protocol.
You may want to try using 1551/IEC drive emulation in YAPE for faster loading times. But be careful, because this is incompatible with fast loaders, so multi-loading demos or games using turbos will not work. The 1541 and 1551 drives also need different disk speeders, so programs written for one will not work at all with the other, unless they have IEC protocol fallback options.
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2015-04-18
11:20:11
| Re: zork 1
Coxy, my take is that this 1541-III device does not support the IEC protocol properly (namely, DOS blocks) hence the crash... a firmware update might help in case someone fixes the glitch.
BTW, I actually know yet another plus/4 owner in NZ, Tezza (Terry Stewart):
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/
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Posted By
coxy202
on 2015-04-30
17:51:49
| Re: zork 1
Problem solved: I got an SD2IEC 1541 drive emulator from eBay, and the program now runs fine!
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