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Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2019 5:57 pm
by mikeb
iss wrote: Sat Sep 14, 2019 11:15 am

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30 DOKE #2F5,#9700:!" "
Nicely done iss. I left out the DOKE-to-activate line bit (this allows "!" to become a user defined command pointing at the new machine code).

The line quoted sets up a pointer to the just-loaded machine code, and then immediately executes it. As per the above posts, one wrong byte and you've potentially lost it all.

So definitely CSAVE your loader before running it, otherwise much frustration.
I notice that for 9700, the corresponding value is A59C, so I guess they go in pairs?
It's a shortcut for assembler/disassembler listings that the address (on the left, #9700) refers to the first byte on that line, and it's assumed that all subsequent bytes on the line are placed one address higher. As mentioned, 6502 opcodes can be 1,2 or 3 bytes, but you'll sometimes see data tables that take it further (8 or 16 at a time) :-

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#9900: 00 05 08 AA BE FD DE 4A
#9908: AA 55 06 3E 2F 00 42 E3
#9910: etc...
Yes, sometimes there are bits skipped out, where someone's left space to start a routine or data table on a "nice round number" :)

But they are a little bit harder to POKE in from BASIC, as you have to then make some arrangement to deal with all the jumping around, e.g. knowing all data is #00-#FF, but addresses are probably going to be #0400+, you could do icky things like this to pick up the starting addresses of each block from the data stream ...

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10 A = #0
20 READ D
25 IF D = #FFFF THEN END : REM End marker, not address, not data!
30 IF D > #FF THEN A = D : GOTO 20 : REM An address, not data!
35 POKE A, D
40 A = A + 1
50 GOTO 20

100 DATA #9700, #A9, #4C, #DE, #AD (etc.)
...
210 REM CHANGING ADDRESS
220 DATA #8000, #AA, #55 (etc.)
....
430 REM ALL DONE
440 DATA #FFFF


Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2019 12:03 pm
by Steve M
Sausages !
I wonder if that's the text adventure program we've been trying to get working?
Please have a look at that and see what it is!

Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2019 5:21 pm
by kaydav
Steve M wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 12:03 pm Sausages !
I wonder if that's the text adventure program we've been trying to get working?
Please have a look at that and see what it is!
Unfortunately it's not a text adventure, it seems to be something along the lines of Snake, or maybe Frogger. I think it might well be a type-in game from a book or magazine. Attaching it for you anyway :)

Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Sun Sep 22, 2019 2:34 pm
by Steve M
Thanks.
Yes, it may be from a book, but I'm not sure which one.

Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Sun Sep 22, 2019 6:41 pm
by Symoon
Steve M wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2019 2:34 pm Thanks.
Yes, it may be from a book, but I'm not sure which one.
I think I spotted it in "Games for your Oric" by Peter Shaw.
http://www.defence-force.org/computing/ ... /index.htm

That was when I was looking for "M4" game, which is also on the tape listed above. So some (all?) of these programs come from this book!

Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 5:12 pm
by kaydav
Symoon wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2019 6:41 pm
Steve M wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2019 2:34 pm Thanks.
Yes, it may be from a book, but I'm not sure which one.
I think I spotted it in "Games for your Oric" by Peter Shaw.
http://www.defence-force.org/computing/ ... /index.htm

That was when I was looking for "M4" game, which is also on the tape listed above. So some (all?) of these programs come from this book!
Yep it's "Save the Sausages!" from Peter Shaw's book. Others on the tape and from the same book are "3D Driver", "Riddle of the Black Chateau", "Bomb Run", "Pac-Muncher", "M4" and "Box Bounce". "Dwarven" is "Stronghold of the Dwarven Lords" from Tim Hartnell's Giant Book of Computer Games, and the rest are probably also type-ins from somewhere. I'm not sure how far the typing-in and debugging process got with any of them. I still have the books and may scan/OCR them at some point.

Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2019 3:50 pm
by Steve M
OCR can help but it can get very confused by computer listings with the 0 with a line through it getting turned into an 8 and it can get hash signs completely wrong.
The better and clearer the print, the better chance you have.

Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2019 4:39 pm
by mikeb
.. and pray it's not one of those listings that was knocked out on an unsuitable printer (some of the Oric Owner listings were like that, some goofball, er, golfball printer that was obsessed with inserting 1/2 and 3/4 signs and other non-ASCII characters in place of < > ... and with a typeface that left you having to work out from context what was 0 and what was O ...

This was way beyond the "£ should be #" thing ... Oric Owner No 4, D. Peat's Word-1 suffered from this, others too.

... And hope that they tur~ed off inter~upts too, which was not a given :(

Or, for MCP40 owners, tur[X]ed off inter[X]upts ...

Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2019 7:28 pm
by waskol
If you want you can catalog your tape files with my taptap utility (for windows , and sources for Linux)
https://github.com/DJChloe/taptap

you can even extract each program from one tap and split it in different .tap files.

example :

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taptap cat c:\yourfolder\mytape.tap
if you want to save it in a text file

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taptap cat mytape.tap >catalog.txt

Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2019 8:43 pm
by kaydav
waskol wrote: Tue Nov 19, 2019 7:28 pm If you want you can catalog your tape files with my taptap utility (for windows , and sources for Linux)
https://github.com/DJChloe/taptap

you can even extract each program from one tap and split it in different .tap files.

example :

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taptap cat c:\yourfolder\mytape.tap
if you want to save it in a text file

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taptap cat mytape.tap >catalog.txt
Ooh thank you! I'll give this a try.

Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2020 6:31 pm
by damien
Hi,

On Windows, Oric Explorer does this very well... It can display the details of .tap and .dsk but also export it to a text file.

In addition it also allows them to be launched directly in the emulator (Oricutron).

Have a look at the topic "Oric Explorer v2.0 is up for adoption!!!" from the "General discussion" forum.

Regards,

damien. flag_fr

Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Fri May 15, 2020 9:23 pm
by hlabrande
Hi everyone, sorry for the necroposting...

I'm interested in the "Games for Basic" book, and especially in the complete adventure game it features. From the name only, i'd guess it's "Riddle of the black chateau"?
Does anyone have more information on the code? (A file with the source code, or the comments accompanying the source code in the book.)
I'd like to know more about its structure; there was a few books or magazines at the time that featured what were essentially frameworks to code adventure games, and I'm wondering if the one in this book is one of these... (and if so, which framework)

Thanks in advance!

Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 12:16 am
by iss
hlabrande wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 9:23 pmI'm interested in the "Games for Basic" book, and especially in the complete adventure game it features. From the name only, i'd guess it's "Riddle of the black chateau"?
Basic info at oric.org (no downloads).
Thanks to @dave3622's Oric JGamebase, attached ZIP contains TAP-file, BASIC soure and two screenshots:

The_Riddle_of_the_Black_Chateau.png
The_Riddle_of_the_Black_Chateau.png (3.91 KiB) Viewed 10194 times

Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2020 4:37 pm
by hlabrande
Odd, I thought I had turned on "follow this thread"... A belated thanks, iss :)

Re: cataloguing tapes

Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2020 10:54 pm
by Steve M
Those Usborne books can now be downloaded from their website.
https://usborne.com/browse-books/featur ... ing-books/

Oh - wrong book! But there's some more adventures here to explore.