cs4w+@andrew.cmu.edu (Charles William Swiger) (11/12/90)
I'm very sorry that I can't send the specifics, but my computer is at
home (in Boston, and I'm in Pittsburg until Xmas) Let's see what I
remember:
I think I ran the program with a RAM disk active, then waited for the
error message, and noted the string and error code.
Then I scanned the disk for either the string or some code like this:
LDA #errornum; JML SysFailMgr. (I forget which) Examine the code
around there and kill the error checking. It's very simple code.
I then went through and scanned for all of the extended ProDOS and
Smartport commands (as in JSL DosEntryPoint), and disabled their error
checking, hoping to kill the nibble count. This unfortunately didn't
succeed, and I didn't bother doing anything else...as I was too busy
doing other things.
Doing this should allow you to boot GS/OS and then run the game from a
program selector, which improves the speed of the graphics during the
game slightly. It looks a little smoother, I think.
If you've got 1.25Mb or more of RAM, and a spare floppy:
Make an 800K RAM disk.
Run the game, and create a data disk onto the RAM disk.
Exit the game, and save the RAM disk onto the spare floppy.
When you want to run the game again:
1) Create a 800K RAM disk and copy the spare floppy onto it using a disk
copy. (Actually, the disk will only be about half full, but doing a
full disk copy is much faster than doing it file by file)
2) Run the game from the GS/OS system disk, and set the options in Test
Drive to use the RAM disk as a data disk (you don't have to rename
/RAM5).
3) The game will do all accesses except the nibble count routine to the
RAM disk, greatly improving speed during play...worth the extra trouble
during the startup. Possibly with the nibble count disabled (I think
someone mentioned how, but I don't remember when it was), you could
improve the procedure further.
All of the above is assuming that you have the same version of the disk
as I do.... :-)
Good Luck.
-- Charles William Swiger
cs4w+@andrew.cmu.edu