[comp.sys.apple2] Test Drive II & GSOS

CXK126@psuvm.psu.edu (James R. Evans) (11/08/90)

     I was going through my disks the other day and I remembered that I had
bought Test Drive II, but don't play it very much. It is a very fun game, but
it takes over a minute of disk access between sections, and much more than
that just to boot up. Seeing that it uses the 'ole Prodos 16, I was wondering
if anyone had managed to put it on a disk with GS/OS? I had tried a while ago,
bt I nad not been at all successful with it. If someone has done this, I would
greatly appreciate a copy of the disk's directory so I could get it to work.
                   Any help would be appreciated.....

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     James Evans         'Darn right I like my IIGS'
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     /   \     /\  Delta Chi              "QUACK!"
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cs4w+@andrew.cmu.edu (Charles William Swiger) (11/08/90)

Test Drive II uses a very through and unnecessary copy protection scheme
that is a real pain to deprotect.  At least on my copy, you can't update
to GS/OS or a newer version of ProDOS 16, nor can you boot of another
drive with a newer system and then use aprogram selector to run the
game.  Additionally, you can't have a RAMDisk active, because it
complains of "memory fragmentation".  And, of course, their is a sync
check & nibble count on tracks $20 and $21, if I remember correctly.  An
ugly mess.

Since I have a master disk, I (not so) simply removed the checks for the
operating system code and for the RAM disk...leaving the sync/nibble
count in (it wasn't worth the effort to find the code.)  So now I can
copy the disk into the RAM disk, then run the program from the GS/OS
5.0.2 system disk, leaving the original disk in drive one.  The program
loads the data of the RAM disk but does the sync/nibble count routines
on the master disk....for a HUGE speed improvement.  It takes as long to
boot the disk as it did before, but once you're playing, the wait
between sections is about 5 seconds...much better!!




-- Charles William Swiger
    cs4w+@andrew.cmu.edu

shatara@islnds.enet.dec.com (Chris Shatara) (11/11/90)

In article <gbCFNnO00VpM50ElYx@andrew.cmu.edu>, cs4w+@andrew.cmu.edu (Charles William Swiger) writes...
> 
>Since I have a master disk, I (not so) simply removed the checks for the
>operating system code and for the RAM disk...leaving the sync/nibble
>count in (it wasn't worth the effort to find the code.)  So now I can
>copy the disk into the RAM disk, then run the program from the GS/OS
>5.0.2 system disk, leaving the original disk in drive one.  The program
>loads the data of the RAM disk but does the sync/nibble count routines
>on the master disk....for a HUGE speed improvement.  It takes as long to
>boot the disk as it did before, but once you're playing, the wait
>between sections is about 5 seconds...much better!!
> 
>-- Charles William Swiger
>    cs4w+@andrew.cmu.edu


Can you send out the instructions for what you did.  I'm particulary 
interested in bypassing the RAMDISK check.  This has been a royal pain for 
me.

Thanks...Chris

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