Subject: Maze Man XB tape recovery!!!

From: Owen Brand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:35:29 -0500

Recently I found an old tape with an XB game on it entitled "Maze Man."  I
had never seen it in any repositories before, so I wanted to try it out.  To
my surprise, it worked!!!  I got to play it for a few minutes and decided
that I would try to save it to diskette and transfer it to my PC so I could
try it out on Classic99.  To my utter disappointment, when I tried to LIST
or SAVE the game in memory, it told me I was in "PROTECTION VIOLATION," or
some such thing.  Well, I put it aside for a few days and asked around about
disabling the copy protection.  Found out that the proper memory location
was (-31931) and the necessary value to disable copy protection was "0".  I
became pretty excited at the thought that I could actually make this thing
work and perhaps bring a forgotten game back into the community.

I fired up my TI and my dedicated PC, and..... guess what... the PC no
longer works... It completely fizzled out on me.  Luckily, I had a CF7.  =)
Plugging in my CF7 and firing up my TI, I realized that the TI was not
recognizing my CF7 device.... UGH!!!!!  So, I figured out that (for some
reason) my CF7 will not work when my speech synthesizer is plugged in... My
speech synth has a custom load interrupt switch on it, and I blame that...
Got it working again.  +)  I loaded the tape back into my TI (OLD CS1),
executed a "CALL LOAD(-31931,0) and hit SAVE DSK1.MAZEMAN, and..... BOOM!!!
Got it to save!  I plugged the CF card into my PC CF card reader and
transferred it to my Classic99 file where I saved it and played it for a
while.  Cool game.

Anyway, I have uploaded pictures, the code, screenshots, and the actual
step-by-step process to the thread over at Atariage where we were discussing
it.  The link is below, and the posts which have all the pictures,
screenshots, and code are posts #1, and #45.  This was fun... I have
attached the zipfile I created of the game to this letter, and I hope it
posts to the forum file banks.  Feel free to check out posts #1 and #45 in
this thread for a full explanation of the game itself and the manner by
which it was recovered from tape.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/172278-maze-man/

Thanks to all who gave me encouragement while I was trying to recover the
program.  I'm glad it's off tape and onto hard drives now.  =)

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From: "computerclassics2000" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2010 13:34:37 -0000

Owen,
Thanks for your preservation efforts. It means a lot! Thanks also for sharing the 'process'. I do so love the technology we have at our disposal for this 30 year old computer. Lastly, thanks for sharing Maze Man.

BillG

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From: Owen Brand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2010 09:30:48 -0500

Absolutely, Bill.  I wish I had more games to recover.  :). I did find a case of TI tapes which are only labeled "TI programs", so that may be a neat source of new stuff... When I have time, I will definitely look into them and determine if they contain anything new or forgotten.  

As for the preservation... I strive to contribute the way you do, Bill.  :)  reading your posts, seeing the videos from your presentations at the Faire, I have alot to live up to.  :). I was glad to find the "Hacking Forth" articles as well---  hopefully I can find time to work with those tapes soon.... if I can find some cool stuff on them I'll do a write up and post the programs here as well.  

It's funny.... The process of bringing the game back to life was more fun for me than playing the game.  Does that make me a preservationist?   :) haha

Owen Brand

www.firebrandmusic.net
www.opry99er.com