100+ games on .po image for CFFA

For discussions about the use of your CFFA card. Feel free to start threads about anything you are doing with your card. Tell us about your system, your CF card, how many drives, and especially anything cool you might be doing with your Apple II. Also, if anybody is hacking the CFFA please post info here!

100+ games on .po image for CFFA

Postby Philip » Sun Apr 05, 2009 7:21 am

It's taken me quite a long time to gather and test 100+ games that can
be run using DosMaster from the CFFA card. I started with Vinces
DosMaster image and just kept building from there.
All games should run on the Apple II+ or better. However my II+ seems
to be having some hardware issues, and for some unknown reason a small
percentage of the games don't work for me. However I have tested
the .po image using Applewin (in II+ mode) and all the games seem to
work fine from there.
Please let me know if you have trouble loading any of the games (when
the game doesn't work for me, I usually get an error at line 95 or
some garbled graphics). However, I recall that many of the games that
now don't work, used to work fine for me (e.g. apple invaders), and
I'm wondering if it has anything to do with upgrading my CFFA card to
firmware 2.0. Very annoying.

Anyway, you can get the .po file from here:

http://idisk.mac.com/lord_philip-Public?view=web

Look under the 'Apple II' folder
Enjoy.

Philip

P.S. the .po image contains my hacked DosMaster
files, so for those with Apple II's and II+'s the DosMaster's splash screen now
displays in all CAPS.
Philip
 
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Re: 100+ games on .po image for CFFA

Postby Char27 » Mon Nov 09, 2009 6:50 pm

Hi Philip,

Nice work!!

I downloaded this image and was able to mount it in AppleWin but am not sure how to load this into the CFFA. This image is 2x the size of the standard 32mb volume on the CFFA. Maybe I missed something in the documentation??
This is on my IIe BTW. I assume my IIGS would be the same since I have 32mb volumes there too.

I have also had trouble copying dos.master images to the CF card using CiderPress and have reverted to using ADTPro to get it up there. I think this might just be due to the limited support for dos master images in CP. Seems the dos.3.3 file is not handled properly.

Would you (or anyone else for that matter) be able to provide any insight or tips on how I can get around these items?

Sure looking forward to the CFFA3000 - should eliminate some of this hassle :)

Thanks,
Rob
Char27
 
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Joined: Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:09 pm
Location: Chicago, IL (north of)

Re: 100+ games on .po image for CFFA

Postby Philip » Fri Nov 20, 2009 5:08 pm

Hi,
It's been a while since I've used Ciderpress so please forgive me for any mistakes:

Yeah, I wasn't sure why it was 64mb either. The image was made from a compactflash using Ciderpress and the 'Volume Copier' function.
I have had no problems restoring the image to another card by using the same 'Volume Copier' function. Of course I believe you will need a card 64mb or bigger.
Sorry for being so vague.

As for the hardware issue I was previously having. I have now downgraded my CFFA card from V2.0 to V1.0 and all the programs that previously failed to load now load fine. Unfortunately my Apple II is packed away at present, but I have spoken to Rich about this issue and once I retrieve my Apple II I will do some further testing.

Philip
Philip
 
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Re: 100+ games on .po image for CFFA

Postby Char27 » Sat Nov 21, 2009 7:47 am

Hi,
not vague at all :) I know which function in CP you are referring to. I usually just copy the files to the folder I want them in using CP or sometimes use ADTPro over my LAN. So far, I have only used the volume copy to backup my whole CF card to a file. I don't think I tried using the volume copy for this yet and will try it on a blank card and see if it works and what the resulting files look like (1 32 MB volume or maybe its actually 2 32 MB volumes?).

Its an interesting note about changing the firmware to 1 for some of the stuff. I have the original 16mb version of this dos.master image on my IIE and there are a few games that work on my emulator but just crash on the apple. I didn't consider trying this so maybe this will help.

I have 8 partitions now and would have to live with just 2 including this. However, that is still a LOT of space and I doubt I really need that many yet.

If I remember the manual right, its just a jumper to switch between these versions(I'll double check that). I wonder if putting a small external switch on that jumper would be worth it. Than I could switch the firmware before booting depending if I was going to use DOS.MASTER or just ProDOS stuff :)

Thanks again!
Rob
Char27
 
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Joined: Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:09 pm
Location: Chicago, IL (north of)

Re: 100+ games on .po image for CFFA

Postby Philip » Sat Nov 21, 2009 8:07 pm

Rich's thought about V2.0 was that the files were corrupting the screen holes (Peripheral-Card RAM space) which are reserved for the peripheral card firmware like the CFFA. Truthfully I'm not 100% sure what this means, and I have not done any testing as my Apple II is still packed away.

If you get my CFFA card image working, try running Apple Invaders (#16 on the list) under V2.0 and see what it does. My Apple II crashes under V2.0, but Apple Invaders works fine when downgraded to V1.0.

I actually put 6502 V2.0 into one of the firmware banks, and downgraded to 6502 V1.0 into the other (I believe it come standard with with the firmware set up for 6502 (Apple II) in one bank and 65C02 (Apple IIe etc.) in another bank). So removing the jumper will allow me to jump between versions as opposed to processor types.

Phil
Philip
 
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Re: 100+ games on .po image for CFFA

Postby Char27 » Mon Nov 30, 2009 10:04 am

I gave Dos 3.3 Launcher a try and like the interface much better. While I am not sure it will support all the same apps, I plan to go thru the images in this image and try and migrate them over to dos launcher.
Nice thing about launcher is you can launch the DOS apps individually from ProDOS via command line. This eliminates the need for booting in to 3.3 first (and run vincemenu or other menu) to launch something.

I will post the image somewhere when done in case anyone is interested in it. It may take me a little time since I have a bunch of other stuff going on. I may post some work in progress images as I go.

Rich,
Would it be ok to post those images here or should I post them elsewhere (Asimov or some other site maybe) and put a link here?
Char27
 
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Re: 100+ games on .po image for CFFA

Postby Philip » Mon Nov 30, 2009 4:55 pm

Great!
However, I believe one downside, at least for me, is that DOS 3.3 Launcher does not support original Apple II's and Apple II+'s.
Philip
 
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Re: 100+ games on .po image for CFFA

Postby Char27 » Sat Dec 05, 2009 8:44 pm

Guess I was not thinking about that.
I am running a IIE and IIGS now but I do have 2 II+ machines in storage. I may eventually want to set those up too.

I am rethinking my plan :) I may still do it but I am not so sure...

btw - I had my CFFA in slot 1 on my IIGS and of the games worked there (only the IIE). I moved it to slot 7 and some work now. I have yet to test the firmware change on my IIE.
Char27
 
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Joined: Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:09 pm
Location: Chicago, IL (north of)

Re: 100+ games on .po image for CFFA

Postby Philip » Thu Dec 17, 2009 12:57 am

Please let me know if you have success when downgrading the firmware.
Also, what games fail to work? Apple invaders (number 16 from the menu) never worked with the new firmware, as well as many others.
Philip
 
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Re: 100+ games on .po image for CFFA

Postby Philip » Mon Mar 29, 2010 12:03 am

Here is what Rich has to say about the issue:

I got Dave to finally look at this on his logic analyzer. It is
indeed a screen hole corruption problem. Screen holes are reserved
for the peripheral cards ever since the Apple II was invented. So
the programs that use them are doing so at their own peril.

Now there was a change in screen hole usage from v1.2 to v2.0 firmware.
Dave is looking at what it would take to try to revamp the firmware
to free up that screen hole so the programs run. But we are really
out of space in the CFFA firmware so it may never happen. I will let you
know. Dave is still looking at the problem.

On a side note, the new CFFA3000 (which will have CF and USB thumb drive
support with Floppy emulation) will not use any screen holes
because it will have its own RAM on board. So no more DOS.MASTER will
be needed either.
Philip
 
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