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Wizards Castle for the Exidy Sorcerer - Bad Dump?

tempest

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Joined
Sep 16, 2014
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Location
SE Michigan
Are you using Mame? Mame does not handle original 1200 baud files very well. I tried the 300 baud file and that works fine.
 
Actually I'm using a custom SD card loader that a friend developed for my sorcerer. To use it you have to convert .wav files to .bin files using tapetool2. It worked for all the games I've thrown at it so far except for Wizards Castle and Lost Dutchmans Gold Mine. For both of these it gives me checksum errors. This is syntax I use to convert them:

tapetool2.exe --sorcerer 'The-Wizards-Castle-(1980)(Joseph.R.Power)-BASIC-Sorcerer-1200baud.wav' parseAudio --baud:1200 blocksToMame 'B - Wizards Castle.bin'

When I tried the 300 baud file with this is gave me an 'unexpected EOF' error.
 
I have used Mame to load the 300 baud file and then saved it to 1200 baud. The resulting file is here. It now loads without errors in Mame so you may have more luck with it.
 
That appears to work! Thank you. Do you have a corrected version of Lost Dutchmans Gold Mine?
 
Using the same conversion procedure with Mame this version of the Lost Dutchmans Gold Mine should work.

Edit: I just tried the 1200 baud versions on Tezza's site using the JSorcerer emulator. They load fine so the wavs are not corrupted, there appears to be an incompatibility in the conversion tool to bin.

I have no idea why the tool threw checksum errors on those original wav files, but your 'fixed' files worked just fine.
 
I'm having problems with several of the Basic games.

Lost dutchmans Gold - OD error in 60
Smunch - SN error in 50152
Super star trek 2.1 - SN error in 50152
Sorcerer invaders - SN error in 50152
sSarbase hyperion - SN error in 49972
Trots horse racing - SN error in 49940
Word squares - SN error in 50152
X-Nim - SN error in 50152
Space - SN error in 50152

Anyone have an idea?
 
Have you been able to successfully use tapetool2 to convert any Exidy Sorcerer BASIC programs from .wav into a .bin that you can load from your SD card thing?
I'm not sure I have used it for BASIC programs.
If it's a bug we can get it sorted out.
It's telling that you are getting syntax errors in the same (presumably non-existent) line numbers across different programs :)

P.S. Wizard's Castle wasn't a dump. Sean OCR'd the type-in listing from Joseph Power's original article [1,2] and even corrected some (original) bugs.

[1] J. R. Power, "WIZARD'S CASTLE," Recreational Computing, vol. 9, No. 1, no. 46,, pp. 10-17, July August 1980. [Online]
https://ia800309.us.archive.org/32/i...-computing.pdf


[2] J. R. Power, "MORE ABOUT WIZARD'S CASTLE," Recreational Computing, vol. 9, No. 2, no. 47,, p. 52, September October 1980. [Online]. Available: https://archive.computerhistory.org/...-v9-n2-acc.pdf.
 
Funny, I have that same print out and I was going to type it in eventually but never got around to it. My friend said that it was written in the computer shop he used to work at so he wanted a copy to play with.

Yes most BASIC programs I have converted do work. I think the problem is the Tape Simulator I'm using to load games from the SD card to the Sorcerer. My friend said he may have coded to BASIC start vector wrong. He's looking into it.
 
Hi, I'm the Sean Corr guy referenced by the OP. I joined VCFED last year but had issues getting the account going. Anyway, I'm here now and look forward to contributing and learning!

As exidyboy said, the tape file was not a dump/analog copy but an OCR > heavy edit > load to Sorcerer > tape save. One of my interests is scanning old Sorcerer list printouts (Z80 or Basic) and using automated workflow, getting them running and saved in digital .wav format.

@tempest: glad you got it working in your setup. I also echo exidyboy's comments regarding the phantom code lines. I find that a bad Basic load will invariably LIST perfectly well at first, and then dribble down to meaningless lines. In fact, when in doubt, I sometimes do a LIST 30000 in Basic as the first step to see if there is any corruption. Not many Basic programs have lines beyond that region so it's a good initial test.
 
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