List of non proper games dumped

[Marcer]

Which games doesnt exists in proper form?

I heard of:

Iron Lord - only buggs or bad dumps ?
Jinks
SON SU SHI
Tetra Quest

is there any others which need to be re-dumped / re-cracked?

[cb]

SON SU SHI !

[orionfuzion]

SSS is in the pipe! Stay tuned

[cb]

SSS is in the pipe! Stay tuned

I know

Another game that has been dumped but never cracked is Fate Gates of Dawn. It has password requests during the game. There are several versions available but none properly cracked. Probably a tough one since most of the files are encrypted...
And of course Crown of Creation on Falcon.
Also on Falcon the CD versions of Ishar III and Robinson's Requiem are available, but do they have password protection ?

[ijor]

Regarding Tetra Quest. The problem seems to be that all known original copies are flawed. Redumping any of those won't be useful. Some cracks are ok, so presumably there must be a good original version (unless the crack was from a prerelease?). But AFAIK nobody found it yet.

We always thought that the good version might be the US release, if exists, because all copies we seen seems to be an Uk release.

[Stefan jL]

I got the US release and it is the bad version... actually if you search ebay so does it seems it is only the US version that is available, the UK release must be very rare.
Or maybe Tetra Quest was only sold in US...and got withdrawn before it got an UK release since they found out about the error. I guess it might have been released in compilations in the UK though.

BTW... exactly when was the first crack released of Tetra Quest?

[ijor]

I got the US release and it is the bad version... actually if you search ebay so does it seems it is only the US version that is available, the UK release must be very rare.

May be indeed is the other way around as you are saying. Either way, we don't know for sure if it's an US vs an Uk release. Might be just a different (rare) version.

[Marcer]

How do i know my version of tetra quest is bad?

[Stefan jL]

It crashes on highscore screen

[Marcer]

Okay..

Ppeerarror is soo wierd.... Yes i stole his idea of trace bad dumps. So i know which games i really should find and dump..

[cb]

Marcer: don't worry about the hungarian troll. Nobody cares about what he says anyway. And his version of Gates of Dawn is still uncracked and untested like many of his 'adaptations'

[dlfrsilver]

I own a pristine copy of Iron Lord french original release. Brume has the KF dump + files coming with it

[kodak80]

Tetra Quest was released on the Tri-Star Warriors II compilation. Whilst I have this, the disk does not boot and I get bombs when it checks track 62.

That said, I have downloaded the STX from Atarimania and this seems to be missing tracks 73 onwards which is where the high score data is read from and might explain why the high score does not work.

It crashes on highscore screen

I have converted the Atarimania STX to KF RAW and added the missing tracks from my Tri-Star Warriors II disk dump and then converted back to STX. The resulting STX boots in Steem SSE and now shows the high score table when you press F9. Not sure if the missing tracks were the cause of issues with this game? Where elese was it failing?

Fixed STX file is attached for others to check. Hope this helps.

Tetra Quest [tracks 73 onwards from disk in Tri-Star Warriors II].zip

[ijor]

Tetra Quest was released on the Tri-Star Warriors II compilation. Whilst I have this, the disk does not boot and I get bombs when it checks track 62.
...
I have converted the Atarimania STX to KF RAW and added the missing tracks from my Tri-Star Warriors II disk dump and then converted back to STX. The resulting STX boots in Steem SSE and now shows the high score table when you press F9. Not sure if the missing tracks were the cause of issues with this game? Where elese was it failing?

Fixed STX file is attached for others to check. Hope this helps.
Tetra Quest STX [high-score fixed].zip

Thanks, but no offense, personally I don't like this approach too much. This is not a true dump, it is an hybrid patch (some people call this type of patch a Frankenstein, but that sounds a bit too agressive ). Even if it works, we don't know if the donor tracks correspond to the original release or not.

In the worst case, the disk image should be clearly labelled that is a mix of two separate dumps. This is not just a high score fix.

Can you provide the raw dump of the compilation disk? Is it available somewhere? It might be possible to fix the problem on that release itself without mixing both dumps. Or at least it would be good to compare both releases.

[kodak80]

Thanks, but no offense, personally I don't like this approach too much. This is not a true dump, it is an hybrid patch (some people call this type of patch a Frankenstein, but that sounds a bit too agressive ). Even if it works, we don't know if the donor tracks correspond to the original release or not.

In the worst case, the disk image should be clearly labelled that is a mix of two separate dumps. This is not just a high score fix.

Can you provide the raw dump of the compilation disk? Is it available somewhere? It might be possible to fix the problem on that release itself without mixing both dumps. Or at least it would be good to compare both releases.

Here is a link to my dumps (KF and SCP) of the Warriors II disk:
https://mega.nz/#!s2p2gSII!9efB9yyBkqjq ... Pi4o-Yl85Y

[ijor]

Here is a link to my dumps (KF and SCP) of the Warriors II disk:
https://mega.nz/#!s2p2gSII!9efB9yyBkqjq ... Pi4o-Yl85Y

Thanks a lot! Unfortunately it's not as simple. I was hoping both releases would have been identical except, of course, for the missing tracks on the original retail release, but they are not.

The Warriors II disk has one "bad" sector on track 0, probably damaged. The sectors is not read at all, that's not the reason that this disk fails. Conceivable it might have been a leftover from a protection that was removed, but it doesn't look like. The track 0 in general seems it was overwritten.

Besides track 0, several tracks are completely different between the Warriors II release and the original release.

I don't know exactly why the Warriors II disk doesn't work. It crashes at one point because the code is corrupted. But it would require further deeper analysis to find out why the code is corrupted in the first place. It is possible that this is related to the data on track 0 seeming to be modified. But I'm not sure.

It is very possible that the tracks missing on the original release (73-79) were supposed to be like the ones present on the Warriors II release. But it is impossible to be sure.

It might be interesting to get a different copy of the Warriors II release. Anybody? Btw, do you know when Warriors II was published?

[kodak80]

The box artwork does not have any dates.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/amiga/676 ... rs-ii/data has a date published for Amiga as 1992.

[ijor]

The box artwork does not have any dates.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/amiga/676 ... rs-ii/data has a date published for Amiga as 1992.

That probably means that this compilation is later than the crack. So it should be a retail release without the problem of the absent tracks.
Thanks for the info.

[ijor]

Tetra Quest was released on the Tri-Star Warriors II compilation. Whilst I have this, the disk does not boot and I get bombs when it checks track 62.

Did you test the Warriors II disk on real hardware? Did you get the same behavior? If so, please let me know exactly which TOS version are you using.

Sorry to bother you again

[kodak80]

Did you test the Warriors II disk on real hardware? Did you get the same behavior? If so, please let me know exactly which TOS version are you using.

Sorry to bother you again

No problem ijor, I have tested the original disk on an STE (4mb RAM) with both TOS 1.62 and 2.06 with the same result 3 bombs.

I have also tried it on an 520STFM (TOS 1.02) with the same result so I think the original disk is bad.

I have been looking at which tracks are bad on my dump and it looks like side 0, tracks 00,01,02,03,04,05,06 are all bad. When I replace these with the tracks from the original STX converted to KF, my dump of the Warriors II version seems works fine in STEEM SSE so although my dump seems to fail at track 62, the issue is actually in the first 7 tracks on the disk.

[ijor]

Re: Tristar-Warriors II release of Tetra Quest

No problem ijor, I have tested the original disk on an STE (4mb RAM) with both TOS 1.62 and 2.06 with the same result 3 bombs.
I have also tried it on an 520STFM (TOS 1.02) with the same result so I think the original disk is bad.

Thanks a lot !!! TOS Uk versions on PAL computers, right?

I have been looking at which tracks are bad on my dump and it looks like side 0, tracks 00,01,02,03,04,05,06 are all bad.
When I replace these with the tracks from the original STX converted to KF, my dump of the Warriors II version seems works fine in STEEM SSE so although my dump seems to fail at track 62, the issue is actually in the first 7 tracks on the disk.

Where do you see any errors on tracks 1-6 ??? I don't see any damaged track on your disk at all. Track 0 does have a sector with errors but that is the copy protection, it is not damaged.

If you replace the first 7 tracks, it works because you replace completely the original loader (in the Warriors II release) with the loader version without copy protection (from the Microdeal US release).

The disk fails because of a timing issue, not because it is damaged. It fails after reading track 62 because that's where the first stage loader ends. Once that part is loaded the copy protection code is performed.

[kodak80]

Yes, all TOS versions are UK PAL ROMs.

So, the Warriors II dump is probably good even with track 0 looking bad?

Can the timing issue be fixed?

[ijor]

So, the Warriors II dump is probably good even with track 0 looking bad?
Can the timing issue be fixed?

The disk is "good" in the sense that the data is not damaged neither corrupt. It does have a timing issue that might be, again, a mastering or a duplicating problem. Yes, it can easily be fixed and without changing any byte, just changing the timing of a couple of tracks.

I'll elaborate later, probably better in a separate thread.

Thanks a lot again for all the work and the info!

[kodak80]

The disk is "good" in the sense that the data is not damaged neither corrupt. It does have a timing issue that might be, again, a mastering or a duplicating problem. Yes, it can easily be fixed and without changing any byte, just changing the timing of a couple of tracks.

I'll elaborate later, probably better in a separate thread.

Thanks a lot again for all the work and the info!

My pleasure. Look forward to seeing your new thread.

[ijor]

Yes, all TOS versions are UK PAL ROMs.

Sorry, forgot to ask. Not just PAL ROMS, but PAL computers, right? I'm asking because there is a slight difference in the CPU frequency between PAL and NTSC computers. That's unrelated to the TOS you are using. The difference is very small and probably is not affecting here. But would like to be sure just for completeness.