tandy put their sound chip on the 1A interrupt?

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

worst thing that could happen just happened:

I just realized the portable Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? is based on the same version I'm hacking, meaning it's in-scope for me to get this, dump the ROM, and compare.

That just increased the cost and complexity of this project by bunch

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

WAIT HOLD ALL THE PHONES.
Here's a photo from a MS-DOS version. It does that thing some companies (like Sierra) did back in the day, and included both 3.5" and 5.25" disks in the package.

BUT WHY ARE THERE SO MANY DISKS?

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

The copy of this game I have is approximately 470kb! You could fit this on ONE disk!

Cameron 💙🏳️‍⚧️🦌

@foone so you don't know which disk carmen sandiego is on?

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

ARG, they mislabeled this.
Admittedly, this isn't really their fault, this is confusing shit.

This is the 1992 Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Deluxe, not the 1990 Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Enhanced.

Manuel Tejera

@foone I played this on it's day on a 286 and it came on one disk. That photo is the deluxe edition (you can see it written on the black bar below the name if you zoom)

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

okay I finally found a boxed copy of the Enhanced 1990 DOS edition. (confusingly labeled the 1993 edition)

It comes on two 5.25" disks: presumably double-density, so that's 720kb in total.

Floppy Disk Pop Quiz: What's weird about these floppies, specifically given that this is MS-DOS version?

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

I happened to look at mobygames, and noticed two interesting things.

First, the Mac version is very similar to the DOS version, other than the expected changes you'd get from it being on a monochrome system with a GUI.

But wow, that's a completely different font! Is that built into macs or something? (EDIT: @amr confirms it is)

(also, the dialogue box is top-aligned. DOS bottom-aligns them)

Andrew Ross

@foone Yes, that's Venice, a font that early Macs shipped with.

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

Secondly, the TurboGrafx-16 version didn't even THINK about using the same GUI!

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

@Vorador Right! That's the 1985 port. The specific version I'm hacking on is the 1990 DOS version, not to be confused with the 1992 DOS version.

Pop Justy :popos:

@foone Floppy disk quiz: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think MS-DOS has a media descriptor for 5.25" 720K. There's one for 1.2M, 360K, and 320K. And two more for the one side version of those last two, 180K and 160K.

But I don't recall a 720K. There's a 720K for 3.5 that's 2 sided and 9 sectors. But I don't recall a 720K for 5.25.

But I could be wrong, but that's my guess here.

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

@amr thanks!

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

I don't want to go through a million platforms but all the other ports of this game tweaked some art here and there or put in different location-photos, but all of them have the same basic tall-window-on-the-left, smaller-window-in-the-top-right, four-buttons-in-lower-right design

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

@pop_justy nah, I meant "720kb" as the two combined, which are 360kb disks

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

The answer for "what's wrong with these floppies?" is that they're double-notched. That's needed for double-sided disks... on systems which have single-sided drives!
The PC has basically always been double-sided, so they only need one notch, on the top/a side.

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

here's why they shipped it on a double-notched disk anyway:
Broderbund was releasing games on a bunch of other systems that DID have single-sided drives. For simplicity they just bought Xty-thousand double-notched disks

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

is it gonna matter? not in the slightest (assuming there's no format-mismatching, which their shouldn't be: these are all the same density of disks, I think).

The PC doesn't check for a notch there, so it won't notice either.

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

It's just funny because this is, like, technically wrong?. These aren't PC disks, but the difference doesn't matter, so why not?

It probably saved them a decent amount of money because of bulk discounts and inventory simplicity.

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

@old_angry_queer hah!