tandy put their sound chip on the 1A interrupt?

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!

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

also after all this wondering about "how many disks does Carmen Sandiego Enhanced (1990, DOS) come on?" is even sillier because I ALREADY KNEW THE ANSWER, I JUST FORGOT I KNEW IT

Martin Gleadow

@foone what happens if you put it into a pc flipped?

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

I am currently, as in this very thread, reverse engineering Carmen Sandiego Enhanced (1990, DOS)!

I've seen the code that asks for you to put in the other disk! And it only asks for DISK1 and DISK2!

Jernej Simončič �

@mgleadow @foone It won't work unless you reformat it (then it won't work unflipped).

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

just looking at the files, not the code (and not having seen original disk images yet that I can recall), I bet the answer is that they put CITIES.DAT on DISK2.
the whole game - cities.dat is ~300kb, with cities.dat being 168kb.

They could do the whole game - carmen.dat and cities.dat in only 200kb, which'd give them 160kb (luxury!) for a fancy installer.

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

This game autodetects everything (video and audio modes) and you can install it by just doing "copy A:*.* C:\CARMEN" on each disk, so I don't think they would have needed a fancy installer.

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

I should just check. I'm sure disk images can be tracked down in places.

the video and audio detection seems to be excellent, by the way. it just silently figures it out, without asking questions or requiring special arguments or configuration.
Perfect for a game aimed at the little childrens.

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

I found two different copies of the disk images, in different places.

both are imaged off a 3.5" disk version, which of course comes on only one (double density, 720kb) disk!