tandy put their sound chip on the 1A interrupt?

[foone@digipres.club]

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@digipres.club]

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@digipres.club]

@old_angry_queer hah!

[foone@digipres.club]

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

[mgleadow@mastodon.green]

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

[foone@digipres.club]

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__s@infosec.exchange]

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

[foone@digipres.club]

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@digipres.club]

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@digipres.club]

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@digipres.club]

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!

[foone@digipres.club]

@jernej__s @mgleadow
the funny thing is that I don't think it's breaking because it can't find the right sectors (because they're on the other side), or even the fact that the tracks are in the wrong places (single-sided drives put the bottom side's tracks in a different place than double-sided drive would), but the fact you're spinning the disk BACKWARDS from its perspective. So the phase transitions and sector headers are all gibberish and it has no idea what the fuck it's looking at.

[foone@digipres.club]

That version has no installer. Just the usual files (and a "DESKTOPD.CFG" file that I don't understand)