dilwyn wrote:nikosdoykas wrote:hello i got a qubata(qubide) so.......... i can unzip on a real ql and the both files so i can try the comparization to areal ql? and the medic? so i see that the medic has 4 files........ i presume that can be run from win1_medic xmm ... i will mece the unzip to a real ql and i will feed back for ALL
now about the super bomber?????
Well done for getting most of the programs to work on win1_!
It is always difficult with these programs which were written before the days of WIN and directories on the QL.
If the code contains no reference to drive names, there is a good chance you can edit the BOOT program to change MDV1_ to WIN1_MEDIC_ (or whatever). For example, in M-Crunch boot line 49 there is a reference to MDV1_ in the LBYTES statement. This type of change is easy for someone with experience of editing BASIC programs. But as the boot program contains some POKEs it is very unlikely that the game would run on anything other than an original BBQL, for example not on a Minerva system with secnd screen active.
It's always more difficult when a machine code program from the old days refers to a drive name to load pictures, fonts or high score tables or configuration information. It's hard to alter the code to make room for a longer drive and directory name, so then you have to resort to substitution tricks such as using the DEV or SUB devices on systems which supply those so that you can fool the system into temporarily thinking that MDV1_ is really WIn1_medic_, for example. Reading manuals or articles about DEV or SUB may help. A rule of thumb is that you define which drive and directory the DEV or SUB device refers to, then alter its name to the device being substituted. For example, with DEV device:
DEV_USE 1,win1_medic_
DEV_USE 2,win1_medic_
DEV_USE "mdv"
What happens after those three commands is that the system thinks that when you type MDV1_ that you really mean win1_medic_ so that DIR MDV1_ for example gives you a list of files on win1_medic_ - commands like LOAD, SAVE, LBYTES will all be "fooled" in this way. It is a kind of last ditch way of forcing older software to work from directories. The example given makes MDV1_ and MDV2_ refer to the same directory, but can be different if you wish by giving different names after DEV_USE 1 and DEV_USE 2.
The DEV device was built into the ROMs of some Miracle Systems interfaces and may well be in the Tetroid clones too (not sure, I don't have one, maybe Vitaly will confirm?).
For systems which don't have DEV, there is a dev_rext you can download from somewhere on my website, I think it might be on the Toolkits page
http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/tk/index.html. It's not as comprehensive as the Miracle version, but suffices in most cases.
An article about DEV is available on my site at
http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/docs/articles/index.html