Epyx (later vorpal)
#1
I am wondering if anybody has been able to copy "The Legend of Blacksilver" or "California Games" from Epyx with the Super Card Pro...

I have a well aligned Panasonic drive that has been able to easily copy v-max! and Rapidlock protections with super card pro but not these... I tried blind and not blind copy without success...

Any thoughts? Did I miss something? Or are these games part of the not yet copiable game list?

Thanks
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#2
The Epyx stuff is still on the list of things to look into. I might have corrected some of the issue with the latest beta. You will only be able to duplicate these with Blind Mode turned OFF. These disks have a very small gap that needs to be located as a last measure if the flux write splice is not found. You of course can duplicate anything and everything using the analyzer if you know where the start/stop of the track is. That's the only real magic in disk copying.
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#3
(12-19-2013, 02:24 PM)admin Wrote: The Epyx stuff is still on the list of things to look into. I might have corrected some of the issue with the latest beta. You will only be able to duplicate these with Blind Mode turned OFF. These disks have a very small gap that needs to be located as a last measure if the flux write splice is not found. You of course can duplicate anything and everything using the analyzer if you know where the start/stop of the track is. That's the only real magic in disk copying.

For Vorpal 2 games, the only way still that I have read that they can be duplicated with SCP is using splice (old "non-blind") mode and then using the analyzer and manually indicating the start and end of the tracks... unfortunately, I am not sure how to do that... I just tried duplicating a few of them with the V1.09 of SCP without success... Could somebody provide a guide or hints on how to do that for a few of the Vorpal 2 games (e.g. Legend of Blacksilver, The Games: Summer Edition, etc.)?
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#4
I'd recommend you wait until Jim implements this in the software, because doing it by hand is tedious, to say the least.

However, if you really want to, here's what you need to do:

Under Drive Settings, for Index Sensor, set both read and write to "required". This will result in a copy that is aligned exactly like the source. Not really required, but if you're going through all this trouble, might as well be exact, right?

Put your source disk in, and choose the option to read the disk to a flux image file, with 2 revolutions. Read the disk in.

Switch to the analyzer mode and put your blank disk in the drive. Change the Device to Image File and click the Read Image button to read in the image you just made. Take the check out of "re-seek track 0" to save some wear and tear on your drive.

Make sure you are at track 1 and the cursor in the data window is at the very top right (Position 0). In the "Find Pattern" box, put in "DADADADADADADADA" (8 x $DA). Now you'll be repeating the following steps for tracks 1-17 and 19-35:

1. Click "Find Pattern".

2. If nothing found, increase Bit Shift by 1, then goto step 1.

3. If pattern found, look at the position of the vertical scroll bar to the right of the data window. Since there's 2 revolutions, it's in the data set twice. You want to find the 2nd occurrence of this pattern, so it should be in the bottom half of the data. You can also look at the Length and compare to the Position it was found at for a more precise measurement. If you found the pattern in the first revolution, set the cursor in the data window to be after the block of DADADA that you found, goto step 1.

4. Once you've found the pattern in the 2nd revolution, the write splice can be seen right where this DADADA pattern changes to another pattern (repeating 5 nibble pattern of binary 10011010101001101010)

5. Click on the byte where this change takes place, then click "Set Flux End".

6. Click "Write Image" to write the track to the physical disk.

7. Increase track to the next whole integer, and repeat again at step 1.

For track 18, you're looking for a different pattern. Search for "FFFF52572529". Again, find it in the 2nd rotation of the image. Once you find it, scroll back about $65 bytes or so in the image to see where a block of $55 or $AA bytes ends and another pattern starts after. The write splice is where these two patterns join. Click on the transition byte in the data window, then click "Set Flux End" and click "Write Track".
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#5
Any update on being able to use SuperCard Pro to copy C64 Epyx (later Vorpal) disks without having to manually set the beginning and end of each track using the disk analyzer? Thanks
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#6
No, I have done nothing more with this. SPLICE mode works in most every case.
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