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Color Dark Castle

olePigeon

olePigeon

68040
Yes! Snagged Color Dark Castle off eBay. Maybe I paid too much, but I've been looking for this one for a long time. I have the manual for the game, but no disks. Which is fine cuz almost all of Delta Tao's games shipped with just the manual and disks shrinkwrapped.

I'm curious about the 2 B&W disks. If they're just copies, someone went out of their way with those labels. I'm kinda hoping they're update disks. Either way, I can't wait. :)
 

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I love buying old software too, however it’s for the packaging now.

Unfortunately most disks are now beyond reading or repair so if you get lucky upload to Macintosh garden for your legacy.

P.s I managed to score Mac populous for the box, love it
 

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I have an AppleSauce for making flux images, so hopefully I can get a good read.

Since they're High Density disks, I can also try using my Imation Superdisk drive. Because of its precision, it's able to read partial sectors of regular floppy disks. I've been able to recover a few disks by copying bits of the file at a time and reconstructing it on a different disk.

Hopefully it won't come to that.
 
Got my disks! They're in rough shape. I was able to recover Disk 2 of Color Dark Castle. Working on Disk 1. I was able to get a flux read, but with errors ... working on recovering it. No one has imaged this version before, apparently. There are disk images of an older release on Macintosh Garden. So a bit of a bummer if I can't get this disk recovered, but not the end of the world.

OK, now for the B&W disks. Before I get all excited, did anyone else know that Delta Dao sold a B&W only version of Dark Castle? The disks that I thought were backup copies of Disk 1 for Color Dark Castle were, in fact, the original Dark Castle in B&W, updated to version 2.1 and released by Delta Dao. These are official B&W Dark Castle disks from Delta Tao. It's likely it uses the Dark Castle engine they wrote for Color Dark Castle, but just with all the original B&W graphics.

I've checked their old website, and I don't see the B&W version anywhere. Did I just not know about this?

In any event, I now have a copy. One of the disks was fubar, but I was able to recover the other disk. Good thing it came with two copies. :)
 
If you read in the manual (which I also have), they would send you a copy of the original if your machine did not support their new color version....if you begged them!

My disks somehow became lost. I need to find a copy, too.
 
I guess not too many people sent out for it. :o

@LaPorta I have a second copy that's broken if you just want to transfer the label to a new disk. I verified both disks just contained a copy of a disk image that contained the actual files.
 
On another note, I was able to recover Disk 1. :D AppleSauce to the rescue! Just kept spamming the Read Again button for the pad sectors, and it eventually got a good read. After that I was able to get a good flux.

So I'll have version 3.0.2 retail and B&W up on my website soon.
 
@olePigeon can you share what you are using to recover old disk. I have system 6.0.7b4 disk that Mac won’t load. Maybe I can give your method try and hopefully archive my disk.
 
You need an actual AppleSauce device with an external 800k or 1.4MB drive connected to it. They can be purchased for ~$100.
 
@crazyben There are older/used versions you can find for cheaper if you ask on the AppleSauce discord. That just happens to be the latest version. Unless you're working obscure Osborn computers with 8" floppy drives, you probably don't need the AppleSauce +. I have the previous model, but even the original one is sufficient if all you work with is Macintosh and Apple II disks. I upgraded to the version 2 because I occasionally work with DOS / 3.1 era PC floppies.

The only special method I have is if I'm working with high density floppies (so your System 6 wouldn't work here) I will use an Imation SuperDisk drive. It has a laser servo that can read 1/2 a track at a time, so you can often read and recover data off a bad HD disk.

If you can't read the disk, then your only option may be to take the floppy out of the shell and clean it with some warm water mixed with a bit of dish soap (this is a permanently destructive process.) If you're careful with a heat gun, you can remove the label before opening the disk so you can transfer the label to a new disk. Be careful not to get anything on the hub itself as it may dissolve the glue, only clean the surface using a cotton swab. Then give it one more clean with demineralized water to remove any soap residue. Place the platter back in the floppy shell and tape the shell closed. See if Disk Dopy 4.2 will read the disk, then save a disk image. Write back the image to a known good floppy disk and transfer the label (if you were able to remove it.)

IPA can dissolve dried label glue, but you'll need to glue the label back on.
 
@LaPorta Not through an AppleSauce. I use it connected to a regular Macintosh, then I use a hex editor or ResEdit to copy bit-by-bit in troublesome areas. After I'm able to extract the files, I reconstruct it on a known good disk.
 
For those interested in recovery, a trick I used to use once other recovery techniques had been abandoned (and as much flux data was captured as possible), is crack the disk cases open and wipe the film with a *clean* silk cloth. Re-assemble, and more often than not, the data would be readable again.
 
@adespoton I'll give that a try, thanks. I wonder if that has anything to do with the plastic bag trick with credit cards? If you have a card that's having trouble reading, run it through the mag reader with a plastic bag over it. For some reason the static from the bag makes the card easier to read.

Incidentally, some of the guys on the AppleSauce Discord took a look at the disk image that was slapped onto an HD disk that had shipped that way from Delta Tao. It kept failing the checksum, so I was worried that my recovery efforts may have been in vain. Turns out it was made using an early version of ShrinkWrap which suffers from a TAG bug where it doesn't fill in correctly the TAG information (or any of it) for the checksum. So it will always fail. The disk image is actually fine, which was why neither AppleSauce nor DiskCopy 6.3 complained when they opened it (only DiskCopy 4.2 and ShrinkWrap 3.5.) So I wrote it back successfully to an 800K floppy disk and made a new image from that one with good TAG info. Also made a flux. So everything is good.
 
LaPorta said:
How do you use the SuperDrive? I didn’t know the AppleSauce could accept USB input?
Click to expand...
That rung a bell in my head when you asked that. I looked back in the AppleSauce Discord because I had this feeling that I actually asked that question once, and apparently I did some time ago. Disk Blitz said he's actually looking into adding USB support to the AppleSauce and supporting the SuperDisk drive. If he does that, it could make for some ridiculously precise recovery tools.

With how accurate the drive was with a servo controlled laser, I'm not sure why the SuperDisk couldn't natively read GCR disks.
 
olePigeon said:
With how accurate the drive was with a servo controlled laser, I'm not sure why the SuperDisk couldn't natively read GCR disks.
Click to expand...
Perhaps the drive cannot vary its rotational speed. Only thing I can think of.

I’d love that capability. I have a SuperDisk that I got brand new with my iMac in 98. Just sits in its box waiting for a use…
 
LaPorta said:
Perhaps the drive cannot vary its rotational speed. Only thing I can think of.

I’d love that capability. I have a SuperDisk that I got brand new with my iMac in 98. Just sits in its box waiting for a use…
Click to expand...
With how fast it was, I wonder if it could have just done multiple passes to simulate variable speed.
 
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