Shufflepuck 128k Mac?

[BadGoldEagle]

Hey guys!

I can't get the original Shufflepuck game to work with my 128k.

The 128k will only accept systems up to 3.2. Even though 3.3 was distributed on 400k floppies it won't work.

I tried different downloads and OSs, from the mac garden and also from macgui.com. 

It boots up all right but if you launch the game it says error ID=15.



Interestingly enough, the same disk works on a Plus...

Any ideas?

Seems to be ROM related...

I'd appreciate ANY help 

 

[tanaquil]

Is this the one from 1987? (by Christopher Gross, aka Air Hockey)

Because the ROM changed between the 128K/512K and the 512Ke/Plus, some programs written for one won't work on the other, regardless of system software used. Games especially are problematic because game programmers would do all sorts of software hacking that wasn't 100% apple guidelines approved. Sometimes the only way to tell is to try to run it on both.

Memory might be an issue if the game is looking for more memory than the 128K can provide.

If the game is known to work on real 128 hardware and you are trying to run it under emulation (even emulation using the older ROM), problems can also occur (again, because the programming was unorthodox somewhere and is doing something the emulator isn't programmed to expect).

If it is the game from 1987, the likelihood of incompatibility with the original ROM and the memory limits of the 128K is very high.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

yeah I guess you're right. It doesn't work on the real thing either...

Shame.

Now I'm having trouble with Dark Castle. This one "should" work on a 128k.

 

[olePigeon]

I've gotten it to work on a 512k.  I've never tried it on a 128k.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

I've gotten it to work on a 512k.  I've never tried it on a 128k.

Shufflepuck or Dark Castle?

I'm going to buy that "dead" 512k Hyperdrive I was talking about in January. Contacted the seller and I'll collect it some time next month.

Hopefully it's salvageable. 

 

[joethezombie]

I'm pretty sure I have both of those titles running on my 128K, I'll check for sure when I get home from work today!

 

[olePigeon]

Shufflepuck or Dark Castle?

Dark Castle.

 

[joethezombie]

Ok, so I was wrong. They work on my SE, but not on my 128k. Shufflepuck gives the same ID=15 error when launched. Dark Castle when booted gives a strobe flashing between ID=02 and ID=28 for about a minute followed by a garbage screen.

 

[joethezombie]

Ok, so this is bothering more than it should. I read an interview with one of the Dark Castle creators that said the hardest part of making the game was to make it fit in 128k. Why would he say that if the game doesn't work on the 128k? And Shufflepuck is listed on several 128k game lists, with downloads. Why is that?

It's pretty tough coming up with actual information from early 80's computing! Guess I'll need to start collecting 80s era computing magazines!

 

[olePigeon]

Hmm.  What version of Dark Castle?  Version 1.2 (the version I have) only works on a Plus or newer.  Perhaps you need version 1.1 or older on 400k floppy.

I just got a copy of the 400k disk version, I'll try to take a look at it when I get home and see which version it is.  If it's older than 1.2 or 1.1, then perhaps it'll work on your 128k.

 

[joethezombie]

Ah, good thinking. It is on two 400k floppies, but I'm unsure of the version.

 

[olePigeon]

I tried my version and it crashes in Mini vMac.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

I tried my version and it crashes in Mini vMac.

You tried the Mac 128k emulation, right? 

I don't have a 512k, so I can't use its ROM in vMac... 

Theoretically Shufflepuck and Dark Castle should work on a 512k. I think the errors we're getting is because of the memory ceiling. The versions we have are too "recent" for the 128k.

If one of Silicon Beach developers said it worked on a 128k then I'm sure at least one version of Dark Castle works on the 128k. But I think version 1.0 is lost. Couldn't find it anywhere on the net.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Crystal Quest 2.2 from 1988 doesn't work either.

I couldn't find v1.0 anywhere. I think at least one version of it works with 64k ROMs.

 

[tanaquil]

I was just reading a copy of MacWorld from Mar 1987, which is the earliest review I've seen of Dark Castle (I have been reading my way through the archives in chronological order). The review does not specify a version number, but FWIW, the magazine lists the minimum memory requirement as 512K.

(The magazine's reviews generally seem to reflect a time frame three months earlier, so this would reflect the state of DC as of about Dec 86.)

It's possible that the original designers worked to make the game fit in 128K during the design stages, but eventually released a version that worked best in 512K, since the larger amount of memory was more widely available by 1986?

 

[joethezombie]

It is an interesting topic.  Here's the quote from the Jonathan Gay interview:

Jon God: How hard was it to fit a game of such high quality on two 800KB disks?

Jonathan Gay: Fitting it into the 128k of RAM on the Mac was a bigger issue than the disks. We had some very simple sound compression and some simple image compression but since the images were all 1 bit they weren't that big. Since the code was written in assembly language and the data for the levels was defined by hand, that part tended to stay small on it's own.

Which suggests a target for 128k Mac.  And I think Jon God meant to say two 400KB disks.   I think maybe they couldn't meet that objective and moved the requirement to 512k.  Even with 512k, the system had to be specially trimmed for it to work.  Release notes specify a Hyperdrive 512k won't work because "the Hyperdrive software takes too much of the memory".  This makes it highly unlikely a version 1.0 (if ever released) worked on 128k.