Get those old Amiga games working! - Carrier Command

This was received from Richard Ling. (Please note that I haven't tested this myself).

BEHAVIOUR

Firstly, you will need this lha file: CC2HD.lha (1414 bytes). Un-lha it and you should have a file called cc2hd.

The file cc2hd is executable. When run it will ask for the original Rainbird Carrier Command disk to be put in df0: and RETURN pressed. It will then disable interrupts, read the disk, and re-enable interrupts. It will then want RETURN pressed again, this gives a chance to put a disk in df0: as the destination (but not on KS 1.3, see below). After RETURN is pressed for the second time it will write a ~350k file "carrier_command" in the current directory (run it from RAM: if you are worried about your HD!) and then exit. The file "carrier_command" is also executable and runs the actual game; it can be run from HD, powerpacked etc. The copy protection is NOT removed and the manual is still needed to play the game.

TESTING

Tested on these configurations and both the patcher and the resulting game work OK:

A1200, 030/40 + fast, KS 3.0
A1200, 020/14, no fast, KS 3.0
A1200, 020/14, no fast, KS 1.3 (df0: goes away though)

Tested on UAE and doesn't work.

BUGS

The patcher uses direct hardware access to read tracks from the floppy disk and under KS 1.3 this leaves the disk drive in an unusable state until reboot (it claims every disk put in it is unreadable). I don't know what causes this. The patch can write to an extra floppy drive or hard drive if there is one. Otherwise on >512k systems the game can be written to RAM each time it is needed and run from there.

The patched game has some minor graphic bugs which are probably caused by the speedup of later 680x0 CPUs. These can be reduced somewhat by changing cache settings before starting the game. I actually get less graphic bugs with the 030/40 than with the 020/14, so I guess experimenting is needed. Despite these bugs the game is still fully playable. It is also stable (I have run it once for 24 hours and it didn't fail).

Thanks for reading, if you try this out, let me know how you get on.

Richard Ling, richard@research.canon.com.au