Amstrad PCW 8256 Games Archive

[jevicac]

Hello and apologies, do not take it the wrong way nor do I want misunderstandings. I have never accused him of stealing material, far from it. What PCWWiki publishes is free and for everyone. I just clarified that a lot of material is from the PCWwiki, nothing more than a record. I don't want you to get angry, this is to share with everyone. I hope you haven't misunderstood me. And you are free to publish whatever you want and like. I haven't called him out on anything. Things can be misunderstood and it is not my intention. This has been a misunderstanding. My apologies. Greetings

[JohnElliott]

Regarding OrbQuest, it is currently unplayable. There used to be a SETTERM program for it, but it is not recovered so far. Someone managed to find out what the data inside TERM.CTL is (see last post here: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.cpm/c/mfTdhZttbTo/m/xj838HKuCAAJ), but again I do not know what the values for PCW should be. Game starts, but text output is bad.

The following TERM.CTL values seem to work for me, at least as far as starting the game on a PCW is concerned:

Code Select Expand


00000000   1B 78 00 67  0B CD 1B 4B  00 C1 77 D8  1B 59 00 C5  .x.g...K..w..Y..
00000010   E5 00 5C 1D  3A 00 02 D6  0D 00 00 01  01 20 00 21  ..\.:........ .!


[cj7hawk]

I found that on many of these games, all that is needed to make them work on the PCW9512 is to rewrite the checksum in the boot sector to 01 instead of FF.

Previously, someone worked out that it's possible to boot from a PCW9512 disk, and pop the disk out as soon as it changes to the bar screen, and loads the boot sector, then to switch disks to the PCW8256 disk, and that would work, and the game could be manually loaded.

However while investigating, I noted that it was possible to just change the boot sector checksum, and then the 8256 disk was recognized as a 9512 disk, and the game would just load.

I wonder if it's worth rebuilding a lot of these images from 8256 to 9512 format so that people who download them can play them OK if they have a 9512?

David

[Aristodest]

Hi guys,

I wanted to go back through some of my old game on the PCW8256 and one of the games is Santa's Grotto.  

Every time I load it, it plays for a few seconds and then comes up with the "Tough Luck" message.  Do you get the same thing?

Any idea how to fix it?

Thanks all.

[zzarko]

Hi guys,

I wanted to go back through some of my old game on the PCW8256 and one of the games is Santa's Grotto. 

Every time I load it, it plays for a few seconds and then comes up with the "Tough Luck" message.  Do you get the same thing?

Any idea how to fix it?

Thanks all.

Hi Aristodest,

Sorry for the late response, haven't been here for a while... I have just tried that game on my PCW for a few minutes and it seems to work OK. Could you maybe post some more details abut the problem? Are you trying on a real PCW or in an emulator? If on a real PCW, do you use a real floppy or some hardware floppy emulator (Gotek, HxC)?

You cannot view this attachment.

Cheers,
Zarko

[Carlos0371]

After almost a year, here is 1.3 version of the archive:

https://8bitchip.info/oub/Amstrad%20PCW/Amstrad_PCW_8256_Games_Archive_1.3.tar.gz

Anyhow, enjoy newly added games in your PCW with Gotek drive

Hi there, I appreciate this is an old post, however I've only just discovered the potential joys of the PCW (acquired an 8256 AND an 8512).

I've downloaded the file, but when I try to open it opens as a Raspberry Pi image file - do I just unpack the image to an SD Card for the Gotek, or am I missing something?

Appreciate your amazing work.......Carlos.

[SkulleateR]

@Carlos0371 

It's a .TAR.GZ file, so it's compressed (.GZ) and bundled (.TAR) ...

So, after unzipping the GZ, you will get one file (Amstrad_PCW_8256_Games_Archive_1.3) with no prefix, but this is the bundled archive. You will have to extract that a second time to get the files inside. How to do that depends on the OS you are using

[Carlos0371]

Thank you for that, I'm using Windows, so do I just extract straight to SD, then put that in the Gotek and it'll work? Sorry, not used a Gotek yet.......

[SkulleateR]

Thank you for that, I'm using Windows, so do I just extract straight to SD, then put that in the Gotek and it'll work? Sorry, not used a Gotek yet.......

After extracting you get a GAMES folder with DSK Images, guess you have to put that in your Gotek

[TynH]

I don't think you can put folders on your removable usb drive and expect the Gotek interface to navigate them. The archive consists of .dsk image files, put them in the root and access each like an actual 3" disk. Even with a rotary selector you probably don't want to put more than say 20 disk images on one drive. 

[eto]

I don't think you can put folders on your removable usb drive and expect the Gotek interface to navigate them. The archive consists of .dsk image files, put them in the root and access each like an actual 3" disk. Even with a rotary selector you probably don't want to put more than say 20 disk images on one drive. 

With a rotary encoder and a OLED display you can navigate folder structures.