Uable to run The Games Collection (1988)(Eurosoft) - MSX Basic appears after CTRL + reset

Supporter (6)

26-11-2020, 00:56

Hello!
I'm new to MSX. I just found my old MSX Computer with Original Disks which unfortunately are unusable now.
Because my Games collections Disks can't be read I was very happy to find them online here:
{links removed by mod}
and so on...
However when I run the .dsk file within bluemsx or any other emulator I get the following result:
- menu appears
- select a game
==> Message appears
Reset the computer and hold down the [CTRL] key until a 'beep' is heard.
==> after a reset with ctrl down:
- menu appears
- select a game
==> instead of loading the game the following is displayed on the screen:
MSX Basic version 3.0
Copyright 1988 by Microsoft
24972 Bytes free
Disk BASIC verson 1.0
OK

I played a round a bit by changing Emulation / MSX Machine from MSX2 to MSX and so on in blueMSX without success.

Any help loading the games would be very much appreciated!

By hamlet

Scribe (3540)

26-11-2020, 06:17

Welcome stoc.
I had to remove the links in your post. Unfornatualy we are not allowed to link to warez in this forum.

By Manuel

Ascended (17779)

26-11-2020, 07:42

Which MSX do you have? What is wrong with it? Depending on that it may be that your original disks are still good.

By turbor

Champion (472)

26-11-2020, 09:32

You are emulating an msx2+. Maybe try emulating a regular MSX2 ?

By stoc

Supporter (6)

26-11-2020, 13:14

I own a Philipps MSX Video Computer. Floppy drives can't read other disks anymore

By stoc

Supporter (6)

26-11-2020, 13:19

I tried emulation MSX, MSX2, MSX2+ and so on, same result. Other disk images I downloaded work fine.
Maybe there is an issue with the disk images itself.
- Do you know, is there a possibility to avoid the CTRL + Reset request from the startup?
- Or is it possible to start the applications manually from MSX basic shell? When I type in the command files I get the names of the games plus extensions like .000 or .002 resp .003

By turbor

Champion (472)

26-11-2020, 15:33

We are talking about hese are we?
https://www.generation-msx.nl/software/eurosoft/the-games-co...

- The CTRL thing is needed so that the MSX only reserves enough RAM for 1 drive and not the regular 2 drives, so there is no real way to avoid this.
- How they are started from the menu isn't standardized, so without reading the menuprogram I can't tell you how to do this.

My current guess is that the disk you have download are wrongly dumped into a dsk file.
A lot of older tools would assume that it were always double sided disk that were being dumped. If you dumped single sided disks which such a tool this would not work. The first track would be alright however, so the directory would show up alright and the autoexec.bas would run, but data on later tracks would be misalligned and thus contain faulty data.
As a result the menu runs but everything else will read bogus junk instead of the actual game.

By Manuel

Ascended (17779)

26-11-2020, 22:27

Yes, that sounds plausible. They are single sided disks, so the files should be about 360kB. Is that the case, stoc?

By stoc

Supporter (6)

26-11-2020, 22:57

Yes, I'm talking about these games
and
yes, disk size is 360k.
So there is no way to 'revive' these disk I assume? Is there any way to use these wrongly dumped disk images e.g like use only layer1?
The bad thing is that my old WINXP-PC with floppy isn't working properly anymore and I've ruined already two 1.44 disks so far.
I remember form my old msx times that it wasn't possible to 1:1 copy these disks without circumventing the copyright protection.
So I might end up with the original disks and I can't really use them nowadays. Therefore I was so happy to find them online

By stoc

Supporter (6)

26-11-2020, 22:55

I found some other .cas files of these disks somewhere online but I'm currently unable to start them.
They look like this: "Games Collection, The - Tape 1 Side A - game ABC (1988)(Eurosoft)[RUN'CAS-'].cas
I tried this without success so far: http://www.msxblue.com/manual/runningcas_c.htm
But I've never used tapes in my live so far, so I'm probably using them wrongly
Is there a way a) to start them in a convenient way b) to convert them into .dsk files?

By Manuel

Ascended (17779)

26-11-2020, 23:47

If you contact me by email I may be able to help you.