Description

Intro screen

NinjaCopimaruKun BASIC is provided with Ninja Copimaru Kun, a rare copy tool, released on a 16kB cartridge in 1986 by Micro vox.

This cartridge has a 32kB SRAM that can adapt itself to the computer type on which it is used, as it will be located

• in pages 2 and 3 (8000h - FFFFh) when the RAM size of the computer is only 8kB
• in pages 1 and 2 (4000h - BFFFh) when the RAM size of the computer is 16kB
• in pages 0 and 1 (0000H - 7FFFh) when the RAM size of the computer is 32kB

The exact working is unknown when the RAM size of the computer is higher than 32kB. Besides, RAM in sub-slots is not detected by this tool.

It can dump only little cartridges (maximum 32kB) on tape, disk or its own SRAM, while adding an extra header with a text about copyright when saving to tape or disk, making the dump working only with this SRAM (although you can remove it to get a standard ROM starting with the 41 42 signature).

It does not work on emulators, probably because its internal hyper-protection corrupts the dump of the cartridge, also because the SRAM needs to be correctly emulated.

Usage of the cartridge

Direct usage

Title screen

Direct usage menu

Copyright message

The cartridge must be in slot 1 with the game ROM in slot 2, and you need to press the SELECT key on the intro screen.

You access then a menu with

• indication of the slot (or sub-slot) in which the cartridge is inserted
• 5 options:
  • RAM EXPANTION - just indicates the total of RAM + SRAM with a maximum of 64kB
  • TRANSFER DATA from game ROM to SRAM (it is followed by a message about copyright)
  • SAVE TAPE DATA = save SRAM content to tape while adding extra header related to copyright
  • VERIFY CHECK = check if tape data without the extra header correspond to SRAM content
  • SAVE DISK DATA = save SRAM content to disk while adding extra header related to copyright

If you use the left arrow, the tape related options will be displayed in red, what means that the baud mode for these options will be 2400 (back to 1200 with the right arrow).

Background usage

The cartridge must be alone in a slot, and you need to press the SPACE key on the intro screen to access this mode.

Instructions

When used in background to the MSX-BASIC screen, the provided BASIC extension adds 7 new instructions. The real effect is unknown for most of them.

Note: CALL can be replaced by the character underscore (_). A space is not required after this character. See CALL for more info.

Links

• Thread about this cartridge on the MRC forum